James M. Redwine

Gavel Gamut

Motherhood and Apple Pie

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I am for both of these institutions and I bet so are most voters. So the slight of hand our politician’s must pull off is to make us think we are getting Mom’s apple pie for our tax monies when, in fact, we may be getting Jezebel’s cow pie.  

Take the Patriot Act for instance. The full name the naming gnomes came up with for this abomination is: “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA Patriot) Act of 2001.” An example of the Act’s true purpose is the secret FISA courts it created. FISA courts are Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts where the term “court” is turned on its head. Secret proceedings are the stuff of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, not places where due process and the protection of rights and liberty occur. Nothing could be less patriotic than The Patriot Act.

Much as we have ignored and subverted our core principles of innocent until and unless proven guilty in Guantanamo Bay “Detention” Camp, our legal and political system has incrementally used words to obfuscate and mislead. A detention center is where bad behaving children are disciplined. Guantanamo is America’s shameful gulag where we give the lie to our core values every day it remains open.

George Orwell was an English writer but his prescient works, Animal Farm and 1984, could be sounding the alarm for our government’s attempts to have us believe politicians pet projects are infrastructure and military incursions are peace missions. It is difficult to get voters to re-elect a politician if they know the person they are paying about $200,000 per year is spending trillions of dollars of taxpayer funds on pet projects and claiming they are infrastructure. Maybe what the politician wants to fund is a good idea but lying to the American public to get it funded is not.

Perhaps if we would rename broccoli, ice cream, we could save broccoli farmers from bankruptcy. Or maybe we could champion those wonderful brussel sprouts as COVID-19 cures. I am confident there would be some late-night charlatan somewhere on the internet or cable t.v. who would run such an idea as a Biblical alternative to vaccines.

As Congress castigates Mark Zuckerberg and wrings its hands at his subliminal manipulation of our youth, perhaps it could turn its spotlight on itself and start policing its own Newspeak. The politicians’ callous indifference to the citizenry’s confusion over science and religion or peace and war or progress over stagnation is in need of a good analysis by a contemporary Will Rogers or Mark Twain or George Orwell or Joseph (Catch 22) Heller.

Anyway, I cannot devote any more time to such pursuits as it is the middle of football season. So, for now, I must concentrate upon what is truly important, at least to me, and I will blithely rely upon the goodwill of the politicians to address the rest in terms that lull me back to indifference.

2021 South Dakota Fall Judicial Conference

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For all the South Dakota Judges here are the 5 handouts and the Pre-Trial Order from Jim Redwine’s October 14, 2021 presentation:

MISSION STATEMENTS

The Mission of the Posey County, Indiana Circuit Court is to help create a community in which individuals, families, and entities are encouraged and facilitated to resolve legal problems among themselves and to provide a forum in which legal issues that are not privately disposed of are fairly and efficiently decided according to applicable law in an atmosphere of mutual respect and positive innovation.

The mission of the Posey County, Indiana Probation Department is to provide information ordered by the court and to accept juveniles and adults who are transferred to the Department and to supervise, record, and report their compliance with the terms of their probation in a manner which meets governing standards, protects the public, assists victims, and provides for the rehabilitation of offenders consistent with the effective application of Department resources.

PROCEDURE FOR DEVELOPING A MISSION STATEMENT

Of course, you will need to finalize any Mission Statement after you return to your Court next week and I suggest using the procedure set out below for that process. For now, at your tables, please prepare and discuss preliminary Mission Statements for your Court. Thank you.

  1. Start with a positive attitude and an open mind.
  2. Determine what entities you want input from such as your staff, other Court Offices such as the Clerk’s Office, the Police Agencies, the Bar and the Public through a volunteer committee perhaps or members of the media.
  3. Define your Court’s and your immediate, short-term and long-term goals.
  4. Set forth written, simple guidance for stakeholders to give input.
  5. Ask for written suggestions and then objectively consider them.
  6. Give yourself and those involved a time line.
  7. Draft preliminary Mission Statements and test them with your staff then the Bar.
  8. Do not hesitate to carefully consider suggestions.
  9. Make and publish your Court’s Mission Statement.

CASE ADMINISTRATION

Your only job is to resolve controversies brought to you.

Discuss ideas with your fellow judges as how to best help the Parties to resolve their own problems fairly and efficiently.

How can you and your Bar move the disposition of cases as close to their initiation as is reasonable and just?

Discuss, share and develop court orders and procedures that accomplish these goals.

SECURITY PLANS

Rural Courts:  “I know everybody, everybody knows me, no one would want to hurt me. “WRONG!” Also irresponsible.

Every Court should have a Security Plan based on its particular circumstances. Follow the A.C.T. procedure in developing a plan for your Court.

  1. Assess your surroundings
  2. Create a Security Plan
  3. Train Yourself and your staff in the plan
  4. Take input from your staff, the Bar and law enforcement.
  5. Form and regularly consult with a Security Committee composed of persons with stakes in the outcome of any security problems.

Every court case can result in problems. Fence line disputes, family matters, landlord/tenant, etc.

Today, at your table with your colleagues, create a preliminary assessment of your Court’s security situation.

Starting Monday, October 18, 2021 implement the A.C.T. approach in its entirety.

ETHICS

Discuss the videos as to what decisions and actions you would and should take on questions of Recusal and handling Contempt.

Keep the guidance of the South Dakota Judicial Qualifications Commission in mind:

“Four things belong to a judge: Hear courteously; Answer wisely; Consider soberly and Decide impartially.”

  1. Uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary;
  2. Avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activity;
  3. Perform the duties of judicial office impartially and diligently;
  4. Conduct your extra-judicial activities as to minimize the risk of conflict with judicial obligations; and
  5. Refrain from inappropriate political activity.
Pre-Trial Order

 

Positive or Negative

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Equal Justice Initiative National Memorial Montgomery, Alabama

 

There is no memorial on the Posey County, Indiana courthouse lawn to the seven Negroes murdered by a white mob on October 12, 1878. There is a modest stele naming those soldiers with Posey County connections who served in   the Revolutionary War and an impressive statue honoring all who served in the Civil War. There are bronze plaques on the lobby walls of the Posey County Coliseum commemorating many of those who served. The Coliseum houses one of Posey County’s two courts and the other court is located in the courthouse.

Because I was the elected Posey Circuit Court Judge and because our son, James David Redwine, was a West Point graduate who would later earn a Bronze Star for Service on the front lines of both the Gulf War 1990-1991 and the Iraq War of 2003-2011 I was asked to speak at both the War Memorial Re-Dedication on Sunday, October 21, 1990 and Re-Dedication of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on July 23, 2008. I was honored to do so and wrote the following poems for the occasions. The poems appeared in several newspapers after each commemoration:

 

WAR MEMORIAL RE-DEDICATION
(Sunday, October 21, 1990)

SUNDAY MORNING CHIMES

How dear it is to be alive:
To hear the peal of morning chimes;
To feel the invigorating sting of this autumn day;
To taste the rich and biting air;
To smell the acrid smoke of burning leaves;
To see the glory of Nature’s third act.

How satisfying to still be a player:
To know a child’s trust;
A family’s support;
A friend’s companionship; or
A lover’s caress.

How thrilling it is to learn,
To plan,
To strive
To serve,
To live!

These wondrous things:  These sensations;
These desires;
These dreams;
These visions.  This life,
Is what these heroes have sacrificed for us.

RE-DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIERS AND SAILORS MONUMENT
(Wednesday, July 23, 2008)

WELL DONE!

At Lexington and Concord, the young blood began to flow.
At the Battle of New Orleans, muskets killed our cousins and our foes.

At the Alamo and Buena Vista, we stood to the last man.
At Shiloh, Chickamauga and Gettysburg, brothers’ blood soaked the sand.

At San Juan Hill and when the Maine went down, our soldiers never flinched.
At Verdun and by the Marne, a million men died in the trench.

At D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, after Hiroshima’s mushroom clouds,
At Incheon Landing the forgotten war brought many more funeral shrouds.

At Khe Sanh and during Tet, we held our own and more.
At the Battle of Medina Ridge, our Gulf War warriors upheld the Corps.

At Sinjar, Mosul, and places with strange names,
Our Iraqi War veterans now earn their fame.

In uniforms, our citizens have served well everyone.
Today, we here proclaim to them our solemn praise:  Well done!

 

It is fitting and proper that we honor those who serve and that we are permanently reminded of the horrors of war. Society needs to be constantly on guard and eternally grateful. Of course, the reasons that call for memorials about wars are much the same as why we need memorials to our collective evil done to some citizens by other citizens.

Since I first discovered, by accident, in 1990 the legal system’s long covered up murders of Daniel Harrison, Sr., Daniel Harrison, Jr., John Harrison, James Good, Ed Warner, William Chambers and Jeff Hopkins by, as the Mt. Vernon, Indiana Western Star Newspaper said on October 17, 1878, “two to three hundred of the county’s best white citizens” right on the Posey County, Indiana courthouse campus, I have called for accountability and a memorial to the victims. Society owes this atonement to the victims and we as a society need it for ourselves.

What the sign says. Pictures by Peg Redwine

How’s It Happen?

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This morning at 5:00 a.m. I woke up thirsty and went to the kitchen for a drink of water. While my eyes were beginning to engage, I reached into the cabinet for a glass. Then I managed to locate the faucet and turned it on. Clear, potable water came rushing out. I did not need to walk to the pond or draw a bucket from a well. It suddenly occurred to me that somehow from somewhere someone had done me a great service. And they did not even know me.

It was Thursday so I knew I needed to get our trash out. I collected the week’s refuse of leftovers and packaging and took it to our gate by the road. Later that day as I went to the post office, I noticed the trash was gone. My mail box contained greetings from two health care solicitors, we must now be in a demographics database. But it also contained cards from our kids and some important information from the V.A. Someone who did not know us cared enough to send it.

To get to the post office I drove on paved roads with proper markings and directions such as traffic control. Somebody must have sweated in the heat and shivered in the cold to help me get to the post office. And, of course, somebody at the post office who was neither friend nor family got our mail to us.

There were street lights helping to guide my way and a police officer watching out as he sat in his patrol car near the café. He may have been enjoying a cup of free coffee but he deserved it. He was there for us and he did not know us.

Who are all these people who provide water and garbage collection and sewer and street and energy and safety and health care? Why do they do it, especially all those town and city and county politicians who serve on boards and in offices that keep the lights on and the streets both navigable and safe? Many of them serve without pay or any financial benefits. Why do they give of their time and labor to serve the rest of us?

When I see news footage from other countries where people are without power or safety for themselves and their families, I not only feel for them I realize how good we have it. It even will sometimes slow down my complaining about all the services I receive from people who do not know me and have no reason to want to. Every now and then, through the dark glass of pessimism, a small light works its way into my psyche and I remember how lucky I am.

So, thank you to all of you who helped me slake my thirst. I will try to complain less and enjoy more. That should last a day or two if I do not watch cable news.

Do Not Cross the Potomac River

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At the Rubicon

In 49 BC the Senate in the Republic of Rome ordered Gaius Julius Caesar to not bring his army across the Rubicon River into the city of Rome. Caesar said, “Let the die be cast”; that is, I’ll take my chances. He did, Rome as a Republic collapsed into civil war and instead of a representative government the Roman people got a dictator. Five years later, on the Ides of March, Caesar was deposed by force.

The people who founded the United States of America came from a tradition of great fear of military power over civilians. In fact, in our Declaration of Independence one of the main complaints against King George III was that, “He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.”

This great fear of military control over the civilian populace of America was guarded against in our Constitution. Article I, section 8 endows Congress with the power and authority to declare war, and to raise armies and militias to suppress insurrections. Article II, section 2 establishes that the democratically elected President shall be in control of the armed forces as the Commander-in-Chief.

In his exhaustive and exhausting treatise, The Framer’s Coup, The Making of the United States Constitution, Professor Michael J. Klarman points out the vital importance to our Founders that “[I]n all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.” See p. 330.

We Americans profess pride in and support of our military as long as we are assured our military remembers its place. That system has worked pretty well and we are likely to maintain it in spite of political pressure being brought upon the generals to undermine their Commander-in-Chief. As I recall from my service days, I did not always recognize as wise what my military superiors thought was wisdom. Joseph Heller in his prescient novel, Catch-22, had a pretty firm grip on the banality of much of the military. On the hand, our politicians sometimes also fall a little short of a full deck. Still, at least we have the opportunity to have some say in who our civilian leaders will be and we can fire them.

Therefore, for me, I’ll chose to bob and weave with the occasional civilian loser versus a palace military coup. Back off oh ’ye purveyors of a Banana Republic. As Scarlett O’Hara said, “Tomorrow’s another day” and as Annie said, “Tomorrow is only a day away.” I can wait. Elections, yes, coups, no.

Another look at the Rubicon