The American dream is built on freedom, and that freedom comes at a cost. American Heroes Stories presented by Life Liberty Happiness is a new series honoring the men and women who've sacrificed to protect that dream. We're proud to play a small part in preserving their stories for future generations. Life Liberty Happiness, a media squatch podcast, presents American heroes stories. All right, everybody, we would like to welcome to the program Virginia National Guard Captain Randy Krantz, or as most people in Bedford, Million, the Honorable Judge Krantz. Welcome to the show. Well, thank you all for having me. It's a pleasure. Yeah. So kind of tell everybody where you're from originally, where it all started. Well, I grew up here in Bedford, Virginia, literally about three blocks over off of Park Street. Oh really here in Bedford. My parents both worked at Rubbitechs. So I went to a school here in Bedford, from Bedford Primary through the elementary school and then the Liberty High School. I graduated high school in nineteen seventy eight. I was thinking about doing a medical career. I was really eat up with a TV show back then in the seventies called emergency with about the paramedics, and after high school, I went to community college in Rowan, Oak at Virginia Western and got a professional nursing degree in my paramedic license and worked as a paramedic and as an RIN in the emergency room at the hospital in Rondock at the Trauma Center. How long did you do that before you ended up joining the National Guards? So let's see. I graduated from nursing school in nineteen eighty one and worked through about nineteen ninety and joined the National Guard in nineteen eighty eight when I decided to go to law school because I was gravitating from the clinical practice of nursing to administration and I was encouraged to get a law degree to maybe do hospital administration was the initial plan. Oh wow. But I continued to work as an RN while I was going to law school. So I from nineteen eighty seven to nineteen ninety I went to law school at the University of Richmond. I was married, I had a fifteen month old daughter and a newborn son, and so I commuted from Bedford to Richmond each week and would come home. I'd be in Richmond during the week for classes and come home on the weekends and work in the emergency room here at Bedford Hospital. I'd worked two twelve hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday and get up a dark thirty on Monday mornings and drive back to Richmond, Wash Rents. Repeat. Yeah. But I joined. I joined the National Guard to quite honestly, to help finance law school. But because I had a nursing degree, I could get a direct commission and I was commissioned in the Army Nurse Corps as a second lieutenant initially, but was assigned to the Lynchburg second one hundred and sixteenth of the twenty ninth Division as a medical platoon leader. So I was a medical officer nursing officer rather in an infantry battalion. But as a medical platoon leader, I commanded a combat medics and an ambulance squad. What's the training like, uh? For like, when you joined the Virginia National Guards, what's that training process look like? Uh? Initially, the first training round was an officer basic course, and that was at Fort sam Houston, which is the Army Medical Center. It's called Ahmed, or back then was called Ahmed. That's where all the medical specialists are trained, starting out everything from physical training, UH, to how to wear the uniform, how to salute, the basic military drill YUH. Went through that and then after that the specialty courses for uh, you know, combat medicine, UH, some advanced training, and trauma medicine and trauma nursing. I could have been assigned to a hospital like a military hospital as a reservist National Guardsman, but they worked it out because I lived in Bedford, to let me go to one of the field units, an infantry unit. As you know, Bedford had the D Day Boys from Company A. Lynchburg was the headquarters company, and the medical unit was within that company, was a platoon within that company. And so I got to be an officer in an infantry unit commanding that medical platoon. Thoroughly enjoyed. It had a great bunch of young men and women who were skilled and trained and combat medicine corman. And my primary duties was their supervision, but also to make sure they were properly trained. UH. And what's the commitment for that? So you've you've done the training, and then what's the commitment after that point? So it's so it's a minimum of two weekends a month. I mean, excuse me, one weekend a month and then two weeks in the summer of active duty. And do you know what that's going to look like before you get your two weeks or you find out pretty much once you get there. Pretty much the training camp calendar is pushed out a year ahead in advance, so there's always some changes, but you know, pretty much, I knew when the when the weekends fell, and I knew when the two weeks would fall. And then as I was going to law school, you know, there was no classes in the summer, so the two weeks were not bad to do because I didn't have to arrange and you know, take a vacation from full time employment. But once I graduated and was working full time, then you had to coordinate your vacation with the two weeks. Many of the employers that I had were very gracious and given some flexibility. Sometimes it would stretch to a third week if there was additional training or accomplishments that you needed to do. But basically a weekend a month, two weeks in the summer. Excuse my ignorance on this, But when it comes to the National Guard, like what are like, where do the orders come from? At that point? I mean like the guests we've had on previous you know, they would say the orders came from General this or whatever. Where did Virginia National Guard orders come from? Well, there's a chain of command. There's even the chain of command. There's a National Guard commander or chief at the Pentagon. I did not know that. And then each state's national Guard falls under the commander in chief, which is the governor. Okay, so primarily we're a state asset, but that can be federalized. So the official thing it's the Virginia Army National Guard. So you're part of the army, but you're in the national Guard, which is different than being in the army reserve. Initially, we fall under a state chain of command all the way up to the Adjutant General. There's a general over the Virginia Army National Guard who answers to the governor. And then there's a command structure at the Pentagon of all the national Guard units through all the fifty states and territories. So is there. At any point in time would the Virginia National Guards ever have to serve overseas or anything like that? Well, certainly. Of course, the best example was back during World War Two with the D Day. The Virginia Army National Guard here in Bedford was Company A of the second and one hundred and sixteen. I did not move that of the second one hundred and sixteenth and which was all part of the twenty ninth Infantry Division and the twenty ninth Infantry Division history goes all the way back to the Civil War. The symbol for the twenty ninth Infantry Division is the ying and yang symbol the blue and the gray, which historically the legend goes is that at the end of the Civil War the Virginian the Maryland troops swapped pieces of their uniform blue in the gray, and then they merged together after the war into the Virginia Maryland National Guard. WOW, and so with the twenty ninth Infantry Division, so you'll see them wearing that blue and gray patch. And then a division is divided into companies Company A, Company B, Company C, and then a headquarters company. And the Bedford National Guard troops were Company A. So they got activated during World War II, and of course where many of them were killed in D Day, which is why the national D Day Memorial is. But yes, any National Guard unit can be federalized and called to active duty or called to active duty for state emergencies, everything from disasters. I think it was nineteen eighty eight, was right as I was processing in. I had not processed in in time to go, but in Virginia Beach. During one summer they had some riots in Virginia Beach and the National Guard units were mobilized to keep the peace. After I came in in nineteen eighty eight. In nineteen ninety, it was interesting. I'd graduated from law school in May of nineteen ninety, took the bar exam in July of nineteen ninety, was waiting on the results. In two or three days after the bar exam, our unit was scheduled to go for our two weeks. Our mobilization point was at Fort Bragg. Oh wow, okay, a different training. And it was while we were at Fort Bragg that desert storm started, and so that was our All these Virginia National Guards when they're in green uniforms, and all of a sudden we start seeing active duty soldiers in brown uniforms, and we weren't sure what that was about because we were out in the field training. Our family members back home knew more of what was going on because they were watching CNN Wow, and we didn't know we did. I don't think we got federalized. I think we got held over a week to see what was going to happen, and then we were released but told to be ready because one of the missions then of the twenty ninth I'm thinking back, was to backfill the eighty second at Fort Bragg. If they moved out, then we would move into the base and assume those duties. But that didn't happen, but we did get to see everybody else going over to Kuwait in the first desert storm. And so yes, Virginia National Guard or any state can be mobilized for a state emergency, a local emergency, or be pulled into the active army. Did you. When did you make the transition from medic over to you did some jag stuff? Is that great? So when I again, the original reason I thought about and decided to go to law school was thinking that I would transition from clinical nursing trauma practice to administration. And so when I graduated law school in ninety with my law degree, I still wasn't sure that I was going to practice law. In fact, the very first job that I was offered after law school was to be an assistant hospital administrator manager at a hospital. And I also got a chance to join a small law firm doing health care law practice. And it occurred to me that if you're going to do administration, you might want to get some other clinical experience of practicing law under your belt. Healthcare is just being so legally regulated and rules and regulations. I thought that would be helpful. So I decided to practice as I said, took the bar exam, passed it, and went to work with a small law firm in Roanoke for two years, and then came to the Bedford Commonals Attorney's office as an assistant Commonwals attorney. And that was from nineteen ninety two to ninety five that I was an assistant. In Virginia, we call them Commonwealth's attorneys. Other states, their district attorneys were prosecutors. And I got assigned by my boss, who was a commost attorney then Jim Updyke. He wanted to have two assistant commals attorneys, one doing mainly vice and drug related cases and the other one doing violent crimes. And I got tasked with doing the violent crimes. So I spent three years prosecuting homicides, robberies, sexual assaults, crimes against children. And there was a lot of overlap between doing that type of law in the medical nursing experience. In fact, being part of a trauma team, you're part of a multidisciplinary team that you have to work together with other medical specialists. Prosecuting violent crimes. I was given the leeway to put together a multidisciplinary team to call the Violent Crimes Response Team that we for here in Bedford in the mid nineties, and prosecutors, police officers, detectives, forensic sciencests, we had profilers or behavioral analysis and some of the same skills working in a medical multidisciplinary team transferred over readily to the violent crimes. And of course a lot of them had medical issues, you know, injuries, autopsies, that sort of thing. And I did that until nineteen ninety five, until then when I became the commonwealths Attorney. Jim Updyke went on the bench became a judge. I got a sign to fill his term, had to run in an election. I've never been in a political contest in my life. But about that time, I branch transferred to the Judge Advocate Corps in the Virginia National Guard and was a sign from transferred from the Lynchburg Field Unit second in one hundred and sixteenth to Division Headquarters at Fort Belvoir and Alexandria, where the twenty ninth Division Headquarters was, and I was assigned to the Judge Advocate staff and was made Chief of Criminal Law for the twenty ninth Division for Virginia, Maryland. And so I did military prosecutions within the Virginia National Guard. Oh wow, So I mean, what does just because I've never heard or seen it, what does a military prosecution look like? What is that? Well, just like any other prosecution, it can range from what's called non judicial punishment or informal punishment of just keeping internal discipline within the units. The command staff, the commander of the military unit has a lot of say and oversight of criminal prosecutions. But it can range to prosecuting domestic violence, murder cases, theft, military equipment, drug use. So this would be like military police arresting someone and then it's going through the process. Correct. So, as a criminal prosecutor or a prosecutor of crime in the Army National Guard. We work very closely with the Military Police and the Army's Criminal Investigated Division. So it would literally be during the week I'd be a state prosecutor and then on the weekends I'd be a military prosecutor, and you prosecuted under different laws. For example, under the state law would be the Virginia Code, but in the military the Uniform Code of Military Justice the UMCJ, and they have their own body of laws defining the crimes, the penalties, and like I said, they can range from informal actions all the way up to full military trials. Did you ever find yourself when you're prosecuting is there more leeway as a prosecutor in the military than there is on the civil side. Does a defendant have less freedom on the military side than they do on the civil side, And did you find yourself crossing paths and going, oh, yeah, we can't do that here. You know, it's interesting, that's a very interesting question. I found the military criminal justice process to be very fair, very clean. There were high standards. You not only had to meet the legal standards, you also had to have in your back of your mind maintaining proper military order, So you know, a judge advocate general, you know, you had your own military rank. I got promoted to captain by the time I went to the Jack Corps. But you might find yourself prosecuting a colonel or a major. Oh wow, I never thought of that. And so the structure would be so at the twenty ninth division, there was a general that was the commander of the twenty ninth Division, usually maybe a two star general, and then he would have the general staff, and he would have staff officers ranging from security, transportation, intelligence, medical personnel. And there would be these other officers, usually sometimes lieutenant colonels or majors, on his staff. And then also on that staff there would be the judge advocate or the SGA, the staff judge advocate who was the legal advisor to the division commander. Okay, and under most army protocols, a division commander would delegate to the staff judge advocate and his staff to handle military justice issues. So there is the court on a base. Okay, we had on tour out that we had a courthouse, a military courthouse. I hate to sound like I just I just it's a side of the military that I don't know that I know much about do you true? Not greatly anything good? I mean we lived of what belvar We just never got in trouble. I mean I guess, I guess the common thing good that you would think of would be someone going a wall. Right, A lot of things are like that, I mean being the weekends prosecutors per se. A large majority of our cases were minor offenses. They were serious when it came to good order and discipline, like positive drug tests. Unfortunately, you had sometimes the thing of military equipment. Things would disappear or be sold, so that took a couple lot of time. Soldiers a wall. Uh. Sometimes we would have administrative discharge hearings. Should it should? Should the person be separated from the service with less than an honorable discharge? So we the due process that was allowed in those cases. But sometimes, you know, we prosecuted assaults, sexual assault. I mean, living on a military basis its own city towns, so you have the same they just have a different judicial system to take care of it themselves. As a civilian, I mean, Tripp grew up in the military homes and on a base. Right, you were at Kemplazoon pretty. Much in Cherry point. So I'm just I mean a civilian my whole life, I don't. I mean, you hear of it, but you don't know how that process looks. So this is interesting to me because I'm like, I have no idea how it works, not exactly, but parallel. As a JAG officer, judge advocate prosecutor. Now, in our section and the judge Advocate department, if you would, we called it the shop, our shop. You had attorneys. There was the chief of family law, the chief of international law, the chief of logistics, and you know, all of those things, and we had to coordinate. And then of course some JAG officers become military judges. Okay, so you know you can, you can rise to that. But there were some instances where we were cross designated as assistant United States Attorneys, so we could, depending on what the situation is, it was theoretically possibly to pross someone through the military system or to prosecute them in federal court. And so sometimes we worked cooperatively with the Department of Justice, Okay, especially if something cross state lines or or when the the National Guards units were on deployment or sent overseas, then you know, there may not be one home jurisdiction, you would figure that out. We're the best place. But I thoroughly enjoyed. I found the JAG system scrupulously fair at the level that I was at. We didn't hide the ball. If if we had put a case together against the defendant, their defense attorney, which could also be a JAG officer, you see, yeah, we would say here's the evidence. Yeah, oh, okay, here it is, and uh, the procedure might sound a little different, but the basic concept was the same as if in federal court. And then there was at the trial level, if somebody was convicted, they had the opportunity there was there's you know, just like you have the trial court then the Court of Appeals than the Supreme Court kind of structure. In the military, there's the trial court and the Military Court of Appeals in Washington, and so they can appeal the case all the way up through that system into the higher courts. And a lot of times, depending on what it was, we could refer a military personnel to state prosecution. We could say, okay, we're going to defer to the state because they may have had concurrent jurisdiction. It just sort of common sense, logistical tactical decisions that we would make. A large part of my duties when I wasn't in court was to make rounds to the field units to give legal advice to the field commanders. So sometimes the military discipline would take place at the local level in the local National Guard unit, and the JAG officer could hold hearings and make a decisions. The whole Uniform Code of Military Justice was designed that it could be done by any officer that didn't have to be a lawyer. So part of military officer training you got some training and experiencing the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So sometimes the commanders would want to do their own process, we would just give legal advice to make sure they stayed within the guardrails. And so sometimes I would travel go to start on Friday evening at a National Guard unit in Richmond area and by Sunday morning being taswell Virginia as you made you rounds and so I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I stayed. I stayed in the JAG until nineteen ninety eight when I came oh wow, yeah. From eighty eight to ninety eight, between Army Nurse Medical Service and. Jack, I wanted to ask you about the Army the nursing that you did there. You had mentioned that you had been in the ure the nursing room for May eight nine years right before you joined the National Guard. Did you find yourself are you older than the rest of the people. That are being training? Have you had enough experience that you're actually helping train the people that are training you? I mean, I mean you had some really hands on experience. Probably a lot of them may not have had. Well, well, it's very possible. I joined. Probably the biggest thing for me that got me started is I joined the Bedford Rescue Squad when I was sixteen. At that time it was all volunteer, but you could join at sixteen. I was a junior, and somewhere between my sophomore and junior year in high school, you had to have your driver's license and you had to have your EMT certificate emergency matter and I was able to do that and join the rescue squad. So from before I went to nursing school, I had four or five years of experience working as an EMT and then as an advanced EMT, And while going to nursing school also got my paramedic certification, and the paramedic is an advanced level of care equal or that exceeds an army cormon as far as level of training. You know, paramedic can administer medicine, start ivs, use a defibrillator, put emergency airways in all those sorts of things. And so by the time I graduated nursing school, I had that experience. But the best experience I worked at Community Hospital in Ruin right off of Interstate five eighty one and was part of the team that helped the hospital or was when it was happening rather get their certification as a trauma center. So what we were trained to do in the emergency room was it was to be a mass unit. Oh wow. So when the patient arrives off out of a car crash or a gunshot wound in the ear, was to deliver that emergency trauma care within what was called the golden hour. What we learned from Korea and Vietnam War is the more seriously injured soldiers, the ones that were the most critically injured, had a better chance of survival if you got them to a surgical hospital where you could do rapid intervention within a golden hour. You had a golden hour of sixty minutes. Even if you didn't do that, even if they survived the initial insult, the gunshots, the explosions, the trauma, they would die weeks later from secondary complications because they were in shock for so long. If you could air evact them over the field units to a definitive surgical hospital, a mass unit, it was called a combat support hospital, the survival rate went up. We learned that at the end of World War Two in Korea when we started using helicopters. Wow. So by the Vietnam really came into play. There was a clinical scenario where a soldiers shot and wounded and he doesn't get the defenditt care, but he survives. It actually had a name. It was called d Nang Lung from Danang in Vietnam. D nang Lung was even if they survived the initial insult, they would go into respiratory failure weeks later because the body just couldn't handle the trauma. They would survive, but not for long. But if you got them to a hospital where you could get in and do the surgical intervention, that had a high rate. So the idea of civilian trauma centers was that rapid evact even by helicopter or ground ambulance, and you had the surgical teams in the emergency room or available, so you could get them to the operating room quick. And so that's what I did for that seven or eight years, well actually through going to law school and worked at part of a multidisciplinary team that would evaluate, assess, and intervene and the goal was to get them to the operating room to fix the injuries or slow the bleeding, or to restore the function within that golden hour. And that became a term of art, the golden hour. And so in the medic side, most of the medics that I were training their initial Army enlisted person's basic training as an EMT course, so they were going through basic what I had gone through, but you know, sixteen seventeen years old, and then they could advance up to more advanced levels of care. And a fully trained military corman is I would say, is almost, if not equally, equivalent to a physician's assistant. They can make very definitive trip because they may be the only medical asset absence that rapid evacuation by LUPKO. So when I was doing that, I got to work in the er also be a flight nurse on the helicopter, either going out bringing them in or being there when they got there. I thoroughly enjoyed that. So when you get out of the military at that at that point where I shouldn't say got out, when you were done with the National Guard, you're still the Commonwealth Attorney. At that point I was. I was still the Commonwealth Attorney, so I was still doing criminal prosecution. Around about the time that I got out is when we in Bedford. As I said, we had formed the same concept as the trauma team, but a violent crimes response team, and that allowed us our Schurf's department Shurf Brown back then working closely with his office, we applied and received a grant to develop what was called Internet Crimes against Children Task Force. Oh yes, and that was that was around about that same time, and we used to joke about it. The first grants that went out for about ten sites across the nation. I can't remember them exactly, but they were like New York, Broward County, Florida, Los Angeles, Seattle, Bedford. Yeah. But I think the reason we were competitive in that first round of grants was that we had already showed that we could pull together as an effective team. So I think that was very rewarding. And so when we first formed the Bedford Internet Crimes against Children, it was designed to be a regional task force, not just combined to Bedford. You had the function of solving the Internet crimes, the child exploitation, but also training up other task forces within the region. So it was both delivery and training. And the code name back then was Operation Blue Ridge Thunder and then now So Virginia was divided into two main task forces, one Northern Virginia Area, which was run through the Virginia State Police, and then the Southern Virginia Internet Crimes Task Force, which was run through the Betfrack County Sheriff's Department. And so we did that. We had our violid Crime team, the Internet crimes. We also formed a cold case squad and there was about about half a dozen or so unsolved homicides from stretching back into the early eighties, and we formed a team. We found the team. I think if I learned one thing both from the medicine and the law, that what makes things work is communication, coordination, and cooperation. If you can get good people on a noble mission. Working together, you can get a lot of things done. And we did that. We were able to solve or resolve some of the cold cases. And so I stayed as the Chief Prosecutor of the Commons Attorney till twenty sixteen. To my surprise, got nominated for the to go on the bench as a judge. It's not something I never It's not something you set out to do. I did not. I enjoyed what I was doing. I was very blessed. And you know, I think the biggest reward professionals if you can do something honorable and good in the town hometown that you grew up. And I used to joke to people, I said, well, what's it like being common wealst attorney? I said, well, some days I had to be Andy Griffith and other days I had to be Matt Dillon. But it was just how to deal with people. Ought to call balls and strikes, treat them fairly. People didn't mind you being tough in the law as long as you were fair. Sure. And but the opportunity to go on the bench came up. I was approached about it and agreed, and I went on the bench. In twenty sixteen, and I thoroughly enjoy what I'm doing now, and I'm in my second term. Judges were appointed, we're not appointed for life in the state like in the federal court, for fixed terms, and then you have to be reappointed by the legislature when your term is over. Does politics get involved into that at all? Maybe small peep, small peep politics, and in the and that that it's it's a legislative process. So you know, the whole idea of advice and consent. Yeah, that's the the the the more cynical politics. I have not experienced that. Uh. There used to be an old joke that if you want to be a judge, be ready to be traded for a bridge, you know, you may get traded for somebody's highway. That I've never seen that or experienced that, And every We're very fortunate with our legislative delegation statewide. I think they take the judicial nominations very seriously and even when there's some disagreement, I think they handle it very honorably the way that that's good that we still have that. Yes, so you also teach as well, I do, Okay, I do so. Before I went to law school, and again that's that's sort of how it happened, as I got a full time teaching appointment at what was called then called the College of Health Sciences in Jefferson College of Health Sciences, and it was a private community college part of the Karelian Hospital System, and they had programs for to get your associates degree in nursing respiratory therapy or your associates degree as a paramedic and as an rin and paramedic. I was. I started out as the clinical director for that program, arranging the clinical rotations of the paramedics as they rotated through the hospital and into the field with the paramedic units, and then eventually became the director of the program. So right before going to law school, i'd been director of the paramedic program training program in Ruino. The college is now part of Ratford University, Ratford Karellian University there and they offer even master's degrees now, And so I was teaching full time right before I went to law school. And to get tenured you needed to get your doctoral degree, and I had it by that time. I had a bachelor's degree, and the dean of the college said, well, you know, what are you going to do about, you know, getting your doctoral degree? And I had some good advice and said, well, why don't you get your doctorate in law and hospital administration and combine the clinical part of nursing medicine with administration, because what I was teaching at the college was medical ethics and risk management and how to design emergency medical systems. You know, what do you have to do to design a rural e m s system or an urban system, or a port system or a mountain system that that designed the rules regulations, And so law school is a natural fit. But I've always enjoyed teaching, and so I teach now at Liberty University. I teach in the School of Nursing. I teach in the master's program. I teach health policy and ethics to nurses getting their master's degree, and just recently been teaching a class in the PhD program because they had Liberty has a you can get your pH d in nursing, health policy and ethics, and so I teach teaching those and then I teach trial advocacy how to do trials to law students. So did you retire from the bench to do all this? Still doing that man, I've written so many things down. I don't know if I've ever written that's any things down. It's bored quickly, grief some degree a schizophren of yours. It works really well. So for example, in liberty, I teach you in an evening. I teach an evening class. Sure, and it's usually on the day that I'm on the bench in Lynchburg, so I can go from the Lynchborog Courthouse over to the campus wow, and then so it works, It works well. I thoroughly enjoy. When I think about when you become a judge, sort of like uh, and I don't mean to use this analogy it's bad, but referee in you're pretty much supposed to be right the day you start refereeing. Doesn't matter what level you're at. When you become a judge, you're not. It's not like you get to go through practice rounds your attorney judge, and I mean. That you're one hundred percent correct the very first. So there is a judicial training program, a lot of it, some of the administrative issues, the finance issues you deal with as a judge, a lot of emphasis on the judicial canons of ethics, the dos and don'ts of being of judge, conflicts of interest, not allowing yourself to be swayed outside of the courtroom type things. Sometimes you have to find yourself extricating yourself from conversations and so those sorts of thing. But that's part of the orientate you eat. In my opinion, you even have that internal compass, but sometimes you need the training just to be more situationally aware. So they do a good job of that. But you're correct, there's no practice around that. The judicial orientation is a week long and then they'd give us some scenarios to problem solving that week. It's what was helpful, and then we go back each year for refresher training at our judicial conference. But the very first day that I went to the bench, because i'd been the Commonal's Attorney in Bedford for a year, I couldn't hear criminal cases in Bedford because they may have been cases I had touched or known about or been aware of when I was in that role, So it wouldn't have been right for me to set on the bench and then in a different role. So I spent a lot of time the first year sitting in other jurisdictions. So the very first day that I had to report was in Lynchburg, and in the way the judges chambers are, you have your desk and your bookshelves and nice little office. But you come around your desk and you have to walk up like two or three steps and you open the door and you're coming into the back of the bench. You're entering the courtroom. And I can remember walking up My first, very first day was to hear civil disputes, and I'd been doing criminal prosecutions for over twenty some years. On your homework, they told you what to prepare for. So you've done the homework and reading and the research and that sort of thing. But I will never forget. As I got ready to open the door, I remember I reached out to open the door and then I shut it back. I said, I said, wait a minute, what am I getting ready to do? And so you've become humble pretty quick. Yeah, But what I found even now, you know I'm in my eighth going on my ninth year, Now it is okay to say you don't know something. And one of the things the judges depend on is the lawyers presenting the issues to them. And many times as you do it more you have to maybe do it less, but initially it's perfectly okay to be honest and straightforward and say, counsel, I'm going to need to research that or brief it for me. And we also, I mean, I guess there's an appeal process, right, so if you were wrong, there's a chance that you can learn from that to know it wrong. In the last one, I mean engineering, and that's what I do for a living. We have had bridges fall down where we designed something and thought it was right, but the next one. We build correctly. It's called establishment career. Yeah, so I mean we had a beautiful system. I think that there is that appeal process in case you're wrong. It's all part. I think the biggest takeaway from the administration of justice, criminal or civil or family court is that is you first have to recognize that every human being is fallible, and so what our system bakes into the process is that checks and balance. It's not perfect, but every Thursday morning in Bedford I do I have about anywhere from twenty five to thirty people come into the courtroom who've been charged with offenses, they've been released on bail, and they're coming in to be advised of their rights and whether or not they want an attorney, and two things that I stress to them as I go through and explain their rights. I essentially explain to them the bill of rights. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to counsel. You have the right to subpoena witnesses. You have the right to an open public trial. You have the right to disagree with the court through the appeals process. But then what I tell them, one of the things we have to realize is a community. There is no such thing as a right without a coequal responsibility. And I said, well, what do you mean. I said, well, if you have the right to remain silent, you have the responsibility to be careful who you talk to. If you have the right to an attorney, you've either got to hire one, be your own attorney, or see if you qualify for a court upon it. And then I get it down very practical. I say, if you've got the right to use the court to subpoena witnesses in your defense, you have the responsibility to get to the court on time. The names and addresses of the witness and what I'm trying to connect up in their minds is each step of the process is a decision to be made, and each decision is going to have some repercussion to it. And then by the time we get to the end of that presentation, at least my hope is there's somewhat of a more informed citizenry. And I always ended by telling them, no matter how guilty you are, because right now you're the only one that knows whether you're guilty. I don't know. You have the presumption of innocence, But no matter how guilty you are, you have the fundamental right as a human being to be treated with dignity and respect in this courtroom. In order to get respect, you have to give it. And I've had people tell me that a they've never heard that before, They've never connected in their minds rights and responsibilities, or that respect is two way. But I have many of them come back and say that that is so old it sounds new again. Oh wow, And we go through that every week. So you've hit on something. And Brian alluded to it that we've been at a We had a little court fiasco that we had to deal with one time, and then I had another one last year just fifty five and still dumb. But I've been to court twice in my fifty five years, and the last two was in the last I mean, the only two were in the last five years. Well, no, actually when I was sixteen. That was a one campushing. But I was floored. And you don't have to say anything. I'm just asking this question. You obviously have the right to say you don't want to answer that, or you can't. But I was floored by the people that came to court. What they looked like, like literally short shorts. Yeah that I wouldn't have my daughter wear at a restaurant, right, There's no way we're going out if you're wearing that. And they came dressed like that, and you talked about respect and gaining respect. To me, there's at least you're going to see a judge that's going to make a decision. And I was just disappointed, and I thought, and maybe it's because I grew up in the military family. In a military court, is there a difference between the two if you were to walk into one and the other and ones in uniform and the people in the. Crowd generally there shouldn't be. Of course, in the military there's prescribed dress codes, you know, military uniform. I can remember even when I first started practicing law and did a little bit of private practice, I would tell my clients dress for court like you would dress for church. Sure, Okay, that reference just doesn't ring much anymore. So what we're finding is that in most courts there's a dress code that we have to publish, and so when we send out the court papers, it says no tank tops, no mid drifts, no pajamas, bedroom shoes, etc. What we have to be conscious of, however, is why do we have a dress call. You either set a tone that is respectful to the people in front of you, but if you don't set the proper tone, the respect breaks down. Now that being said, what we also have to be conscious of is we service a wide socio economic spectrum, and so judges I think are pretty sensitive to someone who what they may be wearing. You might go, well, I wouldn't wear that, but it may be the best they have, sure, and so you're trying to distinguish that. On the other hand, I'll just say every now and then, there are some visual challenges in the courtroom, and I have had to ask people to step outside and address that issue. Sure, some people will try to challenge you with having so we usually don't allow them to have something obscene. We have to balance that against freedom of speech we have. But at the same time, the more for lack of a better word, the more revealing risky things we try to address the written dress code that we publish. If they don't follow it, they run the risk of not having their case heard that day, or or possibly even being found in content. But on the other hand, you have the same There is a code for law enforcement too, right, I mean they have to They can't show up in plain clothes, right, I mean they. Have Uh, you know if they're if they're a detective, they still have to be dressed professionally. You know, a good rule of thumb. I think today someone come to court business casual h versus what you would wear to the beach. Sure. Yeah, and somewhere in between there's the right tone. An older judge told me when I went on the bench that he said, the two things you want to avoid on the bench is being embarrassed and embarrassing someone else. And so I'll just say this, there's lots of room for teaching moments in the courtroom, sure, and most of the time the bailiffs. I am so thankful for all of our Shir's Department bailiffs and all the jurisdictions. They maintain the order and discipline and the courtman. Many times they will catch those issues and deal with them and I may not ever even be aware of it. Wow. So I'm very thankful for them. That's good. Well, we've taken up a lot of your time today. We do appreciate you coming in. Before you leave, though. We always end their show with her guests asking or answering this question. If you could pick one person in history, no matter past, present, whenever, who would you choose and where would you hang out with them for twenty four hours? Other than Christ? I would pick C. S. Lewis. Oh man, Oh wow, first time we've ever read that answer. I am a huge CS. Lewis fan. In the ethics classes that I teach, I have a section on it. It called Law and Literature, and we look at some of his writings to glean ethical principles and precepts, both his fiction and nonfiction. I thoroughly love. In fact, when I leave here tonight, I'm going to a church life group that I'm leading, and we're doing the screw Tape Letters, says Lewis's Screwtape Letters as a Bible study. But C. S. Lewis had a group of friends. One of his best friends was J. R. R. Tolkien, who wrote Lord of the Rings. Okay, so you had Lewis who wrote Chronicles of Narnia, and you had Lewis that wrote Lord of the Rings. And they were friends, one Protestant, one Catholic, and then they and other write. A group of writers during the thirties and forties hung out at a pub in England called the Eagle and the Child and they met every week at a certain time and they discussed their works and that's how those great authors started. Oh wow, I would love to be able to go. They nicknamed that pub. It was called the Eagle and the Child. Was right outside of Oxford and they nicknamed it the Bird and the Baby. I would love to go back and just spend one afternoon hearing them talk to you. Oh sure, yeah. All right, Well, we appreciate you being on the program, and good luck to you, and thank you again. Thank you all. It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.
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