TALES...YEAR IN REVIEW SPECIAL--PART II

YEAR IN REVIEW SPECIAL (PART II)

Welcome back! We end our two-week YEAR IN REVIEW SPECIAL EDITION with a look back to some essays and some very poignant moments that were found in this year's various editions in "TALES...".

Among those moments was when I handed over the mike (so to speak) and became the interviewee for once in reference to my past experiences as a Grand Juror. New Hampshire Contributing Editor Christina Coruth asked me an interesting question about how deliberations usually go in a grand jury room:

101 (CC): But what are the deliberations usually like in a grand jury--for example, conflicts among the jurors?

Holley: As far as the overall atmosphere is concerned, during the term of service, things are actually quite congenial--to the point where new friendships develop that might not otherwise occur due to common objectives.

You have to note, though, the specific place and region where I currently live. Plainview and Hale County are situated in the northwest corner of Texas right on Interstate 27 almost equidistant from both Lubbock and Amarillo--but pretty much farther north than the state's larger cities like Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston. West Texas in its thinking and views tends to be a lot more conservative than the southern part of the state (especially in regards to Austin). Austin is, shall we say, the closest equivalent in Texas to California and San Francisco (which is quite ironic, noting the folks in Hollywood and California deciding to migrate out here in both Texas and New Mexico in recent years). But I digress...

Having said that, all of us on the grand jury I served on--we were all of totally different backgrounds from different parts of the county with some involved in agriculture, others with Wayland Baptist University, et al. in which we were totally in our own different worlds. But the overall camraderie in itself was pleasant in itself--and I was blessed to develop new relationships with people outside my own personal sphere.

In regards to deliberations on cases, it usually depended on the type of case that we had to look at. Grand juries usually look only at those crimes involving felony criminal charges [(Ex.) Major crimes such as murder, robbery, felony drug possession and/or distribution]. They DO NOT handle things like misdeameanors or civil cases AT ALL--ONLY criminal felony cases.

The odds usually went this way: if it involved something dealing with either felony DWI (in Texas--meaning that the one being investigated has already had at least two prior convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol or illegal narcotics) or drug possession and/or distribution, it was just about guaranteed (barring any serious problems arising from the law enforcement agency's handling of the case) that the matter was going to be open and shut without too much discussion noting that the record of the one being investigated was usually not too stellar in nature and that you would have to be a complete imbicile to not grasp the case that the State had against that person. Those were actually the EASIEST ones to decide for us. If there was a sheet of primarily DWIs and drug possession/distribution cases, we could sail through those cases quite easily (barring testimony from other witnesses).

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