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Weather: Partly cloudy with a chance of showers. A slight chance of thunderstorms in the morning, then a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs around 90. East winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50 percent. Wednesday Night: Partly cloudy. A chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly in the evening. Lows in the mid 70s. East winds 10 to 15 mph, diminishing to around 5 mph after midnight. Chance of rain 40 percent.
Today at a Glance:
Flagler Schools: Teachers return to work, with a teacher work day. No students until Aug. 10.
The Palm Coast Code Enforcement Board meets at 10 a.m. every first Wednesday of the month at City Hall. For agendas, minutes, and audio access to the meetings, go here. For details about the city’s code enforcement regulations, go here.
Flagler Beach’s Margaritaville Hotel Public Meeting: The developer of the coming 100-room hotel in downtown Flagler Beach will update the public regarding the hotel project and logistics surrounding construction. The meeting is at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall’s commission chambers, 105 South 2nd Street.
Separation Chat, Open Discussion: The Atlantic Chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State hosts an open, freewheeling discussion on the topic here in our community, around Florida and throughout the United States, noon to 1 p.m. at its new location, Pine Lakes Golf Club Clubhouse Pub & Grillroom (no purchase is necessary), 400 Pine Lakes Pkwy, Palm Coast (0.7 miles from Belle Terre Parkway). Call (386) 445-0852 for best directions. All are welcome! Everyone’s voice is important. For further information email [email protected] or call Merrill at 804-914-4460.
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library: Do you enjoy Chess, trying out new moves, or even like some friendly competition? Come visit the Flagler County Public Library at the Teen Spot every Wednesday from 4 to 5 p.m. for Chess Club. Everyone is welcome, for beginners who want to learn how to play all the way to advanced players. For more information contact the Youth Service department 386-446-6763 ext. 3714 or email us at [email protected]
The Flagler County Republican Club holds its monthly meeting starting with a social hour at 5 and the business meeting at 6 p.m. at the Hilton Garden Inn, 55 Town Center Blvd., Palm Coast. The club is the social arm of the Republican Party of Flagler County, which represents over 40,000 registered Republicans. Meetings are open to Republicans only.
In Coming Days:
September 16: Flagler OARS’ 3rd Annual Recovery Festival at Veterans Park in Flagler Beach, from 3 to 9 p.m., with live bands, food trucks, exhibitors, hosted by Open Arms Recovery Services. Vendor booth space and sponsorships available. Click here or contact [email protected].
Keep in Mind: The Belle Terre Swim & Racquet Club is open, welcoming and taking new memberships, and if you enroll before Sept. 1, you’ll beat the price increase kicking in then. Experience the many amenities including a lap pool, wading pool, tennis/pickleball courts, sauna, and a modern wellness center–all for less than what you’d pay just for a fitness center at your typical commercial gym. Friendly staff is available to answer any questions you may have about becoming a member. Belle Terre Swim and Racquet Club is the sort of place where you can connect with fellow community members and experience the welcoming atmosphere that sets BTSRC apart. If you have any questions, feel free to call at 386-446-6717. If you would like to learn more about our club and membership options please visit online.
Etymology: Back to voir dire, the term used for jury selection, from the old French, voir, or truth (also: to see, in modern French), dire, or told, to tell: tell the truth. First used in the late 1600, and immortalized in Blackstone’s Commentaries: “If however the court has, upon inspection, any doubt of the age of the party,..it may..examine the infant himself upon an oath of voir dire, veritatem dicere, that is, to make true answer to such questions as the court shall demand of him.” Jury selection has been referred to (in a 1981 Daily telegraph article, unattributed), as a “trial within a trial,” a laborious process that can take all day in a typical trial in Flagler County, or weeks in higher profile cases elsewhere. It puts the lie to the phrase, jury of one’s peers, a phrase that comes into court already disheveled by nonsense: what do we mean by peers? How does a burglar, a child abuser, a murderer have peers? Well, they do, but presumably not that many in a jury pool of 40. At least no more than half. By what reductionism is a bus driver or an accountant the peer of any defendant, and vice versa? By “peers” we only mean: members of the community. But even “community” is a construct. We may all live in the same town, the same county, but we have about as much in common with each other as a household in the P Section has with a household in Kansas City or Ukraine, not just when in judging crimes. We are neighbors, we are community members, in name only. By habit. Out of familiarity. But we are not each other’s peers. Ironically judging crimes has a universality that, one could argue, makes anyone anywhere a peer of anyone else, our mutual essence being that shared humanity that gives us the ability–the right?–to judge another’s alleged inhumanity. That’s assuming we, peers, have a moral compass, a way to judge fairly. But even if we do, is jury selection fair? That’s what voir dire is about: to narrow down that “right” jury. To engage in a process that contradicts the very purpose of selecting a jury of one’s peers. Selection is a series of chess moves–chess moves by cynics, by the prosecution and the defense, a war of attrition to get rid of the smarter jurors, the more opinionated ones, the more knowledgeable ones, the ones who may have had experience with crime or court or hate or too much love, too much life. To get rid of the bigots, the overly religious, the supercilious, but also the overly sensitive, the depressive, those who have been shattered by life and who may be life’s sharpest seers. Every narrowing diminishes the authenticity of the jury as a jury of peers to a jury of pawns. I often wonder whether the whole charade would not be better served by a drawing by lots. In English. No old French, no Latin. Just English. True peerage.
Now this:
Flagler Beach Webcam:
The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
For the full calendar, go here.
The American law of evidence is the most complicated in the world. This is largely because of the jury–largely because we entrust certain criminal cases (and some civil ones, too) to twelve laypeople, picked more or less at random. We give the jury enormous power–yet the system does not really trust them. All these rules of evidence are designed to keep dangerous information or misinformation from the jury. Suppose a man is on trial, accused of robbing a candy store. You might think it very relevant to know that this is the fifth time he has been on trial for robbing candy stores; each time before he was found guilty. But the jury is entitled to know no such thing. Only the most carefully screened and purified evidence is allowed to go to the jury. Of course, clever lawyers often know ways to insinuate certain forbidden facts into the jury’s ears; but this is a parlous and delicate game.
–From Lawrence Friedman’s Law in America (2002).
Ray W. says
Is Mr. Tristam arguing that if the truth came out in a trial, it would be a miracle? That a plea bargain, where both parties agree to a certain set of punitive sanctions, which is then submitted for approval to a judge, might provide a more societally beneficial outcome?
Pierre Tristam says
I think those are different though interesting questions. I was more focused on the mechanics and assumptions of jury selection in the ironic context of the meaning of voir dire, when the outcome is often the use of jurors telling their truths, and having those truths used against them, as reasons to exclude them from being jurors. The court’s demand for truth at that point becomes more mercenary than the idea of telling the truth makes it seem. All of that is before we get to the trial, where the idea of truth is its own, entirely different construct. After all, we would need no trials if everyone told the truth. But even when they set out to tell the truth, when their entire aim is supposedly to reveal themselves–Rousseau’s and Augustine’s Confessions come to mind–all they’re doing is fabricating a tale about themselves. Imagine what lesser mortals do. That business of swearing an oath to tell the truth is pretty ridiculous considering that the entire purpose of the proceedings is to arbitrate a way to the truth through the self-serving and self-protective lies, obfuscations, deceptions and mischaracterizations of one side or another. There is an element of the miraculous if and when a truthful verdict is reached, but verdicts, too, are constructs, like everything else that led to that point.
Ray W. says
Great reply! Thank you.
I remember you watching my form of jury selection in the Anna Pehota trial.
My approach to jury selection focused on letting the jurors tell each other how they would deliberate if they were selected as jurors. For over 30 years I had watched prosecutors and other defense attorneys try to lead jurors by asking them to agree with the attorneys. I did the opposite. I would ask juror #1 to tell everyone how he or she thought a juror should deliberate and then listen to the answer. I would then ask juror #12 if they could add to juror #1’s answer and then listen to the answer. I would then give juror #8 a definition of the verb “to deliberate” and ask if that was a good or a bad way to deliberate, and then listen to the answer. I would then ask juror #11 if any juror tried to bully another juror, could juror #11 tell the bully that the judge told them to deliberate, however they defined deliberations, and that they were going to deliberate, not be bullied, and then listen to the answer.
I wanted my jurors to talk to each other during the deliberative process. I wanted them to feel free to explore all arguments and to discuss what each witness told them. I wanted them to listen to the jury instructions and talk about what the instructions meant. I told them that they could reject anything I argued, just as they could reject anything the prosecutor argued.
The first time I used this approach, the jury was out 9 1/2 hours and gave me everything I asked for in a first-degree murder trial. The second time, the jury was out over six hours and convicted on one count and acquitted on another. The third time I use the approach, the jury acquitted my client of first-degree murder after over three hours of deliberations.
Even in the Pehota case, as difficult as that one was to defend at trial, the jury was out quite a long time before convicting as charged. They, apparently, deliberated the whole way, even though she had confessed at every opportunity, starting with the detectives, then at first appearances, then at arraignment, then at the first pre-trial, and the second pretrial, and in a letter to her brother. She wouldn’t allow the judge to even appoint anyone to represent her, insisting that she was guilty and didn’t need a lawyer. Finally, she relented and allowed the judge to appoint me.
Pogo says
@Don’t worry
ron disaster, and floriduh’s public health system are here to save the day:
Leprosy may now be endemic in Florida, CDC says
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/leprosy-may-now-be-endemic-in-florida-cdc-says/ar-AA1eEaUk
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Ray W. says
This past Sunday at a New Hampshire BBQ event, Flagler County’s own Ron DeSantis told the assembled onlookers that on his first day in office, he would begin “slitting throats”, referring to those in government who comprise the “deep state.”