It is Monday and court service day in district court. The public defender's office was in town to take over the felony docket from the contract attorneys. We received the view of the effort to take over the entire state from the contract attorneys. It is an ambitious effort. An effort that will not work with the staff they have. I expect with the ending of the recession they will make a push to create statewide offices to continue their efforts to take over the criminal defense of the entire state.

I had two defendants go to prison today and one to the violator's program which is in effect prison since it is located in prison and lasts four to six months. Judge Goodhue presided. It was an especially busy day since they have taken one of the two court service days from us and put the civil docket on Monday afternoons rather than Tuesday. Wednesday I have a custody trial scheduled and we will "probably" travel to Knoxville to try the case. Can't say what will happen to the witness that I need which I subpoenaed to Jasper County since we did not know where we were going when I sent the subpoena to the sheriff. This is a real mess and will get worse before it shakes out.

The consensus of opinion seems to be that the judicial department is causing as much trouble for the general public as possible so the public will contact their legislators and insist they do something about it. Can't say what the legislator will do about anything this year but cut budgets. We shall see.