Conflict of interest between a judge and attorney in a jury trial?
I was recently dismissed as a prospective juror from a DUI case in California. Afterwards, I googled the judge, deputy DA, and Defense Attorney. It turns out that the judge and one of the lawyers graduated from the same law school in the same year (back in the 1970′s). Given that a lot of prospective jurors were dismissed [I'm guessing here] for various conflicts of interest such as family members working in law enforcement or family members with past DUI convictions, how high do alumni connections rate as a conflict of interest in jury trials?
Not an issue.
A conflict is a situation which would make the judge lean towards one lawyer more than the other, or circumstances that would make people wonder if that would happen. One of my law partners is married to a judge. It’s a big firm and her husband doesn’t know me and never met me but to prevent the appearance of impropriety, the judge will recuse himself (get off the case and have it assigned to another judge) if anyone in our firm is involved in case that comes into his division.
When you work in a profession, you will get to know the judges – whether it’s because you use the same gym, went to the same college, your kids are in the same school, etc. and there is nothing inappropriate about it.
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