Starke Circuit Court Judge Kim Hall will be on the bench today, but it will not be on the third floor of the Starke County Courthouse. Judge Hall is taking his court on the road.
“We’re going to have court at Oregon-Davis High School,” said Judge Hall. “The reason for this is that for many years, Oregon-Davis would bring a bus load of Seniors to the Starke Circuit Court and watch the court proceedings and they always enjoyed that and it was always educational for them. For the last couple of years, for various reasons, they haven’t been able to get to the Courthouse. I’ve been talking with some teachers and we’ve decided that we’re going to bring court to the Oregon-Davis High School. I checked with the Supreme Court and the staff there was not aware of any other court in Indiana doing this, but they thought it was a good idea. This morning, we’re going to have the prosecutors, defense attorneys and the Sheriff there with some of the inmates and we’re going to have regular court.”
We asked the judge what type of cases the students would be hearing.
“We’re going to have all criminal cases, I think we have seven of them on the docket. It will be a regular Wednesday morning with cases involving drugs, methamphetamine and manufacturing methamphetamine. One individual was recently convicted at a jury trial of manufacturing methamphetamine. It will be variety of different criminal cases.”
Judge Hall was asked what he hopes the students will take away from attending court today.
“They get to see real life consequences that happen to people that unfortunately get arrested for committing crimes. It’s one thing watching a movie or reading a newspaper, but it’s another to sit right there a few feet away from the person whose actually experiencing these consequences.”
