Podcast Transcription
(00:04):
Telling it like it is bringing the community together and working for justice attorney Travis McConnell talks, politics trending news, and how you can make a difference. You’re listening to We trust Travis.
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Hi everyone I’m Sarina Fazan. I’m a journalist, host, and producer. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of we trust Travis. Travis McConnell is a personal injury attorney with a huge passion for the community, and he has a lot of insight to share. So let’s get right to it. Travis McConnell is actually joining us now from Indiana and in the studio, his criminal trial expert. Paul Cisco, Paul, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me, Travis. Let’s start with you though. So you are in Indiana, you are an attorney that practices both in Florida and Indiana. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?
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Yeah, we’ve got an office in St. Petersburg, Florida that has people there at all times. And then we also have an office in Warsaw Indiana, and I’m licensed in both and kind of go back and forth when I need to. Since COVID times a lot of it’s been via zoom and haven’t had to go back and forth as much. Cause we just do things via zoom. Nowadays. Very few things are actually happening to in person, but it’s always fun to come to Florida and see everybody. So I live up here in Indiana most of the time and come down to Florida to visit and take care of business.
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Great to see you and Paul you’re in the studio here in St. Petersburg, Florida. So tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.
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I’ve been practicing criminal defense in the Tampa bay area, Serena for 29 or 30 years. Now, my family has been here for over 50 years and you know, I’ve had the opportunity to meet Travis from an, from another state one. One of our lawyers we’ve met nationally now at this point. And I always enjoy talking to you about these types of issues. We
(01:51):
Really appreciate having you both here. And you’ve been on both sides of the law Paul, former prosecutor as well right now, a criminal defense attorney and that topic matter what we’re going to discuss today. And Travis wants to talk about it. Let’s talk about it. COVID in the courtroom and how it’s affected the courtroom and how it’s affected trials. Travis, why did you think this was an important topic for your show?
(02:17):
I mean, something that everybody’s talking about anyway, it’s just COVID right. And how it’s impacted us. And there’s a lot of people that are on one side or the other maybe, and it seems like camps, the form has been a little political, but it’s had a certain impact on our courts and just like to try and keep it to the facts as it pushed a lot of opinions, but just kind of update people, how things are going. There’s been a lot of advances forward and there’s been some that have caused some friction as it were and maybe not so much forward, but backwards, some might say, but yeah, just kind of give people an update about what the courts are looking like and all of this.
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And how are the courts during the courts are reopen in the state of Florida and Indiana, correct?
(02:58):
They are, but it’s ever changing, you know it takes every once in a while, if there’s a report on the variant having an uptick there is a political component to it, you know, there’s the administrators in both our counties here, Hillsborough and Pinellas are very good at monitoring and, and kind of keeping an eye on the statistics. But as Travis knows from Indiana, also, there is a little bit of a political component in terms of how it’s sorta changed courthouse culture. Also some things that COVID brought on, like zoom hearings you know, have their, their advantages we’ve discovered that we probably never would have discovered that it’s convenient. But as a practitioner like me and an old guy I like being there. I think that two dimensions, although we’d love television and zoom, I don’t love zoom. I love television. It takes away a good percentage of your ability to communicate, you know, people relate to people in, in personal and interpersonal communications. And I just feel like we’re losing a little bit of that. I don’t want to use COVID as an excuse to curtail a fulsome hearing.
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Absolutely. How has it been there, Travis with the courtrooms there?
(04:12):
Yeah, it’s been a good, pretty similar here where it closed down for awhile and reopened. I practice in a lot more rural areas here in Indiana. And so they’ve kind of opened up and been more open, quicker due to numbers being lower. It’s not as densely populated, so there’s not as much concentration, things like that. Can that we got the second wave of it, where it came back that with the politics of it our courts here have been more reluctant to shut down and things like that. But there have been, there has been an increase in usage of zoom and things like that. And the big issue has been due to the backlog that happened from the shutdown is trying to clear out old cases that, you know, didn’t get cleared out before and continue with the other cases that are still being filed. In the meantime,
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You know, and on our previous show, we talked about the sixth amendment. We talked about quite a few of the amendments, but the right to a speedy trial has COVID in the courtroom affected that and on both sides, right. The criminal and the civil side. Yeah.
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When I’ve got a civil trial that we were set to go to trial in March of 2020, well, there was shutdown. So we got shut down and moved because of the shutdown. And that was on a civil case that we’d been waiting years to get a trial. Anyway, it was actually our second trial set in, we got bumped on the first one bunk meaning that we got moved over. The way that trials work in Florida is they have, what’s called a docket for civil trials where they’ll set 10 cases all in the same two week trial period or three week trial period. And you can be number one through 10 on the list and you have to be ready to go because if you’re number six, one through five might settle and back down, and then six becomes number one.
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And so, but if you’re number six and number one and two, go and take up all the time, then you get bumped to the next time because there’s not enough time. So we got bumped once and then sat during the COVID shutdown. And so that got missed moved again until October. And then in October things reopened, but criminal trials took precedence because of the speedy trial, right. And the in custody, criminal things have to be taken care of before civil things. And we got moved again on our trial and it’s now set out in 2022. We’ve been waiting for,
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Well, let’s have you weigh on, you know, on that. So the criminal trials take precedent. So, so all of these clients now have to wait even longer.
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Yeah. you kinda look at the motivations of every party. If you’re a judge, even in normal times when COVID doesn’t exist, you just have this feeling that they keep coming over the hill, right here, come the criminal client or criminal defendants, especially here come my civil cases. And I always, you know, perceive that judges thinking, oh, we’ve got to, we’ve got to make sure we’re handling these folks coming over the mountain at us during COVID. That’s been exponentially multiplied. I mean, there’s tens of thousands of cases now coming over the mountain at us. And it, it clogs up the system. And frankly, as a criminal defense lawyer in large part it’s to my advantage, right? Because there’s a limited number of resources. This is always the math. There’s a limited number of resources. How many, how, how many and how much of those resources are they going to devote to the punishment for my client and the resource prosecution intellect going into prosecuting.
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And so it works to my advantage in many ways, but the reality is it’s generally just slowed things down quite a bit, you know, crime doesn’t stop. In fact, it increases probably during, during COVID there’s a lot of arrest made. Prosecutors have to make decisions maybe to get rid of a case or, or resolve it in a manner that they wouldn’t ordinarily be inclined to do during normal times. So it has certain defense advantages to it, but generally I’m looking forward to it returning to normal and back to where we were at some point. Absolutely.
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Because an advantage for you is a huge disadvantage, right? Travis, for your clients who really might be also financially suffering and they need some type of resolution,
(08:24):
But what you end up on the opposite side of things in my case, well, I agree with Paul, like again, typically delay benefits the defense, but I’m not the defense when I’m on my personal injury cases, I’m the plaintiff or the ones they’re trying to get justice. And the defense is the insurance company defending their insured or whoever it is that the corporate defendant which typically insurance involved. But the, yeah, I mean, it’s benefiting them and to continue to delay. And, and we, sometimes you even start to wonder if there’s intentional delay, some of the insurance companies, they know you can’t take them to trial. You don’t have that hammer hanging over their head every day that they, you know, drag something out, they get more interest on their money in bank accounts that they make a lot of their revenue comes from interest returns and investments. So they have a financial incentive to delay. You
(09:13):
Don’t have to wonder about that. It’s a fact, they, they do not, they want to hang on to that money as long as they can. And then in the mechanism and the anvil that’s held over litigant’s head and what moves the wheels of justice is slow as they turn, what keeps them moving is trial dates, right? You better have a trial date set in a criminal case and you better have one set in a civil case, or nobody’s going to resolve it because there’s always a party. That has an interest in slowing that down time is the time is where the real equity is. And in a courtroom, you know, and that’s sort of a component. I think the general public might not understand that judge is thinking to himself or herself, what holds this person’s feet to the fire. What makes them get the work done? They need to get done for this because once you bring it to, Hey, on Monday, we’re picking a jury. Somebody is either going to pay some money in the civil context, or they’re going to say, now we’re going to trial. And in the criminal side, somebody is going to say, am I going to take this deal or am I going to trial? And if you don’t have that anvil over their head, Hey, we’re just here. We need another date, your honor, you know, that’s going to happen. Okay. So
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Paul went on the record on the last show and said, you don’t have a lot of confidence in government. So Travis, do you think though, at this point, though, that the government needs to step in or something needs to happen, especially with these, especially with the civil cases.
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I think they’re, they’re working on it a little bit. The judges are due. I’m pretty good at bringing in and reassigning cases and trying to move things along. The problem is like with the Delta variant things have changed since the last time we’ve talked on some of our other shows things were still moving along as normal. Last time we had one of these shows since then the Supreme court has actually issued a new order re allowing anyone who wants to appear via zoom to appear via zoom in light of the increases in numbers from the Delta variant. So it’s still a moving target as this all continues to develop.
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It’s a little different in the criminal side of things, because, you know, you have constitutional rights to be in a courtroom with the witnesses against you in a criminal case where there’s a little more leniency on the civil side, Liberty interests are placed higher than financial interests, which is why they exist criminally. There’s a lot of talk about, Hey, we’re never going to return to normal in this kind of thing. And the reality is and we’re going to have to figure out how we’re going to have a fair criminal trial because my client wants to be in the courtroom without a bunch of people wearing masks. And you’re going to need to put your witnesses on and convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. I have a constitutional right with my client to do that. It’s becoming a real problem on the criminals. Well, you
(11:57):
Bring up so many great points because the masks I want to talk about because reading the expression and also finding a jury. So we want to talk about the masks first, because you know, when you wear a mask, of course, people are saying, you can read your eyes a little bit better now, but you’re hiding your facial expressions behind your mask.
(12:16):
Absurd. Yeah. I mean,
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They say what, like not 90% of language is non-verbal or something like that, 80 90%. And so, yeah, you’re, you’re obscuring, whatever percent of that percentage to where you’re not able to read that nonverbal language. Listen,
(12:30):
I feel ineffective with that thing on. Okay. you know, David Letterman to age myself, I’m watching him in college, used to say, nobody looks cool on the back of a pickup truck. When you’re driving on the road, nobody looks cool on a mask. Okay. And, and it’s not a matter of looking cool, but it’s a matter of communicating. And you know, you’re the whole time you’re talking behind one of those things, which is foreign to you as a communicator is can they hear me? I’m having trouble breathing. You’re thinking about everything except what you should be, which is convincing that person. You’re talking to what the truth is. And we have no idea the level of communication that takes place from the lower part of a person’s face. I, man, I think it’s, it’s, it’s way underestimated, they know from control groups and so on that, you know, and they use toddlers as their control groups, a person who is looked at as more credible, they, they read their face, they’re reading their expression because jurors don’t necessarily at the end of the day, know whether or not a Medicare regulation was violated, but they know whether that witness thinks there was, you know, and I don’t want, I don’t want half of my evidence behind behind a wall of cloth.
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You know, it’s just a very ineffective way to present it.
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And that’s really what having the jury is for the purpose of a jury is to weigh the witness’s credibility and determine what the truth is. I mean, that’s the, one of their principle functions. They’re, what’s called the trier of fact. They decide which facts they believe as the true facts and which ones they don’t,
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But gentlemen, what a sensitive subject, right. Because we’re also bringing in health and, you know, if people say, well, I’m so fearful, how, how do you get around that?
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Well, if you’ve been in the Hillsborough courthouse, there’s many of us that fear about nine other diseases that you’d get before. COVID I, you know, people look at it differently. We’re all taking risks. You know, we all cross Dale Mabry on the way to the studio today. You know, what are the odds of us getting hit? The fear becomes irrational at some point, you know, at some point you’ve got to get back to business. You have to find a way to deal with it other than constant fear. It’s a built-in excuse candidly, that happens where, you know, a judge can’t really say, if I was to say to a judge, look, my client has a fear about COVID, you know, aunt Gladys, you know she’s, she’s 105 and she’s in the house and I, they’re not comfortable being here.
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It’s pretty hard for a judge to say, no, no, we’re going to trial Monday. So you know, does Delta, is Delta telling you to wear that mask all the time? Because because of COVID or is it because it makes it harder for you to ask for a cocktail or the peanuts? You know, it’s, it’s becoming part of the fabric of a little bit of a cop out here. And there are, people are doing the best in both counties to do this, but there comes a time where we have to get back in the courtroom and they have a right to be there instead of on a zoom hearing. Travis, what are your thoughts?
(15:35):
I mean, there’s a middle ground approach to try and still be, take precautions without having to go all the way up the mask and wear the mask when you’re in the courtroom, but take it off when you’re on the witness stand and you’re more than six feet away from everybody. And then you can allow for social distancing and put you in little it’s like the restaurant will, right. You have to wear it until you sit at your table, you sit at your table, you can take it off there. There’s there there’s imperfect solutions. They’re still provide some level of safety. That again, like there’s going to be a certain level of risk. We can’t eliminate all of it. And it’s going to be slightly more risky than if you just left it on the whole time, but there are other precautions that we can still do to try and take the health into consideration that, you know, make people feel as safe as possible while still striking a balance. Because again, like, yes, you have a right to safety and your health, but our clients also have the right to confront their witnesses.
(16:26):
Yeah. additionally, you know, as lawyers, you’re constantly thinking, frankly, during this COVID well, this person has proclaimed the, a ruling. What authority do they have to do that? You start becoming constitutional lawyers in your head. You know, there’s a whole series of politicians that have said whether I have to wear a mask or not, which, you know, they can’t enforce. And I have no intention of following in many instances the level of compliance when law wasn’t directing in certain instances has been fairly shocking to me, but you know, there are forums like the courthouse and so on where the, the chief judge and other people do have the authority to impose rules, you know private business owners is do also, and you have to abide by them. But I do like the fact that a lot of people have said to themselves or questioning where does this legal authority come from? There’s a, there’s a certain power, which I find fascinating that has come to certain people just simply telling me whether or not I need to wear a mask or not that it’s not justified legally. Absolutely.
(17:33):
Yeah. Well, I mean, we talked about the speedy trial impact too. I don’t know. I’m trying to remember exactly what you had asked him about the masks. And one other thing you remember
(17:41):
Also picking a jury because it’s always difficult picking a jury in general. You know, you know, I know I, we were supposed to answer that call to be a juror, but it’s always been difficult. What is it? The courts,
(17:57):
The courts are happening to send out more subpoenas and more summons to appear because people aren’t showing up and they always had to send extras because people don’t show up for jury duty. In the first place, you send out a hundred subpoena summons for jury duty and 70 people would show up, maybe in regular times nowadays you send out a hundred and maybe 30 or less might show up because they’re afraid to come to the courthouse and concerned to come to the courthouse.
(18:21):
It’s an interesting thing too, from a litigant standpoint. So say I’m a, I’m defending a case and I think to myself, okay, they’re going to bring over a hundred jurors and they’re going to be ordered to be in masks. And maybe there’s a genuine fear of COVID going on among them. Well, the folks generally I have to think to myself, well, do I want the demographics and the particular juror I’m looking for, for my case, to be somebody who’s saying, you know, screw the government, I’m going to do what I want and come in here. Cause you, it might be the very people that are going to convict your client most of the time, you know? So you’re, you’re getting a different universe to draw jurors from these aren’t just, you know, 120 random folks that would otherwise be there. These are people that are there with a purpose and saying, yeah, I’m not staying home because of COVID. And what kind of person is that? Is that the person more likely to convict or is that the person more likely to quit? It plays into my math. I know that. Yeah,
(19:17):
No, it does. It does on our math too on the civil cases is again, especially since it’s so political and you’re getting one maybe particular political persuasion that’s showing up versus the ones that aren’t showing up or of the other political persuasion, more often than not as a general motors, not everybody there’s always exceptions, but yeah. Instead of just getting 12 people that have driver’s license those, because that’s usually what they pull it from a bad news. If you’ve got a license, sorry, that’s how you get stuck with jury duty. You don’t want to be on a jury, then don’t have a license. Yeah. And instead of that, you get, get that. But the people that show up are of a particular persuasion that are going to show up, and those that don’t are up a particular persuasion that are staying home. So it’s a, it’s a smaller cross section
(20:03):
To Travis’s point. You know, this happened a few years ago, not with COVID, but you know, they went in Florida from the jury panels, used to be pulled from the voter records. And now they’re pulled from the driver’s license records, as Travis says, well, those are two different groups. You know, one is a group of people that like to vote in Florida and one’s a group of people like to drive in Florida. Okay. as a defense lawyer, give me the ones that like to drive because as you know, from the roads and in this county and others, there’s a lot of crazy folks out there. And generally on the defense side, you want people that are a little, a little crazier. The ones that are voting oftentimes are going to be more interested in, in civic events. You know, there many times going to consider themselves more educated, whether they are or not.
(20:54):
They participate in institutional activities. The voter records used to be folks as a prosecutor used to convict more than the people that like to drive. And COVID has done that on a different scale. You know, now we’re seeing a different you know, subgroups, they come in where you have folks that may be hold as they’re entitled to personal health, above their duty to serve as jurors. And who’s the group you’re getting otherwise. And I don’t, I don’t care what any lawyer says. I’m not particularly interested in justice. I’m, I’m concerned with justice for my client. Okay. The government can get its justice later. I want justice for my client. And who’s the better jury for it. COVID or pre COVID.
(21:40):
Yeah. I mean the whole goal with jury selection is you want as broad of a cross section as possible. That’s why they switched to driver’s licenses. And you want to be able to choose from that. And we’re getting less people because people aren’t showing up.
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So gentlemen, if I heard correctly, are you both also saying that already the political persuasion that someone might have is affecting the jury the jury pool that’s coming into courtrooms right
(22:06):
Now, you know, so I don’t believe there’s ever a way you can say I’m going to get 12 peers of my client that are going to be fully impartial. No, one’s impartial. You know, we all come with our, our biases or, you know, life experiences that have changed how we perceive things. But when you start eliminating certain criteria where you can eliminate an entire group of people who say, I don’t want to show up for jury duty for health concerns, you are changing that demographic from which you’re picking and you better be aware of it. And to think otherwise, or to say otherwise is to be doing your client a disservice. Are you
(22:44):
Seeing it? Are you you’re actually, you’re actually seeing it
(22:48):
Jury trials aren’t happening. Okay. I mean, it’s been brought down to a trickle from where it would be during normal times. I mean, they’re, yes, they are happening here and there and the counties are back having them, but they’re happening in a, in a very small percentage of the times. And frankly, both on the civil and criminal side judges are really looking at you closely to say, is this one that really needs to go to trial then because I’ve got limited resources or is this one that can wait a while? Or are you guys actually gonna resolve this? And so there, isn’t a huge control group to draw from during COVID to say, how is this jury different? But I will tell you it’s impacting trials. We saw a very high profile one in Hillsborough recently in which it’s in a Travis, alluded to it where the child witness testified against the father who was on trial for a homicide, from a video camera.
(23:39):
And that was partly because of privacy concerns and the age of the child and such, but it was also because of COVID concerns. And you know, frankly if, if I was a criminal defendant and I was on trial for my life, and I was looking up at a panel that had masks on, and I wasn’t really looking at those spaces, you know, I’m thinking to myself, you know, there’s a little bit of concealment that goes on. Like, I, you know, if I’m going to put a man to death, I’m going to look them in the face, you know, and I’m entitled to look at them in the face. And, you know, we’re kind of perverting that element, you know, when we’re requiring these masks in certain events. So we either don’t have them at all, but, but this process of doing them with masks on, or having jurors sit six feet apart, we’re introducing a whole sort of star chamber level to this, which is unnecessary.
(24:29):
Well, I’ve even heard it. Yeah. I mean, I’ve even heard of some juries. I haven’t had one because again, like it’s down to a trickle. I have some that have been set that we’re waiting for, but I’ve heard of some judges even doing like the jury is via zoom. They’re not even in the courtroom. Like everyone is, it’s all via zoom and it’s like the Brady bunch or something everybody’s in squares. I couldn’t even imagine trying to do something like that.
(24:51):
So, you know, do you know, is, is juror number seven really watching my evidence or are they watching pat Sajak on wheel of fortune? You know? And, and so, and maybe I want them to be watching wheel of fortune halfway and not fully watching. So, you know, the dynamic changes, we don’t know what’s going on in zoom. I mean, I had a judge tell me the other day that a defendant appeared from his bed on his pillow like this, you know, and, and just said, we gotta get them back. You know, we gotta get them back in the courtroom cause you lose a little bit of the institutional authority and people saying, Hey, look, look at this rich mahogany furniture here. And the judge is sitting up on that podium and the black rope, you know, you put everybody on TV and we’re like another tick talk video. Absolutely.
(25:31):
And I know Travis, you had talked about zoom can sometimes have advantages if it’s, you know, a quick something quick, but for the most part, do you feel too, that it just has to be back in person?
(25:46):
I think trials and things like evidentiary in nature, where you’re going to make a determination about the credibility and evidence need to be in person. Other than that zoom allows a lot more flexibility, especially for things that things that could have been done via phone even, but they didn’t feel comfortable doing them via phone. Like I scheduling conference where you’re just going to schedule something, do we really have to come into the courthouse for that? And like spend an hour in traffic and then another hour in traffic on the way back or now we can just do it via zoom. That’s great. I agree.
(26:18):
Yeah. I agree. Travis. There’s, there’s, you know, clerical, small scheduling hearings and so on. Zoom has been fantastic for that. You know, you throw a tie on and, and you, you sit there and it’s like the Brady bunch and you say, judge, I need this date. It’s fantastic for that for as Travis says, for those evidentiary matters though. I sure want that witness there. Cause I’m going to read them differently than I am when you know they’re on the tube.
(26:42):
Right? Yep. And and even like depositions where I’m taking depositions to gather evidence, I don’t mind those via zoom depending on what it is. Just to find out what the person’s going to say. Cause you’re not reading them as much. It’s more talking to them to find out what they’re going to say and things like that and getting those questions. And, but I don’t know how you feel about that poll if you prefer your depositions live. I know some people are kind of insisting, no, I want them live versus I want them to be a zoom, but
(27:08):
Why I like, you know, what I don’t like is putting me in a position where technology is now more important than sort of, you know, my experience, you know, that happens with exhibits. You know, I have five or six exhibits that are usually documents that I want to show a witness and you know, I can go, okay, wait a minute. Are you guys seeing this? And put it up on the screen and you know, you’re losing all your spontaneity and then the witness has a chance if they’re hostile with you to kind of through that delay, kind of figure out where Cisco going with this it’s, it’s awkward, you know, and it doesn’t have the same impact and it’s certainly a different animal than we’re used to dealing with in terms of evidentiary hearings. It’s certainly look, it’s proven it’s got its place in, in many areas for clerical situations and it does save time. I’m an old guy that likes to walk to the courthouse every once in a while. You know, and I like seeing my folks, you know, seeing my, my colleagues and, and the judges and prosecutors, you know, the, the coffee stand folks. And I miss all that, you know, like any, everybody misses their, their people, but Travis is right. It has its place. It’s just not in a trial and it’s not in an evidentiary hearing. And
(28:25):
What about the professionalism on and the wardrobe? I mean, you know, like you told me, you just talked about the guy that was like sleeping in his bed. I mean, I heard so many stories of the way people dress or where they’re coming to you from. I mean, does something need to change on that as well?
(28:41):
I think it is changed. And even some of the lawyers have gotten a little lax with how they appear. I’ve seen it in judges procedures. Each judge usually has their own preferences and procedures on their webpage. And if you go look at them, you’ll probably in Hillsborough find at least one or two. I am not thinking of one right now that I’ve seen in Hillsborough that one in Sarasota county. I know that I’ve had a case where it’s been written into the judges new preferences. We will be enforcing proper courtroom attire via zoom. If you don’t have it, the judge will bring it to your attention. So it’s in the preferences that the lawyers are reading because lawyers got lackadaisical with it
(29:20):
And, and I’m learning things I don’t need to know. Right. Like I know a lot about the interior of people’s dens. Now I know a lot about what they read because the whole time I’m supposed to be concentrating on what they’re saying. I’m like, why does he have that Karl Marx book there in the background or, you know, cooking with Tessa, which volume is that, you know, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of distractions and and it’s a, it’s an environment we’re not used to and it’s taking away from what we’re really there for. That’s what bothered.
(29:54):
Well, and again, like what Paul mentioned earlier, as far as courtrooms are designed to impress, or maybe even intimidate people a little bit like the big tall ceilings, the mahogany, all that sort of stuff that Paul is talking about. It’s to get people to understand that this is serious and you don’t have that with this sort of dialogue and busier.
(30:16):
But I think it’s, I think it’s diminished the seriousness of the event or the, the solemnity, you know, sort of what it’s, you know, it’s something that we believe in firmly and what’s supposed to be in some of our more impressive architecture buildings, and we’re going to do it now where, you know, defendant Livingston can be on his bed, on his pillow. And now we’re all a little less for that.
(30:41):
Absolutely. You know, I will say, I mean, don’t you think we all can agree that more people than not, of course, are hoping that things will get back to normal in every area
(30:52):
Of life? Well, I, I certainly am. I I also, you know I, I I’m I’m of the generation, I don’t trust the government and I don’t trust. I don’t even care what party anyone belongs to. I’m independent, but I, I’m not one that says, oh, the governmental fix this. And we’re sort of in a rut there. And there’s a lot of folks that think the government’s there to fix things like this. And it’s people that are going to say, no, we’re getting back to normal and here’s how it’s going to happen. And no, I’m not going to give into that. Sometimes it takes a little more willpower than it does a vaccine,
(31:26):
Like boots on the ground mentality, really it’s up to us to make the change. Correct.
(31:31):
Yeah. I mean, I think we all want things to get back to normal for the most part, but I think people more and more realizing it’s going to be a new normal, like COVID is a thing. There’s lots of people that have been, I think everyone knows somebody who’s been impacted by it for the most part. There’s still a few people that maybe don’t it’s here, it’s been politicized and blown out of proportion. And you it’s just like a lot of things in our current culture and how things have gone. So tribal, but it’s, it’s part of life. And at some point we’re going to have to decide that we’re going to have to learn how to live with it. And unfortunately that might mean that there’s a slightly increased or decreased life expectancy because it does impact people’s health, but it’s something that’s here and it’s not going away and we need to, you know, still live our lives. You know,
(32:16):
There, there is always this element that history doesn’t repeat itself. It rhymes to some extent and Hillsborough county, about 25 years ago, an old, very beloved judge contracted to TB here. And when they did, yeah, we all had to get TB shots. You know, the judges like, Hey you know done by the hotdog stand, you know, this was like 1998. Everybody stand in line and you’re going to have to get a TB shot. Well, and guess what, we were back to work that afternoon. Now, I’m not saying medicine has an advanced and so on, but sometimes it’s all in how it’s handled also. And social media kind of has a way of magnifying the the, the anecdotal story, you know, the anecdotal story. Sometimes now it gets magnified to the bulk of what’s happening. And sometimes it’s a fundamental error in terms of stats and we’re, we’re, we’re confused and we’re sort of jaded by those numbers when we should.
(33:20):
Yeah. And the disinformation that gets spread as well, that’s just right. The comparison theories and all of it.
(33:29):
Absolutely. We’re, we’re being inundated with information everywhere. Well, gentlemen, such a fascinating conversation. Paul Cisco always wonderful to have you on the show. We trust Travis, Travis, any final words before we close out?
(33:43):
No, I think we’re just all looking forward to getting back into court and thanks Paul for joining and Sarina again for hosting. Thanks, Travis. Good to see you. Absolutely.
(33:51):
And thank you everyone so much. We really appreciate it. Have a great day
(33:56):
To learn more about Travis McConnell, head to TravisMCLaw.com. Thank you for listening to We Trust Travis.
