Some of this information you may already have gotten from other sources:

Sheriff Kent Wilkening is the Public Information Officer. That means that Kent is going to be the source of accurate information. We know there rumors going around, and want people to know that he is the source of correct information.  If we hear information that is questionable, we should let him know so he can nip rumors in the bud.

Groups or individuals in the community who are interested in volunteering to help with the clean-up effort are asked to contact the Nobles County Emergency Operation Center at 507-295-5359. Joann Bartosh with Nobles County R.S.V.P. will be coordinating volunteers for the relief effort. If groups and individuals register through the EOC we can track volunteer hours. Volunteers should wear sturdy shoes, bring their own gloves if possible, and dress appropriately for the weather.

Anyone physically unable to move debris to the boulevard for pick-up, or anyone who knows someone who needs that kind of help, please contact the EOC so that any available volunteers can be put to work. The EOC will continue to communicate with community officials throughout Nobles County, but any city officials in Nobles County who are aware of individuals in their community who may be in need of assistance should also contact the EOC.

Nobles County Engineer Steve Schneider is the debris coordinator.

Beware of scams. With an emergency situation, a lot of people are generous with their help, but there are also people who will show up and try to take advantage of the situation. If someone shows up and wants you to hire them to clean up you property and haul stuff away, be cautious. It is ok to ask for credentials. Worthington does require transient licensing. I don’t believe licensing is required out in the county, and am not sure what other cities in Nobles County require in terms of licensing.   Make sure you know what documentation your insurance company will want. Make sure that you know what your insurance company will cover. If someone wants payment in cash, in advance and says they will come back at a later date to do the work, you run the risk of paying for a service that will not occur.

Submit your damages to your insurance company for personal property damage. As of now it is unknown what programs if any will be available to help people out with the personal costs people incurred as a result of the storm.  It won’t hurt to keep records, but there is no assurance that there will be money for individual losses.

Finally, with generators going on and off, food safety is an issue, and we urge people to check out the extension website here about how long food can be kept when the power has gone off.

http://www1.extension.umn.edu/extreme-weather/flood/recover/food-and-water/

Here is another site on trees and shrubs after an ice storm.

http://www1.extension.umn.edu/extreme-weather/winter-impacts/

No, this is not an example of the weirdness of lawyer humor.

Over the years we’ve had a dozen or more “regular” jury trials set on the court calender every month. In the time I have been here (almost 20 years) we’ve probably had an average of one or two jury trials a month that don’t settle and actually go to trial. Those of you who have not been on a jury have seen “Twelve Angry Men” or “My Cousin Vinnie” or any of a number of TV shows that deal with Law and Order, so we know how “regular” juries work.

By contrast, there have been only a handful of grand juries that have been convened in Nobles County during my time here. Grand juries are almost never directly the subject of movies or TV plots, and proceedings are not public, so there is little chance to find out what they are all about.

I know I promised that my next blog would be about revocations, suspensions and cancellations of driver’s licences, but forgive me if I kick that down the road and do this first. I want to give you some information about grand juries, mostly by showing how they are different from “regular” juries. To make things easier, I will refer to them as “jury” and “grand jury” and just drop the “regular”. I am limiting my comparison between a jury that sits on a felony case and a grand jury. Here is the primer, then, on the difference between a jury and a grand jury.

What is their size and composition?

A felony jury has 12 members (though there may be one or two alternates if the trial is to last any length of time). A grand jury, by law, must have no fewer than 16 and no more than 23 people. All of those on a grand jury participate in the deliberations.

When do they serve?

Several times a year the court administrator in Nobles County makes up a master jury list and the people on that list are on call for whatever jury trials are going to come up during their time of service. When we gear up for trial, a group of people from that list is told to report for jury duty. The county administrator also chooses the people who will serve on a grand jury, but the practice here is only to select a grand jury when we need to have one. Technically those who were selected for the grand jury are also on call for a period of time, but the reality is that they usually only sit on the one case they were originally called in to hear.

What is their function?

A felony jury decides whether the prosecuting authority has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that a criminal defendant is guilty as charged. A grand jury decides whether there is probable cause for a person to be charged with a crime. (Though technically we say that a prosecutor “charges” someone with a crime and that a grand jury “indicts” someone.)

Who presents the evidence?

In a jury trial, both the prosecutor and defendant have the opportunity to present evidence. They each question each other’s witnesses. In a grand jury, the prosecutor presents the evidence; no defense attorney is present. Members of the grand jury can ask questions of the witnesses.

What evidence do the jurors see?

In a felony jury trial, the defense attorney has a chance to question whether certain prosecution evidence should be shown to the jury, and the judge may decide that some of the evidence the prosecution has may not be presented. In a grand jury there is no defense attorney yet (because there is no defendant yet) and there is no judicial determination of admissibility. Therefore the prosecutor has to think ahead to whether certain evidence is likely to be admissible at trial before using that evidence as part of the presentation to the grand jury. The grand jury can ask the prosecutor to call additional witnesses. The prosecutor instructs the grand jury in the law and the possible charges.

Who can be present?

A jury trial is open to the public, unless the presiding judge decides there is a sufficient reason to close it. (That happens rarely.) After a jury trial, jurors are allowed to talk about their experiences. Grand juries are closed to anyone not directly involved. While the existence of a grand jury is not secret, but pretty much everything else about it is. No one can be there except the grand jurors themselves, the prosecutor(s) actually involved in presenting the evidence, and the testifying witness (with an interpreter if needed). No one present at the grand jury proceedings is allowed to talk about the testimony that was presented or the deliberations. If there is a transcript of the proceedings prepared, that transcript will identify grand jurors only by the number assigned to them.

Does the defendant have the right to be there?

A defendant has the right to be present at a jury trial, to question witnesses testifying and to present evidence. Because the grand jury is not making a decision that will land a person in jail, but only deciding whether someone should be charged with a crime, the potential defendant has no right to be there. That person may be invited to attend, however.

What are they deciding?

In a felony jury trial, the jury is deciding whether the defendant should be convicted or not. They may also be deciding certain sentencing issues. A jury in a felony crime can only make a decision on the crimes put before them and the culpability of the person that is the defendant in that case. By contrast, a grand jury is deciding not only what the charges should be (and that could include charges other than the ones originally suggested by the prosecutor) but also who should be charged (it could be someone not suggested by the prosecutor presenting the case).

What kind of cases do they hear?

A jury will hear any kind of felony case. Anyone charged with a felony criminal offense has the right to a jury trial, so unless the defendant decides to give up that right, a felony case will be presented to a jury. Most felony cases are charged out by prosecutors, though, not grand juries. Grand juries hear cases that are difficult for the prosecutor to decide, cases that are politically charged, and cases that involve possible first degree murder charges. The law in Minnesota is that a person can’t be convicted of first degree murder unless a grand jury made the charging decision and issued an indictment.

How many have to agree?

All 12 on a jury must agree for there to be a conviction. On a grand jury only 12 (of the 16 to 23 panel) have to agree for there to be an indictment.

I know this will not answer everyone’s questions on how a grand jury works, but I think I have gone on long enough for today. If there are questions that related to grand juries or to “regular” juries, but not to a grand jury or jury trial on a specific case, ask and I will answer if I can.

My sister, who is a few years younger than I am, prefaces talk of her younger years with a creaky, sing-songy, old lady-croak, “Back in my day…” Imagine I am doing that now, when I talk about areas of practice that have changed a lot since I started out in practice. One of those areas of law is child support.

It used to be that the court figured child support only based on the income of the non-custodial parent, usually the dad. And no matter how little money a person made, child support was based on a percentage of that income. But half a dozen years ago some fairly big changes were made. One of those changes is that now it is assumed that both parents are capable of being employed, whether or not they actually are, and regardless of how much they actually are working or bringing home as income. To determine child support now, we take add together both parents’ income or the amount they are capable of making. Then we figure out how much child support is due on that income. We then portion the obligation out between the parents according their share of the total income. (It is easier than it sounds, mostly because there is an online worksheet (which you can find and fill out at http://childsupportcalculator.dhs.state.mn.us/Calculator.aspx) . You plug in the numbers and the worksheet spits out the result.)

Also, there is some recognition now that even the parent who does not have custody still has some fixed costs to have the child come stay with them, and so there is a credit, depending on how many overnights the child spends at the home of the non-custodial parent. Another big change is that we now recognize that everyone needs a certain minimum amount of money just to live–that minimum amount is called the “self-support reserve”. So, if a person’s income is below that amount, child support may be set at a flat rate of $50 for one child or $75 for more than one child.

Another area that has seen a lot of changes is that of civil commitment. When I started practicing in the 1980′s, mental health treatment was much more focused on treatment centers in general and on Willmar Regional Treatment Center in particular. Since then the focus changed and now services are provided on a more out-patient, community-based way. That means that Willmar Regional Treatment Center is not where we send people any more. The goal now to is avoid people being committed, and when people are hospitalized, the goal is to keep people in the hospital for a very short period of time. In the last few years there has been a local Crisis Response Team (that can be contacted during business hours through our Mental Health Center). That team works with community members that need help to try to get them that help without the need for an emergency hold. Other community based organizations work to support people as they live and try to deal with their illness here in the community.

Of course, there are a lot of other changes that come to mind, the law keeps changing to keep up, even with things like inflation. Theft of $500 used to be a felony, but it has been “downgraded”, because $500 doesn’t buy what it used to anymore. Our definition of “theft” has continuously had to evolve to keep up with reality: when people paid with checks, we had to add check forgery and insufficient funds checks as crimes. Now we also have financial transaction card fraud, and identity theft as technology has continued to evolve.

As that set of laws gets longer and longer, it gets more and more difficult for lay people to know or understand how the laws interact with each other, how they change, and what they mean. But we have to try to keep the laws relevant to our lives, our technology, and our sense of what is right and wrong.

If you have questions about how the law works in general, let me know. This is not an advice column, and I can’t talk about ongoing cases, but, for example, someone asked me recently what the difference is between driving after suspension, driving after cancellation and driving after withdrawal.  Good question, that I will answer in a future blog. Stay tuned.

What do we do in our office?  Everyone who has ever watched “Law and Order” knows part of the answer to that question:  We represent the government in the prosecution of crimes. Those cases can be go-directly-to-prison felonies, or they can be pay-at-the-window traffic offenses, or anything in between. Charges can include things like shining raccoons, abuse or neglect of animals, and planting crops too close to the right-of-way.  We are involved in all aspects of those cases after the investigation is complete. At the onset we make charging decisions, refer the case back for more investigation, or we can convene a grand jury to make the charging decision. We handle the hearings and trial and post-conviction hearings, if any. 

We handle juvenile delinquency cases, which are the cases where children break the law.  Most of those cases stay in juvenile court, but some are referred to adult court and some are handled as a kind of half adult-half juvenile thing called “Extended Jurisdicton Juvenile”. But we do other things as well besides deal with crime.

Some of those are related to criminal cases. For example, we do forfeiture actions related to drug and DWI and certain other crimes. We research, write, and argue appeals (on various cases, not just criminal ones).

We are the attorneys for the county, so we represent county agencies in a variety of settings, such as child support hearings, child protection hearings, civil commitment and public guardianship cases.  If we don’t have the expertise in the office to do things like bankruptcy, labor law, or real estate tax appeal cases (all very specialized areas of law) , we find someone for the county to employ to cover those cases.,  

Our office reviews contracts and legal documents (and you would not believe how many of those there are–I am amazed). We participate in Citizen’s Academy, and things like this blog, to help educate people about this office and about the law. We represent the Nobles County Community Services Agency at licensing hearings. We collect on debts owed to the county. We do condemnation actions. I act as the county’s data practices officer.  I am asked to review election ballots to make sure they are properly created, and I have to sign off on liquor licenses.

Then there are all the things that I never had to do before, but now am learning about, things that relate to helping run the county. Things like advising the board of commissioners, individual department heads, and various boards and commissions (like the library board and the planning and zoning commission).  And working with department heads to make recommendations to the board regarding county policies.

And there is this office to run. Which means managing employees, making sure that cases are moving, that the work load is evenly balanced, and that we are planning for the future.  The court system is moving to a more paperless world, which means that soon court documents will be created and filed electronically, and we have to prepare to be integrated into that system.

As I have said before, we don’t and can’t give advice to members of the public, because we don’t represent individuals, we represent the county as a whole, and the county government. However, we do get a number of calls from people, and we try to steer them in the direction they need to go, telling them where to find the answers, when we can. 

Stay tuned. I hope to talk about some of the things we do in more detail later, and I want to tell you about changes in the law. I hope that if anyone who reads this has a question about one of those things, they will contact me and I can try to answer it. I will not discuss specific cases in this blog.

Every year about this time we get a summary of the new laws that were enacted at the latest legislative session.  This year’s summary, which only gives the highlights that would be of interest to a county attorney’s office, runs 50 pages.  Some of these are new laws and some are modifications of laws already on the books.

“The laws on the books” take up several feet worth of shelf, by the way. They fill 15 books (each of which has about 1500 pages). Some people assume that all lawyers know all the law.  We can’t.  There are too many laws, and each one can be modified at any time by the legislature, or overturned by the appellate or supreme court. (You can look up the current laws, as well as the newly enacted laws, called “session laws” at https://www.revisor.mn.gov/pubs/.)

In addition to laws made by the legislature, there are local laws enacted by counties or cities. Also, various agenies have rules. If you apply to be a foster parent, for example, there are rules that govern how that application has to be processed. Then there are rules made by the court system that govern cases that get processed by the courts. Some of those rules are general, and some are specific to the type of case being handled. For example, there are both laws and rules that deal specifically with how probate matters have to be handled, and bankruptcy, and child support. You get the idea.  This is why lawyers tend to specialize in one area of law.  (I haven’t forgotten that I promised to tell you what we do in this office, and will get to that next time.)