The Prepper Broadcasting Network - The Rising Republic: Unbiased and Just

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

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I don't want to set the world I just don't even know why there aren't uprisings all over the country. Maybe there will be. To chase, at least for a moment, Trump and the maggots off the stage. There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there's unrest in our lives. Donald Trump, I think you need to go back and punch him in the face. I thought he should have punched him in the face. I feel like punching him. I'd like to take him behind the gym if I were in high school.

If you're in high school, I'd take you behind the gym and beat the hell out of him. I will go and take Trump out tonight. Take him out now. When was the last time an actor assassinated a president? They're still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump. Show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite

and peaceful. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome anymore anywhere. I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House. Please get up in the face of some Congress people. People will do what they do.

I want to tell you, George Dutch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. We're gonna go in here winning. This is just a warning to you Trumpers. Be careful. Walk lightly. And for those of you who are soldiers, make them pay. We are your lizard overlords. Just make them pet. We are your lizard overlords. Stop listening to these preppers.

Eat your crickets. Fight in the streets. Own nothing and love it. We are the Prepper Broadcasting Network. Well, well, well. we made it again another week. Welcome to the Rising Republic. I'm L. Douglas Hogan, your host and your fellow freedom lover. Have you ever wanted to get inside of the mind of a legal professional to see what makes them tick? Well, I have. So especially with all the activist judges and the bought and paid for lawmen that we have going on right now, I mean, probably in your own local community, on the national stage, you name it, they're probably out there. Well, I have a guest today, Assistant State Attorney Daniel K. Cochran, and he is currently running for the resident circuit judge in Franklin County, Illinois, where I live.

And we've been discussing, talking with each other here the last few minutes, and he is built on integrity and honesty. And I'm really excited to have him on the show here today. So without any further ado, I want to introduce you guys to the man, the myth, the legend, Daniel K. Cockrum. Hello, Dan. How are you doing today, sir? I'm doing very well. Thank you for having me. Not a problem at all. Hey, I'm really excited that you're here. I was checking you out. I've been seeing a lack of posts and different things. Like everywhere I go, there's political signs posted up everywhere. I don't see anything that says Daniel K. Cockrum on it. I went to your Facebook page because I heard that you were running, and I wanted to see what was going on, and I found out that you're fiscally conservative. Tell me a little bit about that.

Well, yes, that's what, when it comes to this campaign, there's a couple of ways to go out of campaign. And one of the ways is to have a committee that goes out there and just hawks money from everybody you can get. And that allows you to buy a lot of things. You can litter every blade of grass on right away inside your county with a sign with your name on it. Or there's the other way to do it. I was raised by blue collar parents. I'm a first generation lawyer. So the other option to that is you get out there and you do it by hard work. That goes to knocking on doors that with the money that you do have available to you through your own funds or my parents help quite a bit because family is just paramount to us.

funds or my parents help quite a bit because family is just paramount to us. Then we get out there and we use that very conservatively the same way we ran budgets in our household when I was a kid. Every dollar was earned by working hard for it. So you made sure it was spent appropriately. You didn't just go out there and blow it because you think I can go out and get more. I'll just have somebody else donate to it. To me, whenever you get too much money involved in politics, and especially in a small county election, it always concerns me with money comes with strings. And whenever someone gives you money, typically they expect something in return. And whether they do or not, that's not a risk I'm willing to take because being a judge, you need to be above reproach on an issue like that. People need to know that you are there to enforce the law and that there is no agenda, that there's not a favor you owe somewhere,

that the only reason you're there is to follow the law and see that it is handled appropriately. I love it. You touched on spending money and it disappearing real quick and everything like that. Seems like you're from the same generation I am, even before us. I call it the crockpot generation, right? Like we're okay with patience and waiting and saving money and, you know, and taking our time to get something that we can earn, something we can work for and earn. But there's a new generation that's come after us that I call the microwave generation, right? They just, they need everything right now. Like everything is instantaneous because we live in an age of information. Nobody has to wait for anything anymore. You and I had to go to a library to crack open a book, to find something where we wanted to learn something, right? These kids

literally just pop open their phone and they grab everything's right there. There's no, there's, I feel like there's a, we're missing something in, in, in all of that, but I'm glad you touched on that because it's really interesting. There's a gap. Well, I think it's funny that you say that because I'm at my house right now and my wife is literally making something in a crock pot tonight for dinner. That's been in here cooking all day, that as soon as I walked in the house, that smell hits you. And you see that the best things are worth waiting for. They take some work, they take some patience, and that's what makes them all the more enjoyable whenever you get to realize them. But yes, I'm definitely still from a generation where we used to have to go to a library for information and things were done the hard way. And I'm glad that

I've been able to be a part of both generations that, yes, it's handy now, especially to do legal research that I can flip open a phone or a laptop and I have all the information I could ever look for in a library right there at my fingertips. But knowing what it used to take to get that information makes you respect having that ability now so much more. Yeah. And so with a newer generation that never had to live like how we did when we were young, they don't have that respect for it. But you mentioned something I want to talk on for a second here. You mentioned work and patience. Now I can't imagine, can you tell me a little bit about, cause you, I saw through your education, you went to SIU school of law.

Yes. I got there. Actually my undergraduate degree was from SIU there at Carbondale and I have a, had a degree in, uh, in education, in education that I was actually certified to be a secondary education in history, so to teach high school students. And going through that, I've always been a firm believer in studying history and learning from it. And as that went, I became more interested in the law. And then after my senior year in undergraduate and graduated and got my certification, I decided that I wanted to go to law school. And I started clerking that summer at a small firm here in town and sat for the admittance exam. And then I took off there at SIU and got my degree there in Carbondale. Were you your first job after that? At what point did you become a public defender in Hardin County, Illinois? I took my first position as a public defender. I had been out of law school just a little less than two years, somewhere between 18, 20 months. I had

been an attorney in a small firm, and then I was offered the position to become the public defender in Hardin County, which is a small county. but it was a chance to get out on my own as well as run my own private practice because it was a part-time public defender position. So I could run a private practice with it as well. Okay. So you're just not fiscally conservative, right? You have other conservative values? Oh, absolutely. Is that something you knew before you became a public defender or is it something you picked up along the way? It's something I've picked up. I'll just be honest that the older I

get, the little more conservative that I become in pretty much everything. It started off, you know, being fiscally conservative was just a lifeline. That's how we learned to survive. That's how the family came along and that's how we got to where we are. But then as I get older, you start to see some of these things that when you don't have a conservative mindset, it seems that we stray off from what's important that's going on, that we get sidetracked from the issues that actually affect us day to day. So it's important to me to have those values as well as then passing them on to your children. Because as you get older, you have kids, you realize I'm not just doing things that are affecting me.

Now it affects my wife. It affects my children. And in order for that to be passed on to them, that's just more conservative you get as you get older. Right. And that's a stark contrast to what we got going on today. Because with the progressive left movement that's out there, it seems like everybody is only interested in themselves and their own personal agenda you know that's how we get the personal pronouns and everything it doesn't matter they want because they feel that they have like some like a state like a claim on on reality like you have to acknowledge their pronouns and you have to acknowledge that they're a cat or you

have you know see i'm saying and and the difference the difference is when you're a cat or you have, you know, see what I'm saying? And, and the difference, the difference is when you're a parent and you have conservative values and you have, you understand that you have to teach those to them. Elsewise, they're going to wind up being influenced by those same kind of characters at school. And they're going to be doing the same thing down the road. If you can't instill inside of them, your own values. And we do that as well as we we're big on teaching them that you're your own person, that just because it's popular or there's a group of people doing it doesn't mean that that's what's the right thing to do. You have to do what you know is right based on the way you were raised. You don't have to be out there harming someone

else or opposing them because they feel that way. You have a right in this country to feel and believe anything you want, but it doesn't mean that you can impose that onto the people around you. Right. So in a nutshell, because we got some more questions to cover here, how was it being a public defender? Was that a difficult job? It can be a difficult job, but I found, and my intention was with my career, I realized very early on that I would want to sit on the bench one day. But in order to do that, you need to be able to see the law from every angle and every aspect.

And one of those that's often overlooked is the public defender position, because as the public defender, you don't pick your cases. You're assigned to them because people, no matter who they are and what they've done, they have a constitutional right to have an attorney represent them in any case where their freedom might be at stake. So those are the times that I've been in, sat with clients in prisons and county jails, in small meeting rooms, and you learn to hear their stories. You meet with their families and understand more of how this system actually affects people and not just the person that's the defendant in a case, how it affects their family and the community around them, which then assisted me. And whenever I became a prosecutor and became a state's attorney, that I know what the other side of that is like.

So now every time I look at a case, when I read a police report, I immediately read it from both sides. How does this look from a defendant standpoint? How does this look from a prosecutor standpoint? And how do we find justice somewhere in between? That's what intrigued me so much about you. And I was looking and reading like some of your bios and your posts and things. I saw how you had in the past, you knew that you early on that you wanted to sit on the bench at some point. Like this, this election is like the end game for you. This is where you wanted to go. And you've been setting yourself up. You've been playing chess for a lot of years, moving the pieces around, setting yourself up for this because a good leader knows every position under them. There should be

no person leading another person and another career path. And they have no knowledge of what that person is supposed to be doing. They never worked it themselves. And you touched on something that I respect very much. Absolutely. And whenever I was young, there was a couple of guys that I grew up with that had dads that were judges before I was even interested in the legal career. And you see that to do that job well meant that, I mean, to an extent, you are separating yourself from your community a little bit because you have to be able to have any person come into your courtroom and apply the law to them fairly and unbiased. So no matter who they are, where they're from, what their last name is, that's important. But to be able to do that, you need to be able to see their position as well as

the person that's on the other side of the aisle from them in a courtroom. So I knew early on that I would have to take different jobs and do different things in order to gain that experience. So there have been choices, times in my career where I've had to sit down with my wife and we discuss things that it may not make as much money to do some of these parts of the law, but that knowledge was going to be important. So if I ever wanted to sit on that bench, I could honestly tell people I've handled these types of cases. I got involved with them and made sure I had an experience so that if I ever was to hear one of these cases, I have experience with that. I know what I'm looking for, what I'm hearing in a courtroom, as well as it's made me focus on watching other judges throughout my career on what do they do well? What do they do poorly? How could we do this better? I respect that as well, because

I don't know if this is a Christian-based podcast, you know, and Jesus didn't hold no punches. I don't hold no punches either. So let me just throw this out there that Jesus said, he didn't stay in Nazareth, right? He actually, he left because he himself said that a prophet has never accepted their own country. That's because they see him grow up. They see the young man, they see the carpenter kid, they see, you know, him and they will never respect him as who he is. And so when you're, if you was to stay in that area and you, you, I think you're very wise, your decision to leave, um, to leave Hardin County and move on. It was a very wise decision. You went from there to being an assistant state's attorney, right? Yes, I took a short stop in private practice. And then as soon as there was an opening here in Franklin County, which is home, I took that to come back here

because that was a place where I could do the most for the community at that point. I could use my experience in prosecuting cases, assisting my local law enforcement officers, because I know what it's like to be on call 24 hours a day. That whenever the guys are on the side of the road and they need some type of advice, I wanted to know if they've got someone there that they can call. And that works for a judge as well. When you're a judge, you're on call 24-7 if you're not specifically on vacation days because search warrants happen all times of the night. You've got to be available. I was going to say that being a police officer myself, all my listeners know I'm a police officer. There comes times and they happen. You can't always plan out a search warrant. A lot of times something happens in the moment, instantaneous,

and you got to be able to reach out to that judge and say, oh, judge, we need a search warrant on this. And here's why. And lay out all the elements leading up to the reason why you need a search warrant. Because the Fourth Amendment is one of our most protective amendments, the right to privacy. And it's highly protected. And everything needs to be laid out before we contact you, right? How does that go for you? Absolutely.

Yes, the judge, before it gets to the judge, you have to have your probable cause laid out, showing that there is evidence in our possession or that we believe we can show to you that says we have a reason to overcome someone's constitutional right to privacy. report together. They then contact a prosecutor, typically the state's attorney or an assistant state's attorney, who then assists them to present that to the judge in a light to show, judge, we have a valid reason to overlook someone's constitutional right at this moment, because that should never be done without a firm thought process and taking into account the right you're overriding whenever you issue that search warrant. taking into account the right you're overriding whenever you issue that search warrant. Right, because the law of the land is our U.S. Constitution. And I talk so much on this podcast about our rights and the Constitution, and they're not to be taken lightly.

So I respect that, that you have such a high criteria for it. How long have you been an assistant state's attorney here in Franklin, assistant state attorney in Franklin County. I've been here back here in Franklin County and see going on 14 months now as the first assistant here in Franklin County. Okay, perfect. So, and, and you're running, you're currently running for the, uh, for the, for the circuit judge or yeah, that's correct. Resident circuit judge. Now I'm the resident circuit judge. What, what can you tell me what a resident circuit judge does versus just a circuit judge? Sure. Okay. So a resident judge, the resident circuit judge. Can you tell me what a resident circuit judge does versus just a circuit judge? Sure. Okay.

So a resident judge, the resident circuit judge is a circuit judge. So our circuit consists of this circuit. The second judicial circuit consists of 12 counties. So we have 15 total circuit judges. There's one resident judge elected from each of the 12 individual counties that are elected by those counties alone. Then we have three at-large circuit judges that are elected from the entirety of the circuit when they run. The resident circuit judge of a county hears cases in that county, but also is responsible for the appointment of the public defender, which is actually done by a vote of

the other circuit judges, but typically it is their nomination that has been approved. They handle the budget for those public defenders who are hired on to handle that position, both the main public defender as well as we have two assistant public defenders that are part-time positions in this county. The judge also is responsible for assigning other judges that are assigned to the county. We have four courtrooms in our courthouse. We're typically running three courtrooms, four days a week, and then one or two on Friday. So those other judges that are assigned to the county by the chief judge, the resident judge then assigns them to hear

whether it's the family docket, orders of protection, juvenile, criminal, traffic. That judge has to decide who's going to hear what cases when they're in that county. So you need to have an experience in those cases to know who's going to be the best person to hear these, who's going to do the best job and has the most experience with those types of cases. So people have a judge who is knowledgeable about what they're hearing that day. That's what my next point is actually getting ready to throw up. You, you walked right into it. So that's perfect. Cause you just can't, for my listeners that might not know, you just can't throw traffic court into juvenile court. And if everybody's crammed into the same space, it don't work that way. There are certain days in time set aside for juvenile court, there are certain days in time set aside for traffic court. There are certain days in time set aside for juvenile court, there's certain days in time set aside for traffic court, there's certain days in time set aside for criminal court, right?

So all this is very important. And a lot of your, we don't have to talk about names, but some of the people who are also challenging you in the primaries, the Republican primaries for this position, don't have the same experience you do. And you have by far, in my opinion, the most experience and you're lined out better, in my opinion. And you also have, you've been working for a long time, kind of like I said, playing chess, where other people, it just seems like impromptu decisions. I think I'll run for a resident circuit judge this year. You've been setting it up for a long

time. And I respect that greatly. Thank you. It is important that it's not just a willy-nilly decision that you just decided, today I'm going to move on to do something different in my same career field. You need to be prepared for that because there's a lot that goes with it to being a judge. In my opinion, if you do it correctly, being a judge done appropriately is as much a burden to bear as anything because you're going to make decisions for people that they obviously couldn't make for themselves, especially in civil court, whether it's child custody when you're separating property in an estate, disputes

between neighbors over where the boundary lines of their property are, you're going to leave, typically, no one's going to leave there real happy with what happened. And you're the person that's going to have to make that decision for them. So it's something, it's a weight to carry with you, as well as in criminal cases. If you're going to sentence someone, you need to be aware of those consequences and how that affects those people and their families, as well as the victims in a case and the general public. And that's what's been so good about being able to do all these different career parts of the law in my career that let me see that from those positions. I'm able to take into consideration how these decisions affect each of these groups of people. Let's talk a little bit about that.

I have some questions. You interested in answering some questions for me? Sure. And these will kind of give you a chance to expound on your current platform. I want to hear everybody that's local that's going to be listening to this podcast wants to hear what are your positions on the things that this will be an opportunity to talk about that. And then from there, I just kind of want to expound out to maybe some state issues and go out even broader to some country issues,

which the broader part of my listener base is going to be most interested in, although I think there's something out of all of this for them. But let's start with this. First question, what inspired you to become a judicial candidate? From early on, like I said, I saw as a kid, you see some of my guys I grew up with had some dads that were judges. And, you know, you start to notice them, how they carry themselves, how people look at them, that you realize that they need to be able to respect that position by being above reproach. That what you're always doing is what's in the best interests of the people that come into your courtroom. Then as I went through law school and I practiced in the law, I started

early on seeing that some judges obviously do a very good job of maintaining control of their courtrooms. They move their dockets efficiently so that cases are done quickly and they don't languish for years. But then you also run into the other side of that coin and you see the job that gets phoned in. You want to continue this case today? Great. If it gets done, I don't really care because you get the paycheck either way. And that's not what it is. It can't just be a paycheck because you see what it takes for people to participate in the legal system. It's expensive. And the longer that case goes, yeah, the attorney keeps getting paid, but the person who's there probably on average, that's every dollar they have to participate in this to try and protect whatever right or property, whatever's involved in their case. whatever is involved in their case, it's all the average person can do to hire an attorney to represent them. So the longer you allow that case to drag out, the more likely it is that person is no longer going to be able to secure representation in that courtroom.

And Abraham Lincoln once said, a man who represents himself has a fool for a client. And I agree with that because the way I explain people my career is we're not a bunch of rocket scientists. We're just typically playing a game you don't know the rules to. And that's where that attorney comes in. And the more those fees rack up, the more times they appear in court and something doesn't get completed, the more it drains from those people that are breaking their back every day at their job just to be able to afford to fight to protect what they have. And that's not fair to them whenever the attorneys can just, you just keep coming back. You know you're going to be back another day. So someone has to make sure that those cases get completed. And that eventually falls on the judge, on the court to say, listen, folks, if you're going to settle this, that's great. I'm happy for you. But if not, we're setting this for a hearing. You're both going to put on evidence and I'm going to rule on these issues and we're going to resolve this matter. I kind of felt that Abraham Lincoln quote because I immediately thought I'm an author. I've wrote

probably 15 books, but no author should be editing his own books. It's the same way with representing yourself in a courtroom. And so that Abraham Lincoln thing, it really clicked with me because you're not going to see your own faults. You're not going to see your own mistakes. You're going to read right past them, overlook them. You need to be represented by somebody else. Somebody else needs to look at your book and edit it up properly and do the proper markups to get you settled. I love it. Absolutely. Question number two, what is your experience with law and legal system? We kind of touched on that. You can elaborate a little bit more.

Okay. So I started off at a small private practice. And in there, it was a general practice firm, which is what a lot of small town law firms are. You handle a lot of different matters. Started off, I've handled divorces, child custody matters, orders of protection, child support that comes along with it. That's when I got my first taste of some juvenile cases. That was as well as with real estate law. I've actually tried two trials in a field on boundary line disputes between neighbors where we actually, attorneys, witnesses, the judge, the court reporter, we actually went out to fields to have these trials, which is a pretty unique experience I found for me. But I really enjoy it because it was something that I would love to do as a judge, especially in those situations

where being able to view on site, which isn't always going to work, but it works well in the boundary line dispute. It's no longer pictures or videos. And the first one I had, the judge, we started putting on evidence, said, stop guys. I can't tell east, west, north, south. I don't even know what you're talking about. Go home and put your boots on. I will see you at that property in two hours. And that was the first time that took off. Criminal cases started off with criminal defense. Tried my first felony DUI trial probably around a year at a law school and was able to get a win there. What's nice now is that officer is still with the sheriff's department, and he and I work together regularly now. And it's great that I've been able to be on both sides with some of these officers over the years. I'm kind of partial to police officers myself, but I look forward to working with you someday.

That'd be really, really cool. But like I was, we were talking before, you know, the interview started and I've actually been in your driveway a few times. You've been in my driveway a few. Our daughters are really good friends. They kind of hang out with each other. Yes.

And we'll talk later on about some more stuff, but you got some upcoming events later on. We'll also cover that. I want to move on to question number three. How do you plan to ensure impartiality and fairness in your rulings? Because there's a lot of that going on right now across the country, activists, judges, and such. So how would you specifically ensure impartiality and fairness in your rulings? Well, at the circuit court level, we are not active. We don't change the law, modify the law. It just is what it is, what's written on the books. If you want to change what the law is, you talk to your legislators. You may want to see cases,

you may hire someone to fight your case through to the Supreme Court. But at the circuit court level, we have the laws that are written, the circuit court level, we have the laws that are written, the rules that are written, and then those have been interpreted by the appellate courts, the Illinois Supreme Court, or even the U.S. Supreme Court that tells us how that law is to be applied at this point in time. And as long as you focus on the law is the law, and it doesn't matter who the person is challenging it, whether it's a man, a woman, your friend, someone you've never met, or people you've never heard of. The law applies to them equally. So as long as you read that law and your ruling is consistent with what the law actually is,

you just don't let yourself be moved by your outside biases. We all have a bias to certain things, to certain issues, but you have to leave that behind as a judge because that's the only way to rule fairly and impartially in every case is you have to leave that behind when you put that robe on. Okay. I have kind of a follow-up question to that because you mentioned just now that you don't, there's no, did you say there's no, no new, no new laws are written? You just, the laws are what they are, correct? Yes. Like a judge is not going to be decide that because they don't like a certain law.

You may disagree with it personally, but when you're on the bench, you have to enforce it as it is written, whether you like it or not. Okay. Because you don't have the power to change that to say, I don't like this law, so I'm not going to enforce it. Whereas a prosecutor has unfettered discretion to prosecute or not prosecute a case. You can plead it down. You can charge it any way you want. You can have a crime that you decide that you don't agree with that law, so you decide I'm not going to charge someone with a violation of it.

law. So you decide I'm not going to charge someone with a violation of it. As the judge, if that charge comes through, and a criminal case is a little easier scenario here to use, it doesn't matter whether you agree if it's appropriate or not. If it's a law and it's constitutional, then you have to apply it as it's written. And a judge doesn't get to just decide this is unconstitutional. That has to be raised to the court through a motion or other process. The judge is not active and decides what to do. The judge makes the decision based on what the parties bring to them. That's the rule, but I understand, based on what I'm going to tell you, there's exceptions. That exception is this, and again, I'm not saying you're wrong. You're right. Absolutely right.

But this person I'm about to talk about is wrong. The Epoch Times reported that just yesterday, Cook County Circuit Judge Tracy Porter ruled that Trump, for example, was disqualified by engaging in insurrection, completely removed him off of the balance. I don't know how a circuit judge can do that or make that decision. The Constitution has two, you know this, the constitution has two qualifications. You gotta be 35 years of age and you have to be a born, you have to be American born. You know, it doesn't even say anything about being a criminal. And so what, you know, if he,

if he did, there's been no trial, this is a side note, there's been no trial. You're just assuming he's an insurrectionist. So you're making this declaration, this fiat that he can't be on a ballot? And that's what seems to be the argument there is. My opinion on how that went down is something that I can't give out as a judicial candidate because it is a pending litigation at the moment. And we are bound by the same judicial code of conduct that elected judges are. When we become a candidate, we are informed and we know that we can't give a comment on how we believe something should have been ruled on or how it will be ruled on as pending or litigation that even is likely to become pending. So in general, the challenges of these, because we've been dealing with them in this local election, they muddy the waters, I am a firm believer in free and fair elections that people have a right to vote for who they want to vote for. Fair enough. Thanks. Question number four.

How do you view the role of a judge and the judiciary in society? During the day, in their private life, I think I've realized that to do it well, you have to carry yourself in a way that never brings disrespect or a lack of confidence in the bench, which means people need to be able to see you that in your personal life, in your practice, leading up to being a judge, that you have always been open, honest and fair with people. being a judge, that you have always been open, honest, and fair with people, that you don't pretend to be things that you're not, that you don't try and sway opinions one way or another. It's somewhat stoic in that response that you can't show that you're inclined one way or another on certain topics because people should never feel like a judge is biased one way or another when they walk into their courtroom. You need to be able to believe that that judge is fair and impartial, regardless of what the certain parties, as well as showing courtesy and respect to all the other people that work in that system who work very hard in order to make that system work, which are everybody from the guy that cleans the floors at night to the circuit clerk's employees that manage the files and make sure the dockets run smoothly. All of these people play an important part in showing that the court respects them the same way you should give respect to the court. It is a situation that I find very important

that you're not above anyone as the judge. You are there to settle disputes in the law, and that's all. Perfect, because it doesn't matter if you're left or if you're right, liberal, conservative, you're bound by the letter of the law. Exactly. Question number five, what is your approach to dealing with difficult or controversial cases? the case is brought to you, you first hear what the evidence would be in a case, what the arguments of the parties are going to be. You then take that information, you research the issues on how has this law been previously interpreted by appellate courts and by the Supreme Courts, and then you apply the law in the fashion as it's been written and interpreted at the circuit court level. If someone doesn't agree with that past precedent, that's what we have appellate courts for. The circuit judge rules

the way they are bound by the law and those previous precedents. And then the party that disagrees with them has the ability to appeal that decision if they wish. And then once you move up that ladder, that's where that precedent may change someday, but it doesn't change at the circuit court level. How would you handle a situation where your personal beliefs conflict with established law or legal precedent? The legal precedent takes, it trumps that every time, to use a good term there, but that's what it has to be. Whatever your personal beliefs are on something, when you become a judge, you're agreeing to set those aside in favor of the law. Because the law has to be equal, unbiased, and fair to everyone. So even if you personally disagree with a law, for instance, a guy comes in in a criminal case, and the judge disagrees with the law in the books.

I don't like this law. However, they are presented with evidence and testimony that this person has violated that law. A jury finds them guilty. You will sentence them, and you will uphold that guilty finding. There was actually a judge removed from the bench. I was reading just a few days ago from a county northwest of here, and I can't recall the county, because a jury convicted a man of sexual assault, I believe. And then at the sentencing hearing, the judge just decided to personally vacate that conviction of a jury of their peers and say his time in the county jail was time enough.

Well, that far exceeds the authority a judge has. You do not have the ability to step in and do that because the law doesn't give you that power. And that judge was actually removed from the bench for stepping so far outside the bounds of his power. So as the judge, it doesn't matter whether you like it or not, you will enforce the law as it's written. All right, let me see your next question. What are the most pressing community issues related to the courts and law enforcement? Well, for the courts and law enforcement right now, the biggest issues we see, and I talk with my officers regularly, it's become pretty cyclical. That starts with drug addiction that typically then leads to thefts to support that habit. Those thefts will proceed on to a burglary at some point

in time. During this process, the person will often become homeless and then spirals further. Then we get them in the county jail and we try to get them treatment when we can because the addiction is the underlying problem. And I've dealt with a lot of the research on this and experience. I prosecute our drug court program. We started drug courts in this state over a decade ago, but they've become more popular and we're supposed to have them in every county in the state. And part of that is a immediate consequences,

reward for doing a good job, sanction for doing a bad job. And those are progressive based on how well or how poorly you do trying to eradicate the addiction, which is the underlying problem. Because if all we do is fail to treat the problem and only punish the action, then the addiction remains. Person gets back out of the county jail, out of prison. They still have an addiction, so they will feed the addiction, which then leads back to being homeless, thefts, burglaries, back to the county jail, onto the Department of Corrections. And it's a terrible

drain on our resources. Our officers spend an exorbitant amount of time. You know about this. There are certain names and certain addresses that when they come across the radio, you know, great, I'm going out there. They're high again. We're going to have a fight on our hands and it'll go through the process. They may go to prison, but the same people will come back out until we address the problems there. Every shift. And this last question is kind of related to that one. What are your thoughts on alternative dispute resolution methods such as meditation and arbitration? are your thoughts on alternative dispute resolution methods such as meditation and arbitration? So mediation is, in some civil cases, actually required. Any case that has child custody or visitation time at issue in the state of Illinois has to go through a mediation process if the parties haven't already agreed on a lawful disposition of the amount of parenting time each parent will receive. So I'm a firm believer in it. I think it's a great way to try and problem solve. We actually have on the second circuit for indigent parties that can't afford to pay that

third attorney to come in and mediate, judges on the circuit are appointed to cases they're not hearing to attempt to mediate those matters between the circuit are appointed to cases they're not hearing to attempt to mediate those matters between the parties. And when they come to mediation in those situations, they actually come without their attorneys, which often is good because some attorneys are problem solvers. Others realize that there's more money to be made the longer this problem goes on. And I've never enjoyed that about this profession. So I believe that it's a wonderful process. You do your best to get things done at mediation because an agreement is always better than a ruling to me because then everybody got something they wanted. If you leave

it up to the court, you may get nothing that you wanted out of this. It could be a situation where the ruling is not good for you and it doesn't work with your schedule, but a judge has to rule based on just the information they have, which they're never going to have all the information from your life. But it's always important to try those alternative dispute resolution paths to me if you can. In some cases, you're never going to get parties close enough. They're just not going to agree. Sometimes both of them are hardheaded. Sometimes it's just one. And those are the situations where the court says, we're not just going to talk about this forever, folks. We're going to have a hearing on this. So we're going to get a hearing date and you can keep talking

and trying to resolve these matters through mediation, arbitration issues. But at the end of this, we're going to have a hearing if you don't have an agreement and the judge will settle it for you. Very good. Let's move on to some broader issues. Now that we know how you stand on certain things, I'm curious because we've, the 35,000 illegal immigrants in Chicago alone,

as reported by Fox News here in the last couple of days, our state has spent $470 million on them, and they're blaming Texas for it. It's just a matter of time, because we know in New York City, I see the news footage, I see the videos. I mean, private people are taking out their cell phones. Everything's accessible anymore. And you see all these recordings of violence and things on the streets. And these, these, I think two or three police officers were beat down by Venezuelans, illegal immigrants, and they were arrested and they were released the next day with no bail. And it's frustrating for law enforcement officers when that kind of something like that happens. But

eventually, cause there's a lot of them in Illinois already, they're going to start trickling down to, we got a lot of plants, a lot of facilities, a lot of places, a lot of jobs down here in Southern Illinois. And it's just a matter of time before, I'm not saying they're all bad. They're certainly not all bad. But their first act of getting here was committing a crime, right? Coming over into our country illegally. So amidst that, these individuals are a fringe group of nasties, and some of them are currently unidentified. Some of them are terrorists.

Some of them are Chinese nationals. But eventually, some of these individuals will wind up in our, the criminal elements wind up in our county. How would you, as a judge, handle some of these cases when these individuals are arrested? handle some of these cases when these individuals are arrested? Well, as a judge, we are currently bound by the modifications the Safety Act made to our criminal justice system and to the laws of criminal procedure. And a big part of that is the no-cash bail that we are adapting to. We're doing our best. We've worked really hard here in Franklin County to be able to still detain people that we believe are dangerous to themselves, to the community, and to others. However, our hands are tied in a lot of cases right now, and judges' hands are tied as well.

If an offense is not a detainable offense, which for drug possessions, for instance, it has to be a class X felony amount, the highest level of felony for us to detain them pending a trial. Some domestic batteries land on there. A lot of these cases, you know, burglaries, thefts, aggravated batteries even, whether it's to a person where you've caused great bodily harm or done it in public, or aggravated battery because it's a police officer, an EMT, a firefighter, we can't detain those offenses now. The only way we can detain them on those situations is if they're a flight risk. And proving that someone's a flight risk is difficult. I've managed to detain two people in Franklin County because they came here from out of state, committed a crime,

and we would have had to have cut them loose the next day or within 48 hours. However, both of them made statements to my officers that as soon as I get out of here, you're never going to see me again. So then I could present that to the judge that, judge, I've got a flight risk here. And then our judge was able to say, yes, we can detain them because you've committed an offense that makes you detainable if you are a flight risk. But had they not been, then we could never have detained them. However, we have been able to be successful with repeat criminals. So you get released on pretrial release. You didn't have to pay any bond.

Part of the pre-existing law is that if you commit another Class A misdemeanor or higher offense, your bond in the case you were released on can be revoked based on that new charge. set their bond at an appropriate and fair amount to ensure they come back to court, well, now I can at least file to revoke that pretrial release in the previous case, and I can detain someone at that point. And we've detained a number of individuals. I detained a guy yesterday that had been released for possession of a stolen motor vehicle and on a theft case, and then officers found him in possession of another stolen motor vehicle. Well, I couldn't keep him in custody on the new case, but was able to revoke his bond on the previous case because he'd gone out and committed another offense of that higher level. Which explains why crimes and violent crimes are up. I mean, we're catching these guys, we're putting them in jail and they're getting, I'm not talking about forcible felonies

and things like that, but just, you know, say simple battery and things like this. People are being caught, you know, and they're being released and I'm going to spare you the agony of having to answer some of this stuff because I know you can't

with the Safety Act and all that. I'll talk about that on another show, let everybody know what the Safety Act is. But violent crimes are up and I'm sure you're seeing a lot of it. I want to move on to just one more thing before I can almost smell your wife's crockpot cooking over there. It smells good. There's a lot of executive fiat.

How does that, because I know you're bound by law. I'm bound by law being a police officer. When a governor or a president writes an executive order, we both know, me and you both know that that's not law. He can't do that. He can't write law. That's not his job. That's a legislator's job to write law. It's Congress's job to write law.

How does it work for a judge when an executive, we'll say in this case a governor or even a president, writes something like that? Are you bound by that? Well, it would depend on the situation. And it's hard to comment on that without it landing in one of these potential litigation or pending litigation issues, because we're still dealing with some of those. We did just go through those with COVID and those orders. And there's still some things bouncing around in litigation. So it really prevents being very specific on that. So what you have to do in those situations, though, is again, as a circuit judge challenges to some type of order, you would go back to what's the previous precedent? What is the law on how executive orders are applied? How have the appellate courts and the Supreme Courts

instructed us to take that based on a certain set of facts that are then analogous to what we have here? And at the circuit level, you're required to rule in order with what that previous precedent is. And again, that's when people have an option that if they don't like what that precedent is to appeal that decision. And that's what starts that process of potentially changing what that previous precedent was. It may or it may not, but the circuit court isn't the one that makes that decision. So you're bound by the previous decisions on how those orders are enforced. Perfect. I get it. Thank you, Daniel K. Cockrum for Franklin County Resident Judge. It's been an honor talking to you. You do have some events coming up. Can you elaborate on some of the things you got coming up? Yes, we are actually having an event

this Saturday in Thompsonville at the Aiken Masonic Lodge from 430 to 7. We're having pulled pork and baked beans and chips. My wife makes cookies that are absolutely delicious that everybody local knows about. We'll have some of that there. But it's light on the politics, good on the fellowship of people being around. I like to shake hands. I want people to know who their judge would be, who I am as a person outside of that suit that I wear all the time, because to me that's really just a uniform I put on every day.

We're also going to have an event in Cesar coming up the next Saturday that I'll be putting some flyers out here soon and making some announcements on Facebook with times and places. And in between those events, I'll be out knocking on people's doors, doing this the old-fashioned way so they can meet me, know who I am as a person, ask questions, because they need to know that judges are regular people. They make difficult decisions, but they need to understand that you can make those decisions because I came from the same place they did. I grew up in a household with two working parents, the same way my wife did. You know, I'm first generation to wear a suit in my family. So when people come into that courthouse, they can understand, I know where you came from. I know how hard you worked for what you have because that's what got me to where I am. Your motto is actually a working class judge for working class people. I love it. Yes, that's exactly right because that's what I come from and those are the people that I support.

Perfect. I will be there March 2nd at the Aiken Masonic Lodge, number 749-105 South Main Street, Thompsonville, Illinois, between 4 and 7. If you guys are listening to this, you're local, come out and meet Daniel K. Cochran. If you've never met him yet, like I said, I've been in his driveway, he's been in mine. I plan on rubbing shoulders with him at the event, shaking his hand and meeting him face to face. Daniel, I want to thank you again for coming out here. Hang tight. After I close out here, I want to close things out with you and chat for another minute or two. And thank everybody else for listening to The Rise of the Republic.

I am L. Douglas Hogan. We'll catch you next week.