So welcome everyone to this podcast edition of the Thomas Jefferson Hour.

This is a program you're going to like.

Joe Lovell from Amarillo, Texas, lawyer, friend, survivor of the Wendover Death March, the summer tours.

And here's what I liked about this program.

It is, you're a serious guy.

You know, when we're out on the trail you can play with the best of them and you have are light-hearted and you love to laugh and you and you have a you're sarcastic and so on, but when you get talking about this subject,

trial by jury, and the threat to trial by jury in our time, you're deeply serious.

I am.

I think it is crucial, like Mr. Jefferson.

I think it is a crucial component of our Democratic Republic.

And without it, we are going to lose, citizens are going to lose something and they just don't know what

they're losing. Because in the pop cultural world, the sense we get is O.J. Simpson, and it's madness, it's chaos, that system's broken, it's all hyper-dramatized. You're saying that day in and day out across this country if there is a

jury of peers justice is usually done that the citizens who come in however unwilling they are rise to the

occasion that it's a it's a pretty magical part of the American system. Yes. And almost uniquely American.

That is correct. Even Great Britain has whittled down, that that's where we got the right to by jury, and they've whittled it down to where

it's almost non-existent there.

So this is, I think, a really interesting program.

I'm glad you're here. I think you should you should come back and

talk about other constitutional systems and particularly America's

continuing search for justice because you've actually you're in the trenches you actually you're in the trenches you actually see what

this looks like this is not just civics to you this is about your profession but

something bigger than that too it's about justice in the United States and if you're

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