Bonus: COVID-19 and the Legal System

m M formally Families Against Mandatory Minimum Sentencing. I can personally attest that these organizations are doing incredible, much needed work on some of the problems of the criminal justice system. I encourage you to take a look at them for yourself and support them in any way that you can. At your local level, take a look at the track records of officials in your area and decide whether or not you support their decisions, and let your feelings be

known with your vote. That's the most direct line between those officials and those that they serve. I really encourage you to look closely at the judges, the sheriffs, the district attorneys, and the city officials who directly impact how justice is done for you and your community. If you have any questions, our phone line is open at four zero four for one zero zero four four one. Thank you for listening. If you will place your left hand on the Bible and raise your right hand, and please

repeat after me and I do titled action. Find the defendant guilty of the crime. It makes no sense, it doesn't fit. If it doesn't fit, you must equit. We all took the same of the office. We are all bound by that common commitment to support and defend the Constitution, to bear true faith and allegiance to the same. Didn't you faithfully discharge the duties of our office? Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing

but the truth. From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta and I Heart Media, this is Swarn. I'm your host, Philip Holloway. High Sworn listeners. We're coming to you today in between seasons with a couple of special announcements. First off, we're happy to announce that Sworn Season two will be released wide and for free this summer right here wherever you get your podcasts. There's going to be some stuff that might sound familiar, but we've also got brand new episodes,

new experts, and new stories to tell. We hope you'll join us in the meantime. I know my life as a lawyer and as a citizen has been turned completely upside down by the spread of the novel coronavirus or COVID nineteen, and I know I'm not alone. We've put together this special bonus episode to look at how this pandemic has affected members of the legal system and the justice community. We want to discuss what happens when matters

of life and liberty get put on pause. As you might imagine, we recorded all of these interviews remotely, safely over the phone or on the internet. Stay tuned to the end of this episode to hear how COVID nineteen affected me and my family in a very personal and not so pleasant way. We spoke with a good friend of mine, Michael Lascala. Michael is a criminal defense lawyer here in the metropolitan Atlanta area, and like me, Mike has seen a dramatic change in the way he does business.

There's a joke in our business that you're either a writer or you're a fighter. I'm not a writer. I'm a fighter, so I go to court and we deal with cases. Inside a court, I would be in court anywhere from three to four days a week, whether it's motions or arrangements or you know, trials or whatever it is. I have not been a court now in six weeks, and I haven't had any dry cleaners for the first

time in twenty years. When this COVID thing got serious, my staff was pretty on top of it and tried to do more phone interviews, and sometimes that work, sometimes it doesn't. We pretty much shut it down. I've had client fact This morning, I had a client say, hey, I wanted my son to come see you. He's a client. I said, I'm just not taking interviews right now. I'm not doing anything face to face, and she completely understood. But ultimately I do want to get back to that.

I just don't know if it's safe at this point. Certainly don't want to staff to have the anxiety with people they don't know. I'm here at the office. I'm here today and you know, working on cases that are being prepped for trial, which probably will never go to trial at least this year. But ultimately there's nothing else to do, so you want to be productive. You want to do something, so you just continue to work the case,

and work the case, and work the case. We are directed by the Georgia Supreme Court, Justice Melton, who is the chief Judge, sent out in order, and he did what was in the best interest of everyone, which is to shut it down. In fact that now we're going I think till I remember the day correctly, it's June fift or something along those lines. We're effectively shut down for three months. My clients called me at the time, is that what are we gonna do? You know, how

do we handle this? So there's nothing you can do. You know, not that we ever would do it, but you couldn't go in there complete guilty at all the charges. Just there's nothing you can do. My practices in Fulton County, and in Fulton County it is Grand Central Station any day of the week. I mean, people packed onto elevators and you may have to wait sometimes fifteen twenty minutes to catch an elevator because it's too crowded you can't

get on. Those are the what I've dealt with for twenty years of practice, and I don't see how that's going to change unless you stagger it, but everybody wants their day in court. I mean, you've got civil litigants, you've got contract disputes, you've got divorces, you've got medical malpractice, you've got arrayments, you've got first appearances, you've got motions, you've got everything under the sun, and everybody's case is important. How do you figure out who's gonna go first? Do

we start with the backlog? Do we start what's going moving forward and figure out what to do with the backlog. We've got great leadership down there, and I think the right thing will be done, but it's certainly gonna be a headache for all the players involved. There's an assistant district attorney, a deputy district attorney I was on the phone with yesterday trying to work on a case that we're supposed to have a zoom meeting in in two weeks, and I said, you know, you're down there by yourself,

because there's three of us down there now. In Fulton County District Attorney's office, they have a hundred and I think it's like a hundred and twenty lawyers and there's three of them down there. The problem, though, is they don't have the five they may be able to look at something electronically if I send it to them. What district attorneys are always hasn't to make a firm commitment about anything until they've reviewed the file diligently, and I

can't argue with that. I'm starting to see, more so now in the last week than even the last five previous weeks, is I've got a lot of solicitors and a das that are starting to reach out and say, hey, we need to start putting this on our radar. You know, everybody understands there's gonna be a tsunami of cases hitting their desk, you know, unless they want to stay twenty four hours a day, seven days week for the next thirty six months. We got to start chipping away at

this block because they're not going anywhere. They're not going to dismiss the cases, and I'm not leading to them. So we're gonna have to see what's the reasonable resolution that we can get done under the circumstances. A deal that I may not have gotten three months ago is certainly gonna be on the table now. As a defense attorney, Michael represents many clients who are currently in jail or

even in prison awaiting their day in court. I asked him how those clients are doing during this crisis, and whether any of them have gotten any special permission to go home. We were successful in federal court to get a released for an inmate just recently, so the motions are being filed and the judges are giving them their attention. It's just some cases. I understand the sire any of it. They're just not comfortable doing it. I don't know if

I agree with it. I certainly understand it. We have one that it's a very serious case that we've just been unsuccessful in getting him out. In fact, he caught the coronavirus while he's at the Fulton County jail. It's terrific. It's him and another gentleman who also has the virus stuck in there, and he's fearful for his life. When you're in jail, you worry about things exponentially, and is he going to get the treatment he deserves and all

those things. Now, he's a young guy and hopefully he'll pull through, which I don't doubt he will, but certainly there's some stress and some real fear amongst his family. I used to get I don't know five ten phone calls a day from different potential clients. We probably get five to ten calls a week now, I mean, it just doesn't exist. I was hired this morning on a case. It's the first larger case I've gotten in at least

two months. My law partner, Manny, he does primary late, but in addition to state court, it doesn't many federal cases, and so federal court, for whatever reason, seems to be just ramped up and moving a lot quicker. In fact, he was in federal court yesterday on a case in Fulton or any other jurisdiction. Say, emotions day, you may be first, you may be last, but you and the other hundred people in the court room, they're gonna be

sitting around until your case is resolved. That's just the way that it works because the numbers are so overwhelming in state court versus federal court. We also discussed some of the other day to day effects of this legal shutdown that Michael and his clients are experiencing. There are things that have collateral consequences, even if you haven't an arrest on your record. There are sometimes that are job implications or promotions and things of that nature. You need

a resolution. Everybody has the right to a jury trial. This is one of the more regular calls in getting right now, is I missed the traffic citations and warrant from my arrest. I need to go down and clean it out. No, you can't. There is literally nowhere to go down and clean it out with. So someone may have a suspended license and they can't go and get a regular license because they have to clear up the case.

You may have immigration issues where oh, my immigration lawyer needs a certified disposition of this case from ten years ago. You can't get it. The clerk's office isn't there to happen. Most of the functions of the court are real severe as in like temporary protective orders so a spouse won't

get injured killed by their you know, delinquents. The bond hearing's first appearances, I have a client right now that has a d U I. But if they didn't take him to jail yet, so as soon as this is over, he has to go turn himself in then bond out. I asked him if he's seen an increase or decrease in any of the types of cases that he's been getting calls about Unfortunately, as everyone knows, um use of illicit drugs, their alcohol is I have I've been hired on a couple of d UI cases. I've got hired

on two domestic violence cases. You know, when you get people cooped up for six weeks and their during day drinking and all that, it's just a recipe for exaster. It's wonderful coming to work right now because my commune is about half there's no cars, there's no traffic. I got a notice from USA A my insurance company, that they're refunding five million dollars because there's nothing going on.

There's no accidents. So all this money that is polled as being dispersed Geico returned over to billion Manny and I have two associates and we've got two paralegals. So we're a nice small firm. They've got kids, they've got mortgages, they've got car payments. We can't furlough anybody and not pay them. I just don't think it's fair. But we have not received deny p p P money. We've applied for it. P p P money is the Paycheck Protection Program loan that was made available to small businesses in

an effort to keep people employed while businesses down. Like Michael, I run a small private practice and we have four employees, including myself. Our business has seen a dramatic hit. We're probably down from where we were this time last year. I had to tell you the process of applying for P p P was a nightmare. When I'm recording this in late May, the banks and government systems have pretty well figured it out, but the application process in the

beginning was brutal and it was extremely frustrating. And I'm speaking for not just me, but everybody else that I know who went through this process. People are having to scramble to reprioritize what bills get paid and when they get paid. People pay lawyers because, let's face it, they are inspired or maybe afraid of what the judge might do to them. And if the judge is not working because of the courts were shut down, then people have much less incentive to hire a lawyer. I have many

clients around payment plans. In front of the month comes up, you send out a bill to them. The overwhelming majority of them have asked for you know, hey, look and I just skipped this month or skipped two months, and you know, I like all of my clients, I really do. I'm really blessed with some really great people. How can you say no to that? You know they're hurting. It's not like they're gonna go and frivously waste this money and go on a trip to Italy, because they're just

not gonna happen. But we are business and I have a family I need to feed too, and that's why I explained to clients. And I think if you're straightforward with them and explain, hey, look, I know you're hurting, but we're all hurting. We all have to make some seting devices. Let's figure out that something reasonable. I think that word reasonable is gonna be a key word for the next twelve to eighteen months. What's reasonable under the circumstances.

Of course, let's face it, an important part of the legal system is timing inefficiency. For better or worse. There are many cases to get through every single day, and often the responsibility to move that business, as we say, falls in the hands of the judges. I wanted to hear more about how that responsibility is being handled and what judges are doing and can do to keep the justice system moving along. My name is Rob Leonard On, a Superior Court judge in Cobb County, Georgia. We're a

court of general jurisdictions. We handle pretty much everything from A to Z in both the civil and criminal world. The only thing that you really don't see in Superior court is is probading, a will, a juvenile delinquency, pursued eatings, unless really serious crime, those can come with Superior Court and get charged as adults. Pretty much. If it can be filed and cop canty, it can be filed in

Superior Court. For the most part, the average day before this pandemic was about like it had been for the last I don't know, several hundred years in the court system, court system dating all the way back to its origins. I mean it was a public gathering. It was it was entertainment way back when you know, before television and whatnot. Court proceedings, of course have to be open to the public, and the way that we've always done things have required

large gatherings of people. For example, I was handling a criminal calendar, I would have a list of cases that would all get noticed appear in court on the same day. So let's say it was fifty cases. I would have I would have itty defendants, I would have fifty lawyers, I would have the prosecutors, I would have some moms and dads and whoever was there for support, not have a full courtroom. And that's that's the way that we did business, and almost all of it was in person.

So this has really caused us to rethink the way that we do business because we just can't keep people safe and continue those practices. I asked Judge Robert Leonard what official orders or directions he and other judges have received and issued regarding holding or stopping court, as well as what other decisions judges came to on their own. There have been several orders system a couple that have come out of the Supreme Court. There was one that

was issued here locally. We had a judges meeting, we declared a juditional emergency in our circuit in the statewide order went into effect, and it really has shut down the common sense of things like we can't be having large calendars, we can't be forcing people into court in groups. We're not ready and not going to be ready anytime soon to summon jurors in for jury selection. Each judge has the ability to go ahead and participate in video

conference or teleconference hearings. If you look at Chief Justice Melton's order, the most recent one that came out gave a little more encouragement to go ahead and adopt this technology. So I think that we're going to see that it's going to become more widespread. But I've been using Zoom heavily. Now we're on Zoom right now recording this, and one of the frustrations has been getting lawyers acclimated with the software,

getting some of the parties acclimated with the software. I'm relatively young for a superior court judge, and the picking up the technology hasn't been too big of a challenge. But five days ago, I didn't know what Zoom was. And now I'm recording screencast of the way that I set up my settings, and I've recording screencasts of how to conduct a hearing and how operate breakout rooms and all of that kind of stuff, and I'm sharing with colleagues on the bench to try to get everyone up

to speed. You might imagine across our state, we've got judges that very widely in age, very widely with technology that's been available to them, and I'm sure, We've got judges in the state that don't know how to get their email on their cell phone, and this is posing a real problem. I feel lucky that I'm able to conduct hearings. I've had court almost every day last week and every day this week so far. I think there's

really essential staff right now is the support staff. Those are the folks that opened the files, prepare of the discovery, run the criminal history. I think that's the biggest need right now in order to get moving. One of the hurdles that I find in conducting these virtual court sessions that I've been doing is how do you satisfy public

access right. There's a constitutional right to an open court room and public access to the proceedings, So I can't just haul off and have court anytime I want to without telling anymore. My solution to that has been twofold. I'll make a list of cases that I'm going to hear virtually with the name of the case and the case number. I'll put a link onto Twitter, and that link will go to the YouTube channel that I livestream

to on the Zoom. I think these changes a good many of them have the potential to stick long term. You know, really it's on us that we let the old system go on for as long as it did. But it worked, and there just wasn't any real reason to fix what had had worked for so long. Like the other day, I did an adoption on Zoom for the first time, and let's say those people a lot of trouble and expense. Usually everybody's got to be there, and so they would have had to have purchased plane

tickets from Arizona in this particular case. And we just got everybody on Zoom and did it that way and it wasn't though, it wasn't a problem. So there are efficiencies that you can find in it, and for that I think it's very workable. While judges have been able to hold some hearings and meetings online, the big question regarding criminal cases is what about a defendants constitutional right to a trial in front of a jury of their peers or to confront witnesses against them. That means being

together in the same room. When are we going to get to jury trials? Anybody's guess. My best guess is that it's probably not something that can even be considered until kids are back in school, Until you're going to an autline of braves game, and I think we're going to have a real hard time feeling comfortable summoning that number of people to court and making them feel feel safe.

We have an obligation to to move the business, and we have an obligation to make sure that the cases are working their way through and nobody's rights to see trial are being violated. This isn't really anyone's fault. You know. You can't say, well, this is the judge is balled, or this is the state's balled or anything, or the defendants balled or anything like that. It's just different, and it takes special considerations to trying to figure out how

are we going to do that? And we might get jury trial started back up sooner if we can figure out a way to do jury selection virtually, like, for example, if we were in old to check injurors, give them an oath conducted jury selection on technology like the one we're on now, then we could only have the twelves

that got picked. Report you can socially distanced twelve people, you you really are going to struggle to do it forty two or however many you know that you think you need to pick your jury with If you could think back to your days when you were a trial lawyer and not a judge and you were picking a jury, do you remember how important it was to you as an advocate to be in the same physical space with a prospective juror so that you could maybe get a

close look at their body language or these intangible qualities that comes only with face to face human interaction. Do you remember that, and don't you think that's something that's important for lawyers when they're litigating cases. It's a nice leading question there, Mr Hallway. I will tell you I

remember you. If I was a lawyer and and I was gonna have to depict a jury, I would much prefer to be in a pot room with them where I can see and they can see me, and I can hear, and if anything goes wrong I can I can fix it right then and there I can make a record of it. You know, in person is kind of be preferable always. And there are going to be cases where say, okay, uh, Mr Holloway, I can get your case tried in if we're able to do virtual

jury selection, I can find you something this fall. If we can't, I don't know when it's going to be. I can tell you we're coming up with a number of ideas and there will be a plan a Plan B, and a Plan C and probably a D. I don't know. We'll just work through them. And those that we can't because of an objection, or maybe it's a kind of case that just doesn't lend itself to being handled the virtual passion, and that might just be something that has

to wait a walk. One thing that this legal shutdown has really pointed out to me and driven home is how many businesses really do depend on the courthouse being open. When you drive by the courthouse in any town, even where I live, I see restaurants, I see parking lots, and I see stores that depend on the courthouse crowd for all sorts of things. These businesses are hurting and some of them are shutting down some forever. One of the industries impacted like this is the bail bonding industry.

We spoke with Shitara Harper, who works at a Georgia bail bonding office. We wanted to see how their business has been changed by the pandemic. My name is Satyra Harper. I am the administrator slash paralegal for a bill bonds agent see here in Cobb County. On a normal day, I am responsible for basically keeping the wheels turning in my office, so like I am responsible for all of our case management, all of our files. In bail bonds, we have bond forfeit your hearings, so I'm in court

a lot. So a lot of my mornings are going down to the courthouse for the bond forfeit your hearings, in putting files, drafting motions to send out to attorneys, and things like that. So a bill bond's agency is basically like a company that will loan a defendant in

their family the money to get out of jail. Once we know that amount, then you know, we speak to the family um and they pay us a percentage and then we post the full amount of the bond in order for that person to get out of jail, and once they've completed their case, we get our money back. People generally like to lay their eyes on us, especially

when they're spending large sums of money. And then also we are in close proximity to the jail, so a lot of the time the family members are at the jail or the person has just gotten out of jail and we have documentation and things like that that we need for them to sign. So we do have a lot of foot traffic in our office under normal circumstances. I can't honestly say the exact moment that I knew that it would be a problem. I believe that when we all started being afraid for our health is when

we started making changes. We used to have this large meeting table in the front room. Now we've removed that. We brought in more masks and gloves and more hand sanitizer and things like that. There was the creation of this digital document platform that we use now, and so instead of having people come in, you know, we send out the forms and they don't ever have to come into the office. So I think that it started with us starting to fear for our safety. The courts shut

down probably I think March sixteenth or seventeen. I do know that people are still working in the courthouse, but you cannot just walk into the courthouse as it was before. They're certainly not holding any of the hearings that I would attend. So the bond forfeit your hearings have now been shut down until it's you know, safe for the courts to reopen. It has been challenging, but you know,

we still have been able to make it work. When the government pushed out what was considered essential business, we were in fact on the list. I guess the idea kind of was like, if we have to keep the jails open, if we have to keep the police officers out there, we owe these people are right to get out of jail should they be arrested. You know, I took this job just personally because this is a service

that people will always need in this county. They arrest hundreds of people a day on a regular basis, and so there's plenty of business to pick and choose from. Really common are d uise and like simple battery, obstruction of a law enforcement officer. We have not seen a lot of that lately at all, because people are not out.

You know, that kind of keeps our ship aflow because we're counting on those We get those smaller bonds all the time, those types of things that we see often that we haven't been seeing because people have been staying home.

I think the lowest that we saw was thirteen people arrested in in twenty four hours, and then once they get arrested, we are up against the judge just letting them sign themselves out on what's called their own recognizance bond, which basically means that they don't have to pay any money. They can just sign and say, you know, I promised to show up in court. So that takes business away

from us as well. You know, you have the others that have done serious things that may have no bond, and then you have other businesses also vying for those few left in the barrel. So they've only arrested thirteen people and six of them get to sign their own bonds, and then several different companies trying to get that same business. So yes, we have seen a dramatic drop in business. I think that the long term problem that I think about is just all of the people that have been

released on signature bonds. That's going back to the owner cognizant bonds that I was talking about. It's called we call them signature bonds mainly because I live in this the same community where I work, and those people are in my community and you're letting them out and they don't have really any skin in the game, so to speak. I think that having to post the bill and spend your heart on money to get out of jail is

kind of a deterrent for future crime. And so, as a member of this community, the idea of people just being set free without having any immediate repercussions for what they've done is scary to me. The times that we're living in are very trying, and the circumstances are unusual. I have two small children and we were in Walmart and I was telling them instead of telling people that you want them to keep their space from you, you just move. It's easier for you to say, just move.

But you know, we've seen things where people fight because people are in their personal space and they want to protect their safety, or people being pulled off of public transit because they don't have masks on the entire world has had to make an adjustment to accommodate this virus that was unexpected and unknown. None of us know what to do. Being compassionate towards your neighbor, I think is something that I would like to see everyone doing in general,

not just from a business standpoint. We spoke with an old friend of mine, Chief Mike Wilkie. Chief Wilkie is the chief of police in the city of St. Mary's, Georgia. St. Mary's is right on the coast and across the state line from Jacksonville, Florida. Chief Wilkie also is a professor

of public administration and criminal justice. We spoke with him about the changes that he's had to make for himself and his officers now that social distancing is the new norm, because, let's face it, policing has always been an up in personal proposition. On an average day, all my personal interaction was close and of course our officers are, you know, if they're taking reports, speaking with people, stopping people for speeding violations, all of their interaction is fairly close down.

You know, we have a hospital which is in the seat, and there would be the occasional need to go over there, either to take somebody to the hospital that we had in custody, or to respond to something in the emergency room where there was an issue there and they needed police intervention. So we felt like we were just as

exposed as you could be. We had a pair of rubber gloves on our duty belt, and you know, if you get to a scene and somebody's bleeding all over the place, where we know not to step in it, not to touch it. That's really about all I think probably that your average officer paid attention to. When the first COVID matters started coming out eight to ten weeks ago, we just sort of backed up and said, what are

we gonna do? So we really went through the throws and trying to understand how to exercise and protection for ourselves. We give masks to our folks, and you know, there's a little quibbling about whether or not you're gonna wear a mask when you're a police uniforming and my thought on it was, I don't care about the uniform, I care about the person. We need to do what we can to protect the individual. Some masks and gloves became

fairly standard. A business entity in town was concerned about this for the fire department and the police department, and they provided some funding for something that amounted to like a defumigator type of thing, and so we were daily driving our vehicles through once a day for for this device. We used to spray the interior so as clean and

disaffective as it could be. Everybody sort of already had some of the hand sanitizers in the car, and that sort of thing, but we're really trying to make sure if everybody's got that. Now, we put in some regulations about entering the building, going in and out, making sure you use hand sanitizers. Come of the building, the first thing you do is go wash your hand. Here. We did have one of our personnelity that showed up and tested positive for us, and so that gave us some

consternation for a time. So the fact that we had though somebody immediately in our department in this very rural county in southeast Georgia, brought our radar right up that you know, we need to be careful. Several of our people did go for the testing, and thankfully they all came back negatively. We did not really get anything specific from say, the Governor's office. The Governor's executive wards were

especially be enforced by the sheriff. Of these local police were specifically written out, and subsequent iterations of that local police were included. We have taken a posture of being educational. If there was let's say, a restaurant and you know, we heard that folks and some of the great staff

we're not wearing masks. We might go by and say, hey, you know, let's let's make you aware of this, because this is what the executive ward is from the from the government are restaurants in places like that or licensed entities, and so the state does have some ability to control

what they do. And we would say, you know, you folks need to have one mask, which please do that, and they'd say, oh, yes, sure, I'm so sorry, or we ran out world the way to get some more or things like that, and so we have been we tried the education to it. I don't believe that any citations have been written by this agency, either on the law enforcement agency or from our code enforcement, which is kind of a separate entity. And in the city we put it no changes and been telling the people not

to make traffic stops or that sort of thing. We've left that discretionary and so our personnel have continued to have that level of interaction from an enforcements and point with the public. We did make some internal change where if someone made to report a stolen bicycle or something that was a fairly low level type of thing, the dispatcher would obtain a telephone number and we would take a report. And that's actually worked out to be Sarah sort of convenience for us, and we may we may

continue that. Probably one of the biggest issues for us is that on occasion we've had to take someone into custody and take them to the jail, which is operated by another law enforcement entity, and we've had some issues with people being accepted by the jail because their temperature may have been slightly elevated or something of that nature.

So it kind of made some a little bit of issue for our folks and where not we could even take someone to jail if they were under arrest, and that was particularly troublesome if it was, you know, a fellow. We asked Chief Wilkie whether his officers had seen any substantial increases or decreases the types of calls they were answering.

I asked our personnel so that I was walking into this innerview blind, you know, if they if we've noticed anything of any increased activity that that sort of thing. And I really don't have any feedback from our personnel that that sort of thing has happened. The George Association Chiefs at least did a survey of the agencies. I think that there were about ten percent of them that responded that they that they had seen an increase in domestic violence type events in our area. I don't think

that it's really made a great deal of difference. The state of Georgia, where we're located, made headlines a while back for being one of the first states to begin the process of being reopened for business. I had heard that people were coming into Georgia from neighboring states to visit all kinds of businesses. Since Chief Wilki's town is right across the border from Florida, I asked him if

he'd seen Floria a license plate around town. I can't not answer about the massages and tattoo partners because I just don't personally keep up with them. We do have some restaurants and establishments that are open in town now that may be one of their features of service of alcoholic beverage. And we have noticed a number of Florida tags. Same thing with some churches into Harry and we didn't interfere with them, but we did look and we noticed that there are several churches have just had a lot

of Florida tags in the parking lots. As a coastal city, Chief Wilkie is facing another problem just around the corner that he's also starting to prepare for him As to COVID Nineteam, I'm coming to the understanding that the hotter it gets, the more difficulty that virus is going to have to survive, and so we're just praying that hot weather hurry up and get here, because fairly shortly we're going to start turning our attention to hurricane preparation, and

we don't want to be had to deal with both crises at the same time. In the last week of March, I'd come home from a couple of round trip flights, and after a few days, I found myself feeling this overwhelming sense of fatigue. I was flatly exhausted. I eventually started running a fever. It got up to about a hundred and two point five. I knew something was up, something wasn't right. This was different. I'd never run a fever like this in years, and the chills and fatigue

were unlike anything that I had experienced before. I didn't have a cough, but I checked in remotely with my doctor, some friends who are doctors, and even a family member who is a medical professional, and all of them said that this sound it exactly like COVID nineteen. Well, my wife made sure that I took pretty quick action. She moved me down to the basement for almost two weeks, away from her and her kids. She fed me food

through the door. She managed all of the regular and new household tasks that already were on her plate, including homeschooling our two children. It was frankly awful feelings so rundown and watching my wife take on all of these responsibilities. I knew I needed to stay away from them though, until I could get tested so I would not pass

anything along to the rest of my family. Around ten days into this ordeal, I made a telemedicine appointment with a nurse practitioner who ordered me the COVID nineteen nasal swab. So I drove myself to a back parking lot of this medical practitioner's office, where the workers had me swabbed my own nose for influenza and for COVID nineteen. The influenza test came back negative the same day. A couple of days later, lo and behold, the COVID test was

negative too, so I immediately rejoined my family. I was feeling better by that point, but I wasn't completely well, but since they told me I did not have COVID nineteen, I felt it was safe to go ahead and become a part of my family again. As time went on, and after discussing my situation with more medical professionals, I wasn't convinced about that negative COVID test. So I went

to get the anybody test. It was a blood draw and it could see if your body had actually fought off this virus, and low and behold, it came back positive. I had had it. Luckily, nobody in my family sick. In fact, my wife had the anybody test and hers was negative. I don't know how that happened, but I'm grateful that it did. There's still so much confusion about this disease. My doctor told me that I probably have some immunity, but who knows if it's going to last

for very long at all. Maybe it will get me by until there's a vaccine. We just don't know. And like everyone we interviewed here said, no one knows how long social distancing and business shutdowns can last. But like sh Tira said, I think it's important to be compassionate with each other, to be patient, and to try as best we can to keep each other safe. I hope you all out there are taking care of yourselves and the people around you. I know I am. Until next time,

stay safe, stay sane, and keep an eye out. This for the wide release of Sworn Season two. Sworn is a production of Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Media. Our lead producer is Christina Dana. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright for Tenderfoot TV, Matt Frederick and Alex Williams for I Heart Media, and myself Philip Holloway. Additional production by Trevor Young, Mason Lindsay, Mike Rooney, Jamie Albright, and Hallie beat On. Original music and sound designed by

Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Blood in the Water by Layup. Show art and design is by Trevor Eisler, Editing by Christina Dana, Mixing and mastering by Mike Rooney and Cooper Skinner. Special thanks to the team at I Heart Media, from U T a or In Rosenbaum and Grace Royer, Ryan Nord and Matthew pap from the North That Media and Marketing and Station sixteen. I'd also like to extend a very personal and special thanks to all of our contributors and guests who have helped

to make all of these episodes possible. You can find Sworn on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Sworn podcast and follow me your host, Philip Halloway on Twitter at Phil Holloway e s Q. Our website is Sworn podcast dot com, and you can check out other Tenderfoot TV podcasts at www dot tenderfoot dot tv. If you have questions or comments, you can email us at Sworn at Tenderfoot dot tv or leave us a voicemail at four zero four for one zero zero four four one. As always, thanks for listening.

I met Phil years go when he worked at the Cobb County District Attorney's office, and I thought Phil was a complete dick. He uh, he was very, very difficult to work with. Phil was no nonsense and we probably should have hated each other, but years later we're still friends. In fact, I was in his wedding