Speaker 1: Any is time now for our community connection right here
Speaker 1: on K one, the one New Trust and we have
Speaker 1: a district attorney, Will Drake in here.
Speaker 2: Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth,
Speaker 2: nothing but the truth. There you go, Here we go.
Speaker 2: We got that out of the way. How you been
Speaker 2: been pretty.
Speaker 3: Busy at the Core House this last couple of months?
Speaker 3: We got jury trials coming up, so getting prepped for that.
Speaker 3: We just got through a jury trials that feels like,
Speaker 3: and we're just just plugging along.
Speaker 1: First question that a lot of people want to know
Speaker 1: is that what does a district attorney do? What's your
Speaker 1: area and what are your functions?
Speaker 3: So what people think that we do and know that
Speaker 3: we do is prosecute people in charge of crimes. We
Speaker 3: do that, you know, traffic tickets all the way from
Speaker 3: murder cases, everything in between for Washington and for no
Speaker 3: Water County is our district. But I have a lot
Speaker 3: of things we don't people don't know we do. We
Speaker 3: advise county officials, like so if the county commissioners have
Speaker 3: a question, or the election board has a question, any
Speaker 3: county official has a question, they ask us a legal
Speaker 3: question obviously, and we try to get that answer to
Speaker 3: as fast as we can, we help it.
Speaker 4: We assist in investigations.
Speaker 3: We give legal advice to law enforcement officers, especially the
Speaker 3: sheriff's office.
Speaker 4: Just a lot of little things.
Speaker 3: I mean when I first became district attorney, I didn't
Speaker 3: realize I signed all the school bonds. So if any
Speaker 3: school in our district wants a school bond, I have
Speaker 3: to sign off on it. And that was really interesting
Speaker 3: because you get, you know, million.
Speaker 4: Dollar school bonds.
Speaker 2: One word. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: So I'm looking at this like a fine tooth comb.
Speaker 3: And I called my predecessor, Mischi Buchanan, and it's like, do.
Speaker 4: I sign these?
Speaker 3: He's like, well, five attorneys have signed that before you've
Speaker 3: even seen that.
Speaker 4: Just signed the thing and get it back to you know.
Speaker 3: So I couldn't believe I had no idea that we
Speaker 3: signed school bonds.
Speaker 4: You know, there's lots of things we do.
Speaker 2: Wow, we that's incredible. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of things that go on here
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma because we're kind of a unique state in
Speaker 1: where we have a credible nations as well as the
Speaker 1: state of Oklahoma, the County of Washington, the city of
Speaker 1: Bartlesville or the city of No water, till lot or whatever.
Speaker 1: But we have different types of citizenship, and sometimes when
Speaker 1: crimes are committed, things have to be treated a different
Speaker 1: way depending on tribal citizenship or whether or not you're
Speaker 1: not tribal.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're a member of an Indian, a
Speaker 3: federally recognized Indian tribe, which is five hundred and thirty
Speaker 3: eight of them, now I believe, and you have any
Speaker 3: degree of Indian blood. So let's got this two pronged test.
Speaker 3: Then you if you're charge anything from like a seat
Speaker 3: belt ticket to murder, you go to either the US
Speaker 3: Attorney's office in Tulsa or you go to the Cherokee
Speaker 3: Nation and Tahic law. So I know years ago and
Speaker 3: its first started in July.
Speaker 4: Of twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: It was quite a fight between Oklahoma and the FEDS
Speaker 3: and a nation.
Speaker 4: Lots of confusion, lots of confusion.
Speaker 3: Boy, it was I mean, no one saw this coming,
Speaker 3: at least if you put true sermon.
Speaker 4: And no one saw this coming, and so it was
Speaker 4: a law. It was years of figuring this out.
Speaker 3: I mean, we talk about the fight we all had
Speaker 3: in twenty and twenty twenty one. Now it's more about
Speaker 3: the details, what exactly does it mean? Individual small details,
Speaker 3: but yeah, it's we So we prosecute everyone who's not
Speaker 3: a member of the Cherokee Nation or any Indian tribe
Speaker 3: who has a degree of Indian blood. So we send
Speaker 3: about probably about ten percent of our cases now go
Speaker 3: to Tahlequah or the Attorney's office.
Speaker 1: Now with this in mind, imagine we have to have
Speaker 1: all different kinds of agreements with the tribal entities in
Speaker 1: order to make things work under the circumstances we have
Speaker 1: presented to us.
Speaker 3: We do, I mean, our office does advise the Sheriff's
Speaker 3: office or some of those cross deputation agreements such normally
Speaker 3: it's your police officers who have those.
Speaker 4: So like the Sheriff's office has them.
Speaker 3: So they can deal with tribal citizens of you know,
Speaker 3: the Barsol police department, They're all have that crossization. It's
Speaker 3: a it's important because otherwise there's a jurisdictional.
Speaker 4: Issue or not you can deal with them or not.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna bring up something here.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna present a knights and just as it is,
Speaker 1: there's talk about a certain tool for law enforcement and
Speaker 1: it's called a flock camera.
Speaker 2: Just what is a flock camera.
Speaker 3: So it's becoming very controversial here in Bartlesville. But it's
Speaker 3: a flock camera. Flock is an acronym for something, and
Speaker 3: that's the that's the brand name of the camera.
Speaker 4: But a flock camera will.
Speaker 3: Sit on different basically the telephone poles around Bartlesville, around
Speaker 3: major intersections, and it reads car tags, it identifies vehicles,
Speaker 3: things of that nature, and it's and it saves that video,
Speaker 3: I believe, for thirty days. And the purpose of the
Speaker 3: it's not really to watch people and keep an eye
Speaker 3: on regular citizens. The purpose of it is to help
Speaker 3: solve crimes. Like, for instance, if there's a stolen car
Speaker 3: driving down Frank Phillips right now, there's a.
Speaker 4: Flock camera outside.
Speaker 3: It could hit that tag, run that tag through a database,
Speaker 3: and we could notify Bartlesville very quickly. Hey, there's a
Speaker 3: stolen car heading westbound on Frank Phillips.
Speaker 2: Same way with somewhat abducting a child.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, if there's an Amber alert, we have a tag
Speaker 3: number on a car. That's a quick way of finding
Speaker 3: a suspect vehicle in a child abduction. We were talking
Speaker 3: off air about other states have already solved crimes. Tulsa
Speaker 3: Tulsa's had these for years, and Tulsa has solved lots
Speaker 3: of child abductions and murder cases these flock cameras. I
Speaker 3: understand people have a lot of concerns about invasion or privacy,
Speaker 3: But anybody comes up to me, I always telling them,
Speaker 3: what's your cell phone at It's in your pockets. If
Speaker 3: you want to be tracked, there's a cell phone in
Speaker 3: your pocket. If if you're out in public, you don't
Speaker 3: have a right to privacy because you're out in the public.
Speaker 3: So the cameras aren't under a constitutional theory, aren't invasion
Speaker 3: or privacy because you're out in public. If you're on
Speaker 3: these cameras, they're not at your individual houses and in
Speaker 3: barrels that we're talking about key intersections, we're there major
Speaker 3: traffic flow.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: Now, something that hits just about anybody over the age
Speaker 1: of eighteen who's a legal voter, the opportunity to serve
Speaker 1: on a jury. I served on too, and I learned
Speaker 1: a lot. I didn't want to, but I learned a lot,
Speaker 1: and I came to appreciate that time spent.
Speaker 2: What can you tell us about a jury?
Speaker 3: I love the term opportunity, That's what it really is
Speaker 3: an opportunity. You know, if you want to be a
Speaker 3: juror in Oklahoma, you have to have a valid driver's
Speaker 3: license or any kind of ID. That's how we kind
Speaker 3: of pick it. So it's very important. It's of very
Speaker 3: important civic duty. If people have complaints, it's like I
Speaker 3: tell them, go vote. If you have complaints about the system,
Speaker 3: go vote. If you have complaints about the criminal justice system,
Speaker 3: don't make all the excuses. Get that courthouse, you know,
Speaker 3: three times a year, and come help us out these
Speaker 3: big important cases. Because I hear all the time, Oh,
Speaker 3: I can't believe this happened to the courthouse, or that
Speaker 3: happened in this jury trial.
Speaker 4: We'll get up here and help us make these decisions.
Speaker 4: I don't. It's I know, it's it's not a.
Speaker 2: It's not a glamorous thing.
Speaker 4: It's not fun.
Speaker 3: We did we did a trial a few about two
Speaker 3: months ago, and the the the gentleman who was being tried,
Speaker 3: had some problems and he did threaten everybody on the jury.
Speaker 3: And I get it, but it's one of those things
Speaker 3: where he had some mental problems. It wasn't going to
Speaker 3: be it was a real issue. I get that, and
Speaker 3: I get it's it's like you have to disclosure all
Speaker 3: these things about you, but it's important civic duty to
Speaker 3: do this, and I always encourage it. Come on up there,
Speaker 3: don't make the excuse, and let's help us out and
Speaker 3: help us make these decisions because we if we're at
Speaker 3: a jury trial, it's because we can't work out something
Speaker 3: we need. People from the public are peers, like we
Speaker 3: learned the Civice class, to come tell us what the
Speaker 3: evidence says. So we really always really appreciate and encourage.
Speaker 4: It to come up there.
Speaker 2: Now, the process is that you picked it random.
Speaker 3: So how we get our jury panels is Oklahoma City.
Speaker 3: There's there's the the the office down there and they've
Speaker 3: used it's fifty percent voter roll and fifty percent oklama
Speaker 3: ID and they just rarely generate this list of Washington
Speaker 3: County people or no water Chunactery, no WAA County. They
Speaker 3: send it to the district court and the Court Cork's
Speaker 3: office sends out all these summons. So we usually get
Speaker 3: about seven hundred names every jury term. And the problem
Speaker 3: is about fifty percent show up. Now there's a lot
Speaker 3: of people like we had. I saw a person going
Speaker 3: through the jury list there today if we get a
Speaker 3: copy of it too, persons over one hundred years old,
Speaker 3: and I think that person wants to serve on a jury.
Speaker 3: And so you got people who are like in their
Speaker 3: twenties and thirties and forties.
Speaker 4: Who I don't have time for it.
Speaker 3: You got a person who's a hundred years old going
Speaker 3: to do their civic duty. Yeah, yeah, what's your excuse?
Speaker 3: I mean, come on, people helps out here.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, you want regular people because as
Speaker 1: the constitutions, it's a jury of your peers exactly.
Speaker 3: And you know, Bartlsfiel's an older community as far as
Speaker 3: the population, and our jury panels reflect that. And I
Speaker 3: love that you get some people some real life experience.
Speaker 3: But you got a guy who's, you know, twenty years old,
Speaker 3: typically on trial for something, and the jury is made
Speaker 3: of folks and over the age of fifty, maybe in
Speaker 3: their seventies. And that's fine, like I said, like great
Speaker 3: life experience for those folks, but they're not really this
Speaker 3: guy's peers. It'd be great to have guys in their
Speaker 3: twenties and thirties and forties, but those people seem to
Speaker 3: can't find their way to the courthouse on jury selection day, so.
Speaker 2: You get lost.
Speaker 4: Something happens, dude, Yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I had that problem with my navigation system in
Speaker 2: my car.
Speaker 3: It must be the just supposed to be googled. Going
Speaker 3: back to the Big Brother thing. Again, Google can't get
Speaker 3: in the courthouse. But it is interesting. But the one
Speaker 3: thing that you do learn is how a jury is
Speaker 3: proceeded once they've been selected for jury duty. And you
Speaker 3: also get the courtroom process. You get that front and set.
Speaker 1: It is nothing like TV TV gives you We've got
Speaker 1: this solved in fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: Well I make that, make that happen joke every void
Speaker 3: iron and I don't. Everybody watching the Count's probably heard
Speaker 3: me say. It's like if we were on an episode
Speaker 3: of you know, watching this, if we were watching TV.
Speaker 3: The jury selection takes three or four hours sometime maybe
Speaker 3: maybe all day. And if you're in a Law and
Speaker 3: Order marathon, we're like five episodes in, we've already solid
Speaker 3: five murders and Law in Order and in Bartlesfield, and
Speaker 3: this is everywhere across Oklahoma.
Speaker 4: If we're doing jury selection, it just takes a while.
Speaker 3: But it's a very important process and I think people
Speaker 3: think I'm wasting their time asking random questions. But if
Speaker 3: they actually get seated on that jury usually understand the
Speaker 3: questions why they're being asked.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, and just to answer them truthfully and nobody
Speaker 1: gets hurt.
Speaker 3: I always advised you and bring a bottle of water
Speaker 3: and a cushion. Is set on because we don't have
Speaker 3: a lot of very It's not a comfortable place to
Speaker 3: set It's like going to a football game, but not
Speaker 3: near as entertaining.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 1: But you do learn a lot about how the wheels roll,
Speaker 1: and you know how it functions, and you realize that
Speaker 1: although nothing in this world is perfect, our system of
Speaker 1: justice is probably as good as it is any in
Speaker 1: the world, if not the best in the world.
Speaker 3: It's it's not perfect, and it's not anybody it tells
Speaker 3: you it is. They're they're full of it, but it's
Speaker 3: the it's the best you can have to get into
Speaker 3: the truth. I mean, you put you put all the
Speaker 3: cards on the table, the jury makes the decision. The
Speaker 3: jury of you said of your peers, it's the best
Speaker 3: system in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now you're on the prosecution side.
Speaker 1: Every bit of evidence that you find has to be
Speaker 1: shared with the defense.
Speaker 3: Correct, absolutely, we that's a that's a constitutional issue. We
Speaker 3: were I feel strongly about that. You know, I, I
Speaker 3: know a lot of attorneys and you have your clients
Speaker 3: and you're gonna fight for them zealously and all.
Speaker 4: That, and that's great.
Speaker 3: But for the as a prosecutor's a little bit different.
Speaker 3: You put all your cards on the table because you
Speaker 3: don't want you want to make.
Speaker 4: Sure it's it's as fair as it possibly can be.
Speaker 3: Now, not every piece of evidence that you have may
Speaker 3: come into trial as a piece of evidence because it
Speaker 3: could be just different legal reasons why it wouldn't come
Speaker 3: into evidence, because it may not be relevant, it may
Speaker 3: be overly prejudicial. Things like that, like a person's criminal
Speaker 3: history almost never comes into play in the actual trial.
Speaker 3: That surprises folks. But you don't base your decision on guilty.
Speaker 3: You're not guilty based on what they've done in the past.
Speaker 3: It's what they did at the time that the allegation
Speaker 3: comes up. But yeah, we put all the cards on
Speaker 3: the table and that way everybody knows what it is.
Speaker 3: We're not going to hold back evidence, hide to evidence.
Speaker 2: That's not what we do.
Speaker 4: People accuse us of that.
Speaker 2: That's not what we do.
Speaker 1: No one of the cases that I was involved in,
Speaker 1: I would never have known that the defendant had a
Speaker 1: rap sheet until the defendant took the stand against his
Speaker 1: attorney's wishes and started talking.
Speaker 2: He wound up not getting convicted, by.
Speaker 4: The way, really well.
Speaker 1: He knew what he was doing. He turned his life around,
Speaker 1: and it's.
Speaker 4: And that's fantastic when they do. I mean, but it did.
Speaker 2: Lots of it happening are very very small.
Speaker 4: It can be, you know.
Speaker 3: I have seen a lot of success to where people
Speaker 3: do actually turn it around, and it's fantastic. I'll see
Speaker 3: him around town because you know, the officer here arrests somebody,
Speaker 3: they see him one time, they see it the DA.
Speaker 4: They see me every month.
Speaker 3: Until their trials are with their cases ever with and
Speaker 3: I usually see them more than once, you know. So
Speaker 3: I know a lot of the folks who are involved
Speaker 3: in the criminal justice system pretty well. I mean they
Speaker 3: I'm friendly to him, respectful to them, because you never know.
Speaker 3: You never know those same folks who are going to
Speaker 3: be key witnesses in the case or they're gonna be
Speaker 3: victims one day in the case.
Speaker 4: And you don't want to you want to do your.
Speaker 3: Job as professionally as possible and just be as respectful
Speaker 3: as you possibly can. But yeah, this is the only
Speaker 3: time you would find out their criminal history, really is
Speaker 3: they testify, you'll find out pretty quick.
Speaker 2: Dog said, I.
Speaker 1: Was just whoa Okay, everybody was paying attention, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: But now when you try cases, you say you go
Speaker 1: to no Wata to take care of their cases as well.
Speaker 2: So that's a lot of miles that you're putting on.
Speaker 1: Do you have offices in both counties or are you
Speaker 1: centered here and just traveling?
Speaker 4: Well, we do. I go to know Wata once a week.
Speaker 3: So we have I have assistant district attorneys and some
Speaker 3: of them work out here in Barblsville. One of them works
Speaker 3: and know What and we I travel in no Wata
Speaker 3: once a week to supervise that, to handle big trial
Speaker 3: stuff like that. But yeah, we have offices, one in
Speaker 3: each courthouse. The one in No Water is pretty small,
Speaker 3: about the size of the studio. It feels like, uh
Speaker 3: but because No Water does have they have less crime,
Speaker 3: less people, less crime.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's it's not a we have office cars
Speaker 4: that we drive.
Speaker 3: It's not a it's twenty miles to No Water so
Speaker 3: I've been pretty lucky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not it's not a big deal.
Speaker 3: Well, I've got colleagues like who have the Panhandle? So
Speaker 3: one DA has the whole Panhanu. It's one hundred and
Speaker 3: something miles from It's crazy. How so I'm pretty lucky
Speaker 3: having District eleven. How close my county seats in my
Speaker 3: corethouses are to each other.
Speaker 1: Now, if anybody has questions about the District attorney's offices,
Speaker 1: You've got a little page that's on the county website,
Speaker 1: don't you.
Speaker 3: We do, and it has my email address on that,
Speaker 3: And I mean, I'll talk to anybody.
Speaker 4: That's kind of my thing.
Speaker 3: I don't mind, because you never know what you're gonna learn.
Speaker 3: And I encourage if you yet questions shoot me an
Speaker 3: email because I'm believe or I'm in court quot a bit.
Speaker 3: So it's hard to enter the phone and we have
Speaker 3: to kind of prioritize the phone calls, but you know,
Speaker 3: if you have a question about the DA's office or
Speaker 3: a certain case, or because I hate it when somebody
Speaker 3: approaches me out in the community and says, why didn't
Speaker 3: you do this?
Speaker 2: Why adn't you do that?
Speaker 3: And I always say well, why didn't you bring it
Speaker 3: to my attention? Because I did, I don't, I mean,
Speaker 3: don't know anything about it. So bring it to my attention.
Speaker 3: If you got a problem, let me know. If we
Speaker 3: don't communicate, we won't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: Take it to the DA, don't take it to Facebook,
Speaker 1: don't take it to the chatter.
Speaker 3: Well, I do enjoy Facebook. It's ah, it's quite the
Speaker 3: fictional universe on Facebook.
Speaker 4: It can be.
Speaker 3: And I've been accused a lot of interesting things on Facebook,
Speaker 3: which is funny. The power people on Facebook think I
Speaker 3: have is quite amazing. But if they really want to
Speaker 3: get an answer, shoot me an email, you know, or
Speaker 3: or they can come to the office. And if it's
Speaker 3: we're not crazy busy, I'll talk to I'll talk to folks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're very approachable.
Speaker 3: Maybe a little too much sometimes, but yeah, I definitely, Uh.
Speaker 3: The staff knows that people got problems. We're there to
Speaker 3: solve those problems.
Speaker 4: If we can't. Some problems, you know, just can't be solved.
Speaker 1: That's true. We've been speaking with the district attorney, Will
Speaker 1: Drink and Will I want to thank you for being here,
Speaker 1: Thank you sir, all righty, thank you very much, folks,
Speaker 1: you've been watching