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Show 450 tor Judge Talk m Dings Seventh Judicial District Court Judge Edward SJie-ya SJie-ya was in Moab Tuesday evening to address nearly 450 persons who had expressed ex-pressed concern about some of the workings of the judicial ju-dicial system. The meeting was organized after a mass arrest a week ago brouht a great many local citizens into the picture of drug abuse. Judge Sheya began his presentation with a general gener-al talk discussing the judicial judi-cial system and how it pertains per-tains to removing problems with drug addiction and ways the group present could go about directing their energies toward alleviating al-leviating this problem. Judge Sheya stated that residents re-sidents could help the courts and law enforcement enforce-ment officials by reporting report-ing crimes, acting as witnesses wit-nesses if they are called and serving as jurors if the need arises. Following his prepared presentation, the Judge answered questions which upvp niKPfl liv members of the audience. Include! in those questions ques-tions was one asking what .-could be clone locally to discourage drug pushers and users from moving to Moab. Judge Sheya stated that one of the most effce-tive effce-tive deterrents could ba the certainty of apprehension. apprehen-sion. "Make the certainty cf punishment more certain, cer-tain, make the apprehension apprehen-sion more likely." Other questions included penalties for drug abuse in Utah for both possession posses-sion and sale. In this matter, mat-ter, the judge stated that in all cases it was the duty and right of the court to be able to suspend sentence sent-ence if the court feels this is in the best interest of all involved. When asked how citizens could aid in getting better bet-ter cooperation between local lo-cal agencies, Judge Sheya pointed out that as voters, the citizens should make their wishes in this matter mat-ter known to their elected elect-ed officials. The power of the vote should carry weight enough to provide that cooperation, the Judge said. Judge Sheya stated that any citizen could make an ari'ost 'by simply stating that such an arrest was being made and then taking tak-ing the person to the nearest near-est law officer. When asked whether or not a citizen ci-tizen making the arrest could be sued, the Judge said, "Not unless the arrest ar-rest was made maliciously malicious-ly and without probable cause." The meeting was moderated moder-ated by Dr. Jerry Peters who kept control and the situation this week was considerably less explosive explos-ive than that which occurred oc-curred at the City Council meeting, last Tuesday. Another An-other meeting concerning this problem is to be held April 26, with Assistant Attorney General Loren Beesley. |