Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

We tried to get a decision between the people who filed the complaint and the
people against whom they had filed it. Many's the time we could work it out
and make people gfve them their money back or something of that sort. But
if that didn't work, then we would go up and get a warrant written out for the
person who was the person who caused the problem and then it would go up to
the courts. Sometimes I would follow it up there and sometimes I wouldn't.
Most times I would not.
Then, after I was there a period, they sent me out to some of the courts and
I became an assistant in the courtroom. I worked in the various branch courts
and then in the criminal court itself where I tried only felonies. One year,
I and a partner won eighteen felony jury trials in a row for the State.
Q: Oh?
A: Eighteen. That was supposed to be some sort of record. And then, the
last year I was there, I was the assistant state's attorney in the chief
justice's courtroom. Then that's when I went to the legislature, after that.
Q: Was there a different type of work, then, that last year, than the preceding
?
A: Well, the chief justice court is where all cases came and they would be
farmed out to other courts and then we would try some cases before the chief
justice himself. But in the other years, I was just assigned to a courtroom
where we tried every case that came in there. Murder, rape, manslaughter,
robbery, all kinds of cases. With a large percentage of them being jury
trials.
Q: You say there are branch courts?
A: Yes, the misdemeanor courts, where they are misdemeanors instead of
felonies, some of them are in local areas--for example, I had two of those
where you would go to one first and then--you had the same judge, it's like a
circuit. You would try the cases here and then you would go to another one
after you finished there, We had two courts in the same area.
Q: (pause) Normally, cases that are brought up to the court like that, do
they come from individuals or is it the state's attorney himself that . . .
A: No, they are brought by individuals who have filed complaints against
others. Batteries and assaults and--you get a lot of cases where a couple of
women across a fence are arguing about something and one of them pulls the
other's hair, you know. Husbands and wives and all that stuff in the branch
courts.
Q: How many years were you with the state's attorney's office?
A: Eight.
Q: How did you come to go to the legislature?