Appearance counts for something.
To gain public confidence and ensure impartiality, judges and prosecutors often excuse themselves from cases involving local officers with whom they've had a working relationship. A prosecutor or judge with no ties to the community is often brought in to argue or preside over those cases. If there is a legitimate question in anyone's mind that we may not appear to be fair, we're gonna recuse ourselves. It's up to each judge and prosecutor to decide if he can be impartial enough to either listen to evidence or present it without a personal relationship clouding his judgment. While officers aren't filling up defendant's chairs in court, Amherst Commonwealth's Attorney Ed Meeks was presented with two incidents of officers in court within the last month.