Note that the judge is bound by precedent and law as to what "unreasonable" means, they can't just make it up as they go along unless there is no precedent. Otherwise the case can be reversed on appeal.

I was on a jury recently where we had to swap out judges in the last couple days of the trial. The reason was because the judge had been assigned another case where the defendant had not waived his right to a speedy trial. The judge wanted to finish his existing case first, the defense lawyers said "You can't do that", the judge looked it up and found out that indeed they were right, so off he went to start the new case and handed off the existing one to a colleague. In my experience judges really do take the law seriously - that's how they get to be judges.

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Chaosvex 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Why didn't his colleague just handle the new case? What am I missing?

	▲	nostrademons 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		My understanding is that judges have certain specialties - one judge might be well versed in a particular area of law but not other ones. The case I was on was an area where nobody in the district had expertise, and everybody (judge, prosecutor, defense, jury) was learning as they go. The new incoming case was one that was in an area that our previous judge would normally handle. So it was assigned to him because it came in through his department, while the case I was on was sort of a free-floating orphan where not much was lost by having another judge handle it (and it was also already in the jury instructions phase, with testimony complete).