JMO
First I really like her as a person. She seems really nice and as a personal acquaintance she seems very nice.
With that said
I think she has done quite poorly in these specific areas:
1-She did not keep the LENGTH of the 2 trials down to a reasonable time frame.
Which has directly contributed to the huge cost of this trial. There are many things she could have done better to shorten the length of this trial.
Things like:
1A-not allowing the ridiculous number of sidebars
1B-rejecting a lot of Nurmi's items immediately from the bench, and not taking them under consideration overnight and in some cases days
1C-not allowing redundant questioning from the DT
1D-not allowing either side to go into totally unrelated material that had nothing to do with the trial.
1E-Scheduling court days MUCH MUCH more agressively. This 2 or 3 days a week has been ridiculous. And the days themselves were never full days.
2-She let the fear of future appeals dictate her decisions.
The perfect example was when she broke the Constitution and had to be corrected by Court of Appeals. She needs to be confident that so long as she follows the letter of the law, she can still be firm in her decisions to deny the DT whenever it is valid to do so. You cannot just agree to give the DT everything they ask for just because you are afraid of future appeals. Especially when that request is illegal to do so.
3-She needs to treat both sides fairly.
There were numerous instances where she did not give the Prosecution the same level of courtousy and fairness as she was giving the DT. A good example was when she let the DT totally ridicule Juan + Flores in front of the jury. Not acceptable for either side to do that.
4-She needs to be more considerate and respectful of the Jurors time and service.
Seldom do we see her acknowledging or respecting their time and service. Especially when there are numerous delays and special start times later than normal. The impression I get is that she tosses them around like baggage.
I am sure she will learn from this trial and I hope she can improve in these areas.