Kat's Scribbles

Thursday, June 5, 2003

Law & Order in Real Life. Today, I sat and observed a rape trial. I missed the opening statements yesterday, but today I caught some of the direct and cross-examination of the victim. The victim cried as she testified; the actual rape occurred about 3.5 years ago and only now did it go to trial. I missed a lot of the facts, but from what I gathered, she was in her bedroom sleeping when her assailant climbed into her bedroom window and attacked her. She testified that she could hear her son, who was an infant at that time, crying in the background while it all happened. It was very sad and intense.

Real life trials are not quite as “slick” as they are on TV. In real life, both prosecutors and defense attorneys stumble on words, make mistakes, and take breaks. Real life trials also tend to last longer than just an hour. And in the end, there’s no clever “one-liner” that the prosecutor gets to say. Hopefully, there'll be a happy ending to this one at least.

POSTED BY KAT AT 6/05/2003 03:15:00 PM |

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