Courting

Considering I went to the Courts here over two weeks ago now, I should really put up my blog on the experience and talk about some of the Court-related law stuff I’ve learnt so far…

Now, as I’ve not written about the court in the first available publication I don’t have qualified privilege*, so I intend on skirting around the details of the case my excellent friend Amy Moore and I sat in on. Though, if I’m honest, probably wouldn’t have said a lot about it anyway in case I got it wrong. I don’t want to get in trouble.

Re-reading my shorthand from the day now, I am reminded how incredibly nerve-wracking the entire experience was. Just walking into the court and up to the desk to go in was thoroughly scary. I made Amy talk the first time but they were about to go to lunch so we had to go back – typical! We took this opportunity to take some photos, hopefully they should appear here:

Anyway, we returned and, as promised, I spoke to the man this time, which is a bigger deal for me than it sounds. After a little explanation, we walked through the metal detector (which we both set off) and approached the desk, overwhelmed by the size of the place before we had even really got inside. The extremely busy woman at reception eventually managed to find a gap between phone calls to direct us to the only court where the jury was not deliberating. This case just so happened to be a rape case – what joy.

We took a fair amount of time to work up the courage to go in, alarmed by the fact that the girl being interviewed on the television screen seemed so young. We waited outside for a good 15 minutes before we entered the public gallery, only going in because someone had just come out - we’d become a little paranoid about the possibility that we might not have actually been allowed to be there. This is silly because the whole point of there being a public gallery is to let the public watch – after all, “justice has to be seen to be done.”

I managed to make a few notes from what was said in the recorded witness interview in shorthand (I’m quite proud of myself for this) and I think I can just about read them back but I’m not going to write it on here because:

1)      It’s sad

2)      I am taking no risks in potentially getting into trouble.

We left after about half an hour, as the jury had left and the barristers and judges and what-not were confusing the hell out of us with their pretentious-sounding lawyer-jargon, and were, frankly, thoroughly depressed by the whole affair. I think if we’d had a less intensive case, we might have felt a little more positive or if we had had the ability to hear the verdict. Alas, the case continued the next day and we had lectures. Not that either of us really wanted to go back after all that.

Oh well; if nothing else the experience taught me I probably can’t be a court reporter without needing serious amounts of therapy.

* Qualified privilege – the ability to report anything said in court, and some other places, if reported quickly, accurately and fairly; more detail in a future blog; promise.