Victory!

My trial is over! It went really well. The professor had some high school kids sit on as the jury, and even had them deliberate after the trial. They came back in with a verdict of not guilty on all counts, so we won! : )

The comments we received included that our side was more planned out, more organized, better visuals and related to the jury better. Both our opening statement (me) and our closing argument (my partner) went over very well.

Because I had to share the task with my partner, I didn't get to do everything I wished I could have, because we needed to split up the tasks evenly. I did the opening, direct exam on our defendant (and his redirect) and cross exam on 2 of the prosecution's witnesses. I think with our styles it worked out perfectly though because my partner is more dramatic and entertaining, which was perfect for closing.

I thought I may have to grill the police officer, a witness for the prosecution, on one particular point, but ended up doing so on a completely different point, but was able to still do effectively. It was satisfying to see him have to back down from a lie he told me originally.

I did ask my professor for written feedback, so I hope to get that in the next few days in email from him. I think probably the best thing I did was all of our exhibits. The opposing side only photocopied the pages from the book in 8.5 x 11 size. I had blown up one of the book exhibits to 16 x 20, and then also created several more on my own in a large poster size. We got numerous comments that the visuals made the case for us, so I'm glad that I put the effort into doing them. I had been feeling bad because I had wanted to use a visual with each witness, but because of the limited information we received about the case, there just wasn't that much to be able to use. But I still had a photo from inside the bar (which I used during my opening), a diagram of the street where the incident took place, an outline of a body on which the medical examiner marked the wounds (front and back), another for him to mark on a side view, also showing the path of the bullet, and finally I had another side profile that we used to represent the defendant and showing that the path the bullet took could not have happened if the victim was in an upright position, but only if either the defendant was in a higher position (which we had already established he was not) or if the victim was leaning forward, possibly lunging at the defendant, which our defendant testified was the case. Anyway, I think they all made the case easier to understand and helped us tremendously.

It was fun, though very tiring. Next Wednesday I get to sit on the jury for another trial of fellow classmates, so it will be nice to just sit and observe. But, I will definitely miss this class!