Sandra Levkovich
I have always wanted to go sit in on a real case where it involves a jury, defendent, prosecuters and so on. I wanted to always experience of how our legal system actually works instead of just reading about it. On Monday, April 26th, I got to finally experience that.
At first, we went into small court. It was a little hard to hear and things were moving slow. There were cases about child wellcare, robbery etc… It was mostly a judge and from what interpreted a lawyer that they give you, not your own. As I was trying to really listen to what was going on, I had notice that people behind the computers were on facebook, they were chatting, some even were making jokes. I was sort of dissappointed in that it was not a real case with a jury and all. After this, I thought we were moving onto another small court room, but it was an actual trial.
When we had gotten to the trial, someone was testifying. There was a jury, judge, lawyers, and many more officials. The lawyer kept asking him questions and it was as if he was the one that did wrong. I was shocked when I heard of all the crime he had commited such as dealing heroin. I had thought he was the one that was going to go to jail until he told the story about what had happened the night he went to a club and then pointed at the man who was sitting in the room, the murderer. It was complete shock that my whole class was in a room with a suspected killer. We did not get to finish the trial, however it was really interesting to see what would have been the verdict.
This whole experience was something I did not expect going to the Lower Manhattan Criminal Court. You read about such trial in the papers like the one we got to sit in on, but I got to actually witness some of it.
