Courtroom Observation

By now, you should have observed a court proceeding for a criminal case.

In this module, you will submit a paper summarizing the court proceeding you observed and other relevant information. Your Module 03 Course Project should include the following information:

• Date, time, city, state, name of courthouse, of court proceeding
• What kind of court proceeding did you observe?
  • Trial, hearing, plea bargain, sentencing hearing?
  • If you watched recorded content, you must be sure to explain the source (You Tube, etc.)
• What was the defendant’s name?
• Name of all participants (judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, any witnesses)
• What is the crime/specific criminal law that the defendant allegedly violated? (This will be important for the next part of the assignment.)
• What individuals did you observe in the court proceeding? (prosecutor, judge, etc.)
• What was the role of each individual you observed?
• How were the defendant’s constitutional rights protected during the proceeding?
  • Examples:
    • Defendant’s right to notice of charges
    • Right to counsel (Sixth Amendment)
    • Privilege against self-incrimination (Fifth Amendment)
    • Right to confront witnesses (Sixth Amendment)
    • Right to present evidence (Sixth Amendment)
    • Right to a jury trial (Sixth Amendment)
    • Exclusion of illegally obtained evidence (Fourth Amendment)
• What was the outcome of the proceeding? (guilty plea, set for trial, conviction, sentence)
• Student’s reflection and overall thoughts about the proceeding.
  • Was it more/less formal than you expected?
  • What student learned from the experience
  • How experience helped student learn more about criminal law and procedure

Be sure your paper includes all information asked for in the assignment.

Answer preview

The trial proceedings began with stating the accusation against the defendant. He was accused of theft and intentionally causing injury which included recklessly cause harm and unlawful assault. However, the prosecution was required to choose one of the last three charges because they were all result of the same conduct. The final charges were, therefore, theft and intentionally cause injury. From the proceedings, I gathered that the more severe accusation was intentionally caused injury. The people present in the courtroom during the proceedings included the accused, magistrate, barrister, bench clerk, defense solicitor, the informant, prosecutor, and witnesses. The accused was the man to whom the criminal case was brought…

(600 words)