Take one Court, two murder trials and you have three very nervous journalism students. On Tuesday, me and two girls from the course decided to head down to Winchester Crown Court just to get the gist of court reporting. After our law for journalists lecture, we were all a bit worried because we didn't want to do anything wrong, but we knew it would be good for us to experience.
Before we got into the reception of the court, we had to go through a security scanner. When it was my turn to walk through it, the scanner typically beeped! I found it funny that the security guard blamed it on the keys which were on the desk not even close to the scanner, a very alert guy!
Once we were in reception, we asked the reception to tell us which courtroom we should go to. I was expecting her to say there's a drink-driving or speeding case in court such and such, but what i wasn't expecting was what she actually said. It went a bit like this: 'Oh there's a murder in court 3 and a murder in court 4, so just go on in girls'. Ok, so this was serious.
We slowly walked up 'the marble and then the carpet stairs' as directed by the receptionist until we were standing outside court 3's public gallery. This was all really happening. This wasn't my usual Monday night Eastenders episode, this was all real-life. We hovered outside the door for a while because we wasn't sure if we were able to walk in since the trial had already started. One of us was then brave enough to go in first whilst we followed like lost sheep!
The courtroom was just as I expected with the judge, the jury, the prosecution and the witness. The jury didn't look as I expected them to. I thought they would be very smartly dressed in suits and ties but they all looked quite 'normal' in formal but casual clothes. Both courtrooms were the same, they had a very tense atmosphere. The questions that were being asked to the witnesses in both courts were so detailed and often repeated but worded differently to get as much information as possible. I can see why shorthand is needed!
The murders were obviously extremely brutal and I found the comments from the witnesses were really shocking and upsetting. You read about devastating violence in the newspapers all the time but to actually be sat in a room with real people who have witnessed such horrendous violence is a completely different feeling. The jury had folders containing horrorific images from the crime scene and the weapons which were used were also shown in the court. They were concealed in boxes so a replica was shown to the jury.
Unfortunately, we weren't able to view both cases from start to end as we had arrived after the trials had started and we had to leave before the trials ended so whilst we were there we only heard from the witnesses.
When we left the court, (which took us a long time as were afraid of making any noise since the trial was still in process) we agreed that we had found it a very interesting experience and we were annoyed we didn't get to see the trials from beginning to end. I would deffinitely be interested in learning more about court reporting as the cases get so gripping, but for now i'll enjoy hearing less about murders!
No comments:
Post a Comment