LAW

Law

Law

PART 1

Court Visit Report

On 20th January 2012, I went to visit the Hendon magistrate court with few friends for a trial at 10. As I entered the court I was checked for security reasons and also had a bag check. I have visited this court before with a class when I used to be at college so I was familiar with the surrounding. It was on an opening day when I last visited and the court gave the whole class a tour around but however, I did not watch a trial. This was my first time to observe a trial, which I was looking really forward to.

At the reception, we approached a lady who told us there is a case with police evidence in Court 5 so we decided to wait for this case as it grabbed our attention. However, the trail was supposed to start at 10 am and it had delayed up to an hour. We were waiting at the waiting room for the trail to start and few people were waiting for their trails with their representations. A number of police officers were there sitting around waiting to give evidence.

As soon as I entered there were more people involved in this case and as I sat down a police officer named Pc Merit was giving evidence and was talking about the incident. I was observing but I didn't quite understand the facts of the case as I just entered. On the right, inside the box there were the defendants who were Asian males sitting with the interpreter. I recognised them from the waiting room. The victim was a white male sitting with a lady right in front of us.

The Police officer enters for whom the court was waiting for. He walks to the witness box and reads out the oath and has some evidence in his hand and introduces himself to the court. His name is Pc Harris and that he works at the Forest Gate Police station. The Prosecution lawyer stands up and starts to ask the officer some questions related to the incident and what actually happened.

The prosecution lawyer also asked what the police thought would have happened if the police didn't approach at this particular time. The defence lawyer stood up and started asking the police if he believed that the defendants had the woods on their hand as a self defence and the police replied “no comments”. The police rounded the incident off by saying that he had escorted the other officer and white male and arrested the defendants and reported them in the Plaistow police station.

As I walked out of the court room, the defendants and the victim were walking out as well. I looked at the notice board for this case as I did not get a chance before and I realised what the lady meant when she mentioned about other cases. I could see a list of other cases all at the same time, which meant ...