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Court Observation Paper, First Observation: Divorce Case

Everybody who intended to attend the proceedings of this was seated fifteen minutes before the proceedings began. At the point when the proceedings were expected o begin, the court registrar entered in the courtroom and was followed by the judge. Everybody rose in honor of the court. After the court registrar declared this sitting to be open, he asked everyone to take their seat. He then went on to announce the case under review and called the first witness in the witness court. He administered an oath after which the witness gave information regarding what he knew about the case. The presiding judge was responsible for controlling the proceedings accordingly during the entire hearing. Since this case was quite sensitive, the audience kept interrupting with noises. They were asked to remain quite. The defense attorney cross interrogated the witness accordingly in order to clarify some of the statements that he made.

The second witness was called upon and was asked to give complete details of his name as well as address. He was then administered with an oath by the court registrar. He then proceeded to telling the judge about the facts he knew regarding this case. He handed to the court registrar certain documents that were supposed to support his evidence. At this point, the defendant side objected to the use of the documents on the premise that they were not only invalid but also outdated. After the review of the documents, the objection was sustained. At this point, the court was adjourned in and the hearing scheduled for another date.

Second Observation: Housing Case

After the court was seated and quiet, the attorneys made brief statements to the jury. In these, they outlined the facts that they looked forward to proving from their individual point of view. Usually, these attorneys are not considered as witnesses. As such, their statements and general information is not used as evidence. The plaintiff was the first to give his statements and was followed by the defense attorney. This was then followed by the presentation of evidence by the witnesses. The plaintiff’s witnesses were allowed to testify first before the witnesses of the defense.

Before each witness testified, s/he was sworn to ensure that s/he told the truth. The attorney that was responsible for calling the witnesses at each point asked relative questions when conducting a direct examination. Then, the attorney form the opposition side was allowed to cross examine the witness accordingly. Usually, the reason behind the questions pertains to the need to elicit as much evidence as possible form the witness. There were photographs that were presented as evidence at this time.

After the witnesses had completed presenting the evidence, the attorneys were allowed to individually address the jury. The plaintiff’s attorney was the first to present evidence followed by the defense attorney. During this time, the attorneys evaluated the evidence they had and tried to convince the jury to make decisions in their favor. The statements that they used at this point in time were mainly aimed at persuading the jury to decide in their favor. After this, the judge took tme to instruct the jury that any decisions should be solely based on the law. At this point, the jurors retired from the courtroom in order to deliberate on the case in secret. The hearing was set for another day.