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Trial by fire

3:12 PM

Trial by fire

The most pleasant words of the day were..

"We, the jury find the accused *pause for effect and the lawyers all cross their fingers and mutter a quick prayer*...not guilty!"

About 8 hours before those words...

I was in college at 8am.

And I know you're thinking, "What the heck is Siew Yen doing in college at 8am on a Saturday morning?"

Simple, I'm here for the law mock trial. =p
Believe me, I don't simply get out of bed at 8am on Saturday just for the fun of it.

Feeling nervous but trying to maintain a surface appearance of calmness, since most people were feeling panicky, it wouldn't help the general atmosphere if I went all panicky too. But if you'd scratched that veneer of calmness, I'd probably go hysterical and confess that I'm all jittery and have a whole hoardful of butterflies in my tummy. Haha.

Nah...I wasn't that on the verge of panicking. I just thought I'd spice things up a little *grins mischeviously*

To be honest, I was a bit jittery before the whole trial actually started. And I was a little nervous just before I had to cross-examine the prosecution's witness. As for the closing submission, well, I must admit that I had a butterfly or two in my tummy. Because I thought that the prosecution would go first and it turned out that I had to begin first. And also because I hadn't quite decided where to stand and make my err...last stand? Hehe.

But overally, I found that I was less nervous than this compared to last year's relatively small inter-class debate. I suppose and I hope, that this sort of speaking and debating thing comes easier to you as you grow older. *thinks wishfully*

To begin with, when the clerk read out the charge and the prosecutor started off, there was a lot of giggling from both sides and muffled laughter, shaking shoulders, bitten lips and eyes generally fixed on the table or hidden behind papers to try and stop the laughter. I was one of those guilty of laughing. Don't ask me what was so funny, I can't really explain it. Could be from the nervous tension, I suppose.

It was a good thing we managed to control our laughter after a while. If not, technically we could all be held for contempt of court, I suppose. Haha. The judge held himself in contempt of court because his phone rang during proceedings and he forgot to set it on silent mode. As you can expect, the court burst into laughter.

The prosecution's witnesses took about 2 hours to finish as we, the defence were cross-examining them rather throughly. More like crucifying them and hammering the stakes in, some people would say. =p

But that's our job, to go for the jugular vein.
We expected no quarter and we gave none.

Mr. Dhanesh said, "If you think that's bad, wait till you get to a real trial."

He also said its really difficult pretending to be the doctor, as the opposition can throw at you any medical question and if you can't answer it, boom, there goes your credibility. But, a little preparation can go a long way, as we've all found out, right? Hehe.

When it was the defence witnesses turn to be put on the stand, we expected them to get slaughtered in return. But, we got away with only several nicks and cuts. Good comebacks on an overall from our witnessess. =p

A big thank-you to all the defence witnesses for taking the time and effort to prepare for the mock trial as we couldn't have won without you all.

We were given black robes to wear and the white bib-like thingy but no wigs, which turned out to be a sort of good thing. Those robes and all might look very glamourous and professional on Boston Legal, L.A Law, The Practice, those Cantonese drama serials or whatever lawyer show you guys watch, but believe me, it is damn awkward to wear, ok!

Those black robes were so freaking humongous!
And the white bibs weren't really comfortable.

I was totally swamped in the robe, and it kept falling of my shoulders when I was sitting down, making my white bib look messy. And when I stood up, the sleeves were so long and huge that you couldn't see my hands at all. I was afraid that when I was halfway cross-examining the witness, the robe would just fall off my shoulders. Or that I would trip over the huge billowing robe and fall flat on my face. It would have been utterly humiliating if that that happened.

Thankfully, it didn't. *sighes in relief*

But imagine, if I had to wear the white wig, it would have been even more uncomfortable and I think would be patting my head to check if it was still there and worrying whether the wig would fall off my head or not. =)

After wearing the robe once, I decided not to wear it for the closing submission because I didn't want it to hamper any movements or gestures I might make. But it had at least one useful purpose.

Can you imagine, I was already wearing a long-sleeve shirt and a coat and I still felt slightly cold? That was where the robe came in handy. Haha. But I attribute the cold partially to a little bit of nervousness.

The guys who were much bigger sized definitely looked better in the robe. At least, they didn't look like they were drowning in a black sea of billowing cloth. =p

Everyone in the courtroom was dressed very smartly and it was a pleasant surprise to see everyone turned out so nicely. The guys cut a dashing figure with their black coats (Shaun, this is meant for you in case you happen to stumble on to my blog.) As for the girls, they looked very smart and professional in their formal wear and power suits.

There was some tension in the courtroom due to certain events, and due to that, my co-counsel and I decided not to make it worse. We thought it might help if we went on very lightly about certain things in the end. But, it was rather disappointing that this show of goodwill was not returned. I mean, lets not waste more time by waffling on about something irrelevant that ought not to be brought up during court. Anyway, who are you to judge and comment about us? And if you want to play dirty, inasmuch as I'd prefer not to antagonize anyone and make enemies, I can hit below the belt too, if you want it that way.

But then again, I'd rather play fair. After all, this is just a mock trial. No point in creating animosity when we are all classmates. The purpose of it is for everyone to get a feel of how things are done and to gain the experience. So what if you win or lose? In the end, you still learn something. But its obviously more fun if you win. Hehe.

There was nothing personal, so don't take it the wrong way. And before you go around shouting unfair and insinuating unpleasant things, think back and see for yourselves if you played by the rules.

Those were some of the things that detracted some of the pleasure in winning.

Anyway, what really makes you win/lose a case depends on:

1. The facts of the case
- you can't have a 50-50 perfectly balanced case. Somehow each case will always lean slightly to one side. In this, we were lucky as it wasn't that difficult to raise reasonable doubt.

2. Witnesses
- because this was a mock trial, we were allowed to prepare our witnesses. And we did put in preparation. But sometimes, the unexpected question is asked or the witness accidentally blunders, and there's nothing you can do about it except to try and salvage what you can. And in a real trial, you are not allowed to prepare the witnesses so it all depends on how lucky you are as to what type of witness you get.

3. Preparation
- the more preparation you do, the less likely your chances are to get really caught off-guard. It doesn't hurt to do extra reading and research. But, it hurts a lot to come to court and not know certain facts.

4. Luck
- sheer dumb luck. Sometimes, you can prepare as much as you want to but if you just get unlucky, like a biased judge and so on, there's not much you can do against luck.

This mock trial really was a trial by fire as it was everyone's first time participating in such an event, except for the judge. I personally expected it to be a little more solemn and formal, but there were quite a lot of times where everyone in court burst into laughter because the event that just transpired was quite hilarious. But while its good that it was funny and informal at some parts, that informality at certain points wandered into the grey area of disrespect and contempt of court, technically speaking. Hehe.

After going through this, I really learned a lot and it has whetted my appetite for more. But I shall have to do a whole lot of studying and reading up before I even come the slightest bit close to where I hope to be.

For those who were hoping for a more juicy and humourous story, I decided not to put some things in here as this is a little public and the other person/people involved might not find it as hilarious as you and I might, and I wouldn't want them to feel hurt or embarassed.

Depending on who you are, I might tell you those little stories in person, ok.

Last but not least, to my co-counsels Sarah, Nisha Kamilla, Shaun, Ruth, Claudia and Angeline who were wonderful teammates, thank you very very much. I really enjoyed working with you guys, winning wouldn't have been possible without all of you.

Anyone up for round two?
Hehe.

Written on Sunday, November 26, 2006; 3:12 PM

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