I’ve been back to court to follow the continuing case I
shadowed last week (see previous post of same title). Today the Defence opened
its case and my role was purely to take a note of the evidence and also to
provide some moral support to the mother of the alleged victim in court.
We stood outside in the heat for a while before entering
court as the evidence of a child in another case was in progress and the judge
had ordered the court to be cleared. I am pleased that the privacy of the child
and protecting the child from intimidation was rightly considered by the judge,
absent any formal guidance of how to approach such cases. I raised this concern
in my previous post.
Again, prior to our case being called I sat through several
other cases, of which one witness was heard in each case prior to it being
adjourned for a week or so. I was disappointed by the prosecutor – who had the
unenviable task of prosecuting each and every case in that court. That’s a big
case load. I was disappointed as her cross-examinations consistently failed to
build up a case. There was no “boiling the frog”. In fact, in many cases, I was
at times unclear as to whether she was making a cross examination or an
examination in chief!
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