Sunday, December 8, 2013

Trial Preparation

Mark and Ann did trial prep at St Stevens dining room (basement). Present were Paki, Eve, Beth, Gail, and me. Matt, Carmen, Palina are on the way from NYC. Debra Sweet will be in tomorrow to testify, and Kathy Kelly is in ?Falls Church for an engagement Tuesday. Martha Hennesey is in transit. Those are the only names I caught. Art and Colleen are in residence. NYC just arrived. Mark's advice: look at the judge when you answer, your voice is you tool don't drone, have notes but don't stare at the paper, and keep track of where you are, look alert and know the program, don't interrupt the judge or others because the recorder can't get it and your great thought won't get in the record, know your roles. Ann added, while playing DA, It's a general intent violation. So possible aid and abet may be in the cards. The jumpsuit itself may be a "device", not sure if that means a jumpsuit is a sign.

MORNING== dont want to sleep
Gail is doing cross examination of prosecution witnesses. I think that she has a good opportunity to get new informataion from the police. Things we don't know about procedure and practice, their training (this is a specialized crime), how they see the elements of the crime, how they decided whom to arrest. [If you saw a group of teenagers on a corner, and one was drinking from an open container, how would you decide whether to arrest the one vs all of them? As it applies in this case, how would you decide whether to arrest the offender vs establish a perimeter?]]

Midnight between Monday and Tuesday

We lost today. We got a new judge because the prior judge could not do a two day trial. It turned out we only needed one day anyway. My eyes are starting to water, it's late, no glasses, people are sleeping need to be quite, so more later. Not that much now. Except that people are learning and of course we won't stop, so we can only win. We all got a good idea as to the facts and what at least a good theory would be. Not quite able to extract enough admissions from the prosecution witnesses, and did not frame the issues clearly enough for the judge to "get", but we will. There is an appeal being considered, as another chance to practice, and get a transcript to see what we failed to do. So there will be a lot of detail within six weeks.

Here is the first draft of the basis for appeal http://bit.ly/19gn836
Here is the second. http://bit.ly/1kJGpwu