Editing Blog/2025-05-17/Witness For The Prosecution

[[File:Superior Court of California - San Francisco County - Department 25.png|thumb|The courtroom where I gave my testimony]]

Last week, I was a witness in the prosecution of a domestic abuse case. Julie and I'd been driving down the road when we saw the event in question<ref name=event/>. But this was also the first time I'd been inside a courtroom: I'm not American, so unlike most people here I haven't ever been eligible for jury selection or so on. The surprising thing to me was how much like the movies it is.

While the main floor to the various courtrooms is actually like any old government office building, the actual courtroom has the classic brown wood panels, the judge in the middle with the witness stand to his right, the stenographer in front of the witness, and the jury to the right of the witness. The interesting thing to me was the variation in specificity in procedures. For instance, as a witness I am not to speak to the jury except when instructed to, but I'm also not to enter the courtroom until I am instructed to and the jury selection room is next door to the courtroom. I was handed a sheet of instructions that told me I was not to talk to the jury at all and I was not to discuss my testimony with anyone. These are easy enough to comply with but no one guarantees that you've complied with them. TV has taught me that mere technicalities are enough to get someone off a charge but here it seemed that common sense pretty much worked<ref name=process/>.

The other side of procedure specificity was in the courtroom. The attorneys had to ask the judge whether they could approach the witness stand (that's me) and inside the courtroom the process was fairly strict. To show an annotated map of the scene required admitting it in evidence and declaring it a specific name. I stuck to the process as much as I could, but the defending attorney definitely hit me with a couple of objections that the judge helped explain to me. I had to act some things out, and apparently that's permissible. I was somewhat of the opinion that only verbal testimony was permitted but the judge then described what I was doing, asked me for confirmation, and that was all written down.

The prosecutor and the defending attorney's examinations of me were separated by a short break, during which I chatted with the stenographer, the bailiffs helped me with some water, and we talked about the See's Candies that they had in their breakroom.

The judge himself was quite terrific. Since the jury apparently was just as unfamiliar with the courtroom as I was, he explained each of the bits of process that would occur and would clarify points of order and so on. The prosecutor was quite thankful for the testimony and everyone was quite friendly and so on. I will probably testify to things I've observed if I'm asked to in future. It did help that the courthouse was a short ten minute walk from home.

One thing that I thought was entertaining was the subpoena. The whole thing started roughly 2 years ago when Julie and I witnessed the incident, a year after which I was contacted by an SFPD investigator, and 6 months after which I was asked to be a witness. After many delays in the process, I was finally formally asked to be a witness. I figured this was a matter of just answering the email (which included the subpoena), but amusingly they actually also serve you a subpoena at home to tell you that you are required to present yourself at court as a witness. Now, I didn't know this thing was coming so it was very funny to receive a call at work with the front-desk concierge at home calling to tell me that there was a lawyer there to serve me papers! Fortunately, Julie was able to go get them and that started the process.

Overall the timeline was:

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Caption text
|-
! Date !! Event
|-
| 2023-07 || We witnessed the event, and called 911
|-
| 2024-07 || I was contacted by SFPD
|-
| 2024-11 || I was asked to be a witness
|-
| 2025-05 || I actually testified in court
|}

I can still recall the entire thing that happened and I was particularly pleased that when the 911 call was played in the courtroom my testimony lined up exactly with it. Turns out my memory is still pretty good! It's probably because there was no phone service in the courtroom so I didn't use my phone.

<references>
<ref name=event>
which I'll talk about once the case has ended one way or the other
</ref>
<ref name=process>
It's easy to guess at the reasons for the process in the courtroom, and much of it seemed to be oriented towards ensuring there was a textual record
</ref>
</references>

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