Editing Blog/2025-05-17/Witness For The Prosecution (section)

== Process ==

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.