Today, I wasn't able to take any photos because I thought I couldn't care my camera at all with me today. I would have been okay to carry it to the Supreme Court, but that's okay. Today will be a text post only, no supplemental photos, which I think sometimes are the funnest parts of these posts.
We saw the Supreme Court today, which is surprisingly new compared to other Supreme Courts. Then we went to see a live trial at the Old Bailey, which is basically their lower level criminal courts.
The Supreme Court was established in 2009 after the parliament decided in 2005 to separate Law Lords from the House of Lords, due to conflicts of interest. This was surprising to me because other Supreme Courts are so new. Their Supreme Court seems to operate in a fashion that is similar to ours in that they are the highest court of the land, except in human rights cases which can go to the European Court of Human Rights, and they are the last ditch effort in the appeals process. They decide which cases they are willing to hear out of many. In their courthouse, they only have three courtrooms. The biggest courtroom holds a maximum of nine Justices. The set up in very different. The Justices do not sit on a higher level than everyone in the court. The courts are interesting here in the UK because they are very open about everyone being able to see what is going on. They televise parliament and the supreme court, you can sit in on them.
We were going to sit in on a supreme court case, but it was full so we weren't able to go in and see what was going on. Apparently they have had some interesting cases that have come in there, such as the guy that was responsible for Wiki Leaks. I'm still shocked that their court has not been separate from parliament for more than 6 years! It seems so young, especially in comparison to other processes here in the UK.
Next we went to the Old Bailey. Here we were able to watch a live trial in progress from the public gallery (up above the courtroom). It was a bit awkward having to look down on them and have very limited viewing. Apparently we had a weird room that was meant to only have limited view of everything below. I could really only see the barristers. The defendant sits inside a glass enclosed box, which is so bizarre. The only time he came out was when he came to testify. This was a sexual assault case, which I will only say that much about the details of the case and focus more on the processes that I observed.
First and foremost, the barristers, prosecutor and defense, do their jobs a bit different than I observe in the US. They appear more adversarial in the US. Whereas, in the UK, they were sitting very close to one another, there was not a lot of objections (or any actually). They also appear to be more leading than US attorneys do. Where I see US attorneys ask a very straightforward question and make the witnesses tell the story, it seems like the barristers tell half of the story themselves. The barrister read out a letter by one of the Detective Constables. They ask questions by reading off from evidence and then saying "is it true that that detail is on this piece of paper?" and then just get a yes or no. When the defense was questioning the defendant, he was detailing events and asking if that was how they occurred. It was definitely really interesting to see. It was very different.
Their juries seem very similar to ours. They are diverse and there are twelve of them on a panel. You do not get eliminated like we do in the US. In the UK, you will likely serve on a jury and very few excuses will get you off from jury duty. Whereas in the US, I will likely say "I'm a criminal justice grad student and a victim advocate" and I'll immediately be excused.
Well, that's about it for my day. Tomorrow is the last day of activities. We are going to the Marine Police Unit down on the river in Wapping. Then we have a free afternoon and then our farewell dinner. I cannot believe that London is coming to an end.
:)
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