Yesterday, me and Liam decided to go to the crown court in Winchester, we had no idea where it was, so we just walked up and down the high street looking for a sign, until we stumbled across it pretty much by accident. When we got in, we had the airport style security checks etc etc. There were no court listings displayed so we decided to go up the large flight of stairs and begun walking around aimlessly. We assumed that there would be a case in court 1, but there was nothing. We then saw a TV screen with the day's cases and what courts they were in, we chose a court with a case that had just started - hoping to hear a commital we headed for that one, we went into the public gallery and sat there for over 30 minutes! Finally the judge walked in, only to find out that the person who was supposed to be in court hadn't turned up..... Then the judge moved on to a different case, in short - this second one was not very interesting at all!
We left this court and as soon as we heard some very interesting words, we entered the public gallery (to be honest, because of the words we had heard, I wasn't sure if we would get a seat because there might have been journalists and some other people - but to my surprise there were only 3 others in there!). Due to Contempt of Court, I will only write these details:
Name & age: Defendant - Mr Randolph Pennant.
Address & occupation: Address - Unknown (to me). Job - 'Works with steel'.
Charge(s): Sexual Assault.
Date & place of Crown Court hearing: 4th October 2011, Winchester Combined Court.
Bail & legal aid conditions: Unknown
Names of counsel: Unknown
A lot of the details of the case were quite grim and not stuff that you would particularly want to discuss in public! It was still interesting to see how a real court actually works.
Being able to sit in on two cases poles apart from each other, we got two different atmospheres. The first case had no real tension to it, just a lawyer reading out boring information. The second case was very tense (as you would expect in that type of case) - the cliché 'You could cut the tension with a knife' comes to mind!
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