Mycroft goes to court
One of my pastimes is attending criminal trials in courtrooms around the world. Although not a lawyer, I get my kicks from reading (fictional) murder mysteries and following (real-life) criminal trials in the media and sometimes in-person in the courtroom.
I have attended criminal trials in the following places.
USA
Oxford, NC
Granville County, NC
Durham, NC
Baltimore County, MD
Baltimore City, MD
Baltimore City, MD (Federal Courthouse)
New York City
New York City (Federal courthouse)
York, PA
Canada
Montreal, Quebec
St. Johns, Newfoundland
Europe
London, England (Old Bailey)
Paris, France
Laon, France
Madrid, Spain
Rhodes, Greece
Aylesbury, England
Edinburgh, Scotland
Reykjavik, Iceland (civil court only)
Caribbean
Fort-de-France, Martinique, French West Indies
Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe, French West Indies
Roseau, Dominica, West Indies
Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies
Willemstad, Curaçao, West Indies
South America
Cayenne, French Guiana
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Santiago, Chile
La Paz, Bolivia
Some of those places I have visited only once, others several or many times. Following are some recollections of my visits.
New York City (Federal court): In 1949, I visited the jury trial of eleven top leaders of the American Communist Party before Judge Harold Medina on charges of conspiring to violently overthrow the United States government. They were all found guilty and sentenced to prison by Judge Medina.
Old Bailey, London: During my many visits there, the ones that stick in my mind are:
In 1954, the crew of a Polish freighter had mutinied and taken the ship into British waters—six or eight of the leaders of the crew were on trial for mutiny. This event, which occurred during the height of the Cold War, gained worldwide public attention (it was covered by Time magazine, among other media). Sir Hartley Shawcross was the presiding judge at the non-jury trial (Sir Hartley had been a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trial of Nazi war criminals and had also been prosecutor in several British high-profile trials of the 1940’s and 1950’s).
There were interpreters of Polish to assist the defendants during the trial. My recollection is that the defendants were acquitted on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction by British courts in the matter.
In 1989, the trial of several men (six or eight, I believe) who were charged with savagely beating to death a boy in his early teens. The details of the crime testified to by police and other witnesses were gruesome.
The following year, 1990, the high-profile trial of a scientist for General Electric in Britain who was charged with violation of the Government Secrets Act by conveying certain classified information to agents of a foreign government.
In 2004, the trial of about six young Asian men (Pakistanis, I believe) for the killing of another Asian man in a robbery that turned into murder.
Not having followed the last three trials to their conclusion, I don’t know their outcome.
St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada: The trial that my wife and attended in 1994 was of a pimp who was recruiting underage girls for prostitution. Several years later, I saw a film which told the supposedly true story of a Catholic home for boys in which some of the priests sexually abused the boys. Years later, the priests were brought to trial, at which some of the boys (now men) testified against them. The filming of that trial was in the very same courtroom which we had visited.
Cayenne, French Guiana: There, in 2002, I walked right into the courtroom carrying a tote bag. There was no security to check me out; I could have easily been carrying a weapon in the bag. Yet, when about a dozen men were brought in for arraignment, all handcuffed together, there almost 20 cops in the room. No one to stop me (or anyone else) from entering the courtroom with a weapon, but 20 cops to guard 12 handcuffed men. Ah yes, the French have their own inscrutable ways--I learned that when I worked for an American-based imternational oil company in what, at the time (1953-54), was French West Africa.
Before the court proceeding began, I had an interesting conversation with the gendarmerie captain in charge of the court security. Among other things, he explained something I had observed all over France (metropolitan and overseas) and had long wondered about: the difference between the Police Nationale (who have that patch on their sleeves and wear particular headgear) and the gendarmes (who wear the Foreign Legion type caps). Essentially, according to him, the Police are just that: members of a national police force; the gendarmes, on the other hand, are part of the French army. In actual practice, they share law enforcement duties.
Durham, NC: In 2003, the trial of Michael Peterson for the murder of his wife. I first heard about the case when Katie Couric (then the co-anchor of the NBC morning show) talked to a Court TV reporter about it—due to several of its bizarre aspects, Couric commented that it sounded like an Agatha Christie whodunit.
Michael and Kathleen Peterson were a well-to-do couple, in their fifties, living in Durham. In December 2001 Kathleen was found dead at the bottom of a stairway in their upscale home, apparently having fallen down it; however, Michael was charged with murder based on the allegation that he had, first, bludgeoned her and the pushed her down the steps.
There were several attention-drawing aspects of the case which brought about continuing coverage of the trial by Court TV and the national media.
--The body of a female acquaintance of Michael Peterson who had died in a similar (falling down the steps) accident some years before was exhumed from its grave, with the result that a pathologist report stated that the cause of death was the result of having been struck on the head with a blunt instrument.
--The bi-sexual characteristic of Michael’s nature came to light when a male escort testified at the trial—over the strong objection of defense counsel—that Michael had contacted him for a “date” (which never actually took place).
--The extended family of the Petersons was violently divided: Michael’s adult son by a previous marriage and the two young adult daughters who had been adopted by Michael and Kathleen—and who were the biological daughters of the first woman to die falling down the steps—sat on one side of the courtroom and strongly supported Michael. On the other side of the courtroom sat Kathleen’s twenty-something daughter by a previous marriage and her father (Kathleen’s former husband), who were equally strongly opposed to Michael.
--The well-known forensic scientist Henry Lee (famous for his testimony in the O.J trial) testified.
Another noteworthy aspect was that the presiding judge was Orlando Hudson, a black man--something that would have been unimaginable in North Carolina forty or more years previously. I thought that the judge handled the case admirably.
The trial began in June and lasted until October 2003. Before going down to attend the trial, I read about it in the Durham Herald Sun and phoned that paper’s reporter to ask if, because of its notoriety, it would be difficult to get into the courtroom—to which he answered no. So, the first day that I attended, in mid-July, I made the reporter’s acquaintance and we had lunch together each day that I attended. I got a lot of interesting background on the case from him.
Back home, I followed the trial on Court TV and other media. I had all along guessed that the result would be like the OJ case: guilty but acquitted. I was very surprised when, on October 10, 2003, the jury returned a guilty verdict and Michael Peterson was sentenced right then by Judge Hudson to life without parole.
La Paz, Bolivia: I attended a court session there in May 2005. In addition to the three judges that are usual in non-Anglo Saxon courtrooms, there were two others identified by placards in front of them as being from other government departments.
In a highway robbery case, a police officer was called to testify. The chief judge asked the officer if he believed in God, to which he responded yes; next he was asked if he was Catholic, to which he again responded yes. At that point the judge read an oath—during which everyone stood up, the court officials and the audience; when the officer accepted the oath, everyone sat back down. The same procedure was repeated when a witness was called to testify.
Rhodes, Greece: When my wife and I were on a cruise of the Greek islands in 1997, I wandered around Rhodes on my own when I saw, among a block of government buildings, an open door with a crowd of people milling about inside and outside the building. I wandered in (again, like French Guiana, no security to stop me) and found a court in session. There were very animated exchanges between court officials and the man and woman in the dock and, also, between the judges themselves (of whom there were five or six).
Knowing virtually no Greek, I had no idea what the court procedure was all about. However, I asked a group of cops outside if any spoke English (I had learned how to ask that in Greek), to which one young officer said he did, whereupon I asked him what the charges against the defendant were. When he shrugged that he didn’t know the English term, I gave him my English-Greek dictionary and he pointed to the Greek word that translated to “theft/embezzlement.”
Later, as I was walking back to the ship, I saw at a fruit stand a man whom I had seen in the courtroom, whom I took to be a prosecutor. When I discovered that he spoke some English, I asked him what the trial was all about, to which he said with a heavy accent, “Much money.”
I have attended criminal trials in the following places.
USA
Oxford, NC
Granville County, NC
Durham, NC
Baltimore County, MD
Baltimore City, MD
Baltimore City, MD (Federal Courthouse)
New York City
New York City (Federal courthouse)
York, PA
Canada
Montreal, Quebec
St. Johns, Newfoundland
Europe
London, England (Old Bailey)
Paris, France
Laon, France
Madrid, Spain
Rhodes, Greece
Aylesbury, England
Edinburgh, Scotland
Reykjavik, Iceland (civil court only)
Caribbean
Fort-de-France, Martinique, French West Indies
Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe, French West Indies
Roseau, Dominica, West Indies
Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies
Willemstad, Curaçao, West Indies
South America
Cayenne, French Guiana
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Santiago, Chile
La Paz, Bolivia
Some of those places I have visited only once, others several or many times. Following are some recollections of my visits.
New York City (Federal court): In 1949, I visited the jury trial of eleven top leaders of the American Communist Party before Judge Harold Medina on charges of conspiring to violently overthrow the United States government. They were all found guilty and sentenced to prison by Judge Medina.
Old Bailey, London: During my many visits there, the ones that stick in my mind are:
In 1954, the crew of a Polish freighter had mutinied and taken the ship into British waters—six or eight of the leaders of the crew were on trial for mutiny. This event, which occurred during the height of the Cold War, gained worldwide public attention (it was covered by Time magazine, among other media). Sir Hartley Shawcross was the presiding judge at the non-jury trial (Sir Hartley had been a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trial of Nazi war criminals and had also been prosecutor in several British high-profile trials of the 1940’s and 1950’s).
There were interpreters of Polish to assist the defendants during the trial. My recollection is that the defendants were acquitted on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction by British courts in the matter.
In 1989, the trial of several men (six or eight, I believe) who were charged with savagely beating to death a boy in his early teens. The details of the crime testified to by police and other witnesses were gruesome.
The following year, 1990, the high-profile trial of a scientist for General Electric in Britain who was charged with violation of the Government Secrets Act by conveying certain classified information to agents of a foreign government.
In 2004, the trial of about six young Asian men (Pakistanis, I believe) for the killing of another Asian man in a robbery that turned into murder.
Not having followed the last three trials to their conclusion, I don’t know their outcome.
St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada: The trial that my wife and attended in 1994 was of a pimp who was recruiting underage girls for prostitution. Several years later, I saw a film which told the supposedly true story of a Catholic home for boys in which some of the priests sexually abused the boys. Years later, the priests were brought to trial, at which some of the boys (now men) testified against them. The filming of that trial was in the very same courtroom which we had visited.
Cayenne, French Guiana: There, in 2002, I walked right into the courtroom carrying a tote bag. There was no security to check me out; I could have easily been carrying a weapon in the bag. Yet, when about a dozen men were brought in for arraignment, all handcuffed together, there almost 20 cops in the room. No one to stop me (or anyone else) from entering the courtroom with a weapon, but 20 cops to guard 12 handcuffed men. Ah yes, the French have their own inscrutable ways--I learned that when I worked for an American-based imternational oil company in what, at the time (1953-54), was French West Africa.
Before the court proceeding began, I had an interesting conversation with the gendarmerie captain in charge of the court security. Among other things, he explained something I had observed all over France (metropolitan and overseas) and had long wondered about: the difference between the Police Nationale (who have that patch on their sleeves and wear particular headgear) and the gendarmes (who wear the Foreign Legion type caps). Essentially, according to him, the Police are just that: members of a national police force; the gendarmes, on the other hand, are part of the French army. In actual practice, they share law enforcement duties.
Durham, NC: In 2003, the trial of Michael Peterson for the murder of his wife. I first heard about the case when Katie Couric (then the co-anchor of the NBC morning show) talked to a Court TV reporter about it—due to several of its bizarre aspects, Couric commented that it sounded like an Agatha Christie whodunit.
Michael and Kathleen Peterson were a well-to-do couple, in their fifties, living in Durham. In December 2001 Kathleen was found dead at the bottom of a stairway in their upscale home, apparently having fallen down it; however, Michael was charged with murder based on the allegation that he had, first, bludgeoned her and the pushed her down the steps.
There were several attention-drawing aspects of the case which brought about continuing coverage of the trial by Court TV and the national media.
--The body of a female acquaintance of Michael Peterson who had died in a similar (falling down the steps) accident some years before was exhumed from its grave, with the result that a pathologist report stated that the cause of death was the result of having been struck on the head with a blunt instrument.
--The bi-sexual characteristic of Michael’s nature came to light when a male escort testified at the trial—over the strong objection of defense counsel—that Michael had contacted him for a “date” (which never actually took place).
--The extended family of the Petersons was violently divided: Michael’s adult son by a previous marriage and the two young adult daughters who had been adopted by Michael and Kathleen—and who were the biological daughters of the first woman to die falling down the steps—sat on one side of the courtroom and strongly supported Michael. On the other side of the courtroom sat Kathleen’s twenty-something daughter by a previous marriage and her father (Kathleen’s former husband), who were equally strongly opposed to Michael.
--The well-known forensic scientist Henry Lee (famous for his testimony in the O.J trial) testified.
Another noteworthy aspect was that the presiding judge was Orlando Hudson, a black man--something that would have been unimaginable in North Carolina forty or more years previously. I thought that the judge handled the case admirably.
The trial began in June and lasted until October 2003. Before going down to attend the trial, I read about it in the Durham Herald Sun and phoned that paper’s reporter to ask if, because of its notoriety, it would be difficult to get into the courtroom—to which he answered no. So, the first day that I attended, in mid-July, I made the reporter’s acquaintance and we had lunch together each day that I attended. I got a lot of interesting background on the case from him.
Back home, I followed the trial on Court TV and other media. I had all along guessed that the result would be like the OJ case: guilty but acquitted. I was very surprised when, on October 10, 2003, the jury returned a guilty verdict and Michael Peterson was sentenced right then by Judge Hudson to life without parole.
La Paz, Bolivia: I attended a court session there in May 2005. In addition to the three judges that are usual in non-Anglo Saxon courtrooms, there were two others identified by placards in front of them as being from other government departments.
In a highway robbery case, a police officer was called to testify. The chief judge asked the officer if he believed in God, to which he responded yes; next he was asked if he was Catholic, to which he again responded yes. At that point the judge read an oath—during which everyone stood up, the court officials and the audience; when the officer accepted the oath, everyone sat back down. The same procedure was repeated when a witness was called to testify.
Rhodes, Greece: When my wife and I were on a cruise of the Greek islands in 1997, I wandered around Rhodes on my own when I saw, among a block of government buildings, an open door with a crowd of people milling about inside and outside the building. I wandered in (again, like French Guiana, no security to stop me) and found a court in session. There were very animated exchanges between court officials and the man and woman in the dock and, also, between the judges themselves (of whom there were five or six).
Knowing virtually no Greek, I had no idea what the court procedure was all about. However, I asked a group of cops outside if any spoke English (I had learned how to ask that in Greek), to which one young officer said he did, whereupon I asked him what the charges against the defendant were. When he shrugged that he didn’t know the English term, I gave him my English-Greek dictionary and he pointed to the Greek word that translated to “theft/embezzlement.”
Later, as I was walking back to the ship, I saw at a fruit stand a man whom I had seen in the courtroom, whom I took to be a prosecutor. When I discovered that he spoke some English, I asked him what the trial was all about, to which he said with a heavy accent, “Much money.”
posted by Mycroft Watson at 5:50 PM
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