Criminal Minds: Day One of Three

Today I appeared in Criminal Court on charges of Trespassing, Mischief, and Forcible Entry.

This is going to be a short post because I'm exhausted. I never believed I would actually end up arguing my case: I was sure the Crown would drop the charges at the last minute. But he didn't. The game is on.

Mr. Grieves, the Crown prosecutor, had set the trial down for one day, but it soon became apparent that between his witnesses, my witnesses, and time for argument and summation, that it would be more like three days. Today he called his witnesses, and next time we'll call my witnesses. Except because of scheduling conflicts, we had a bit of a trade-off where I deferred cross-examination of his last witness and examined my first witness instead. We didn't finish til almost six.

I'm not going to tell you much because I don't know what I'm allowed to say while the trial was still on. But I think I'm allowed to say I felt pretty good when I left. In fact, that would be an understatement. I think I'm winning, and I'll have some pretty good stories to tell when its all over. But I think that's all I'm going to say for now.

Actually, there's one more reason I'm holding back. As I told you recently, I had been able, with some difficulty, to subpoena six witnesses for the trial. I honestly thought that my witnesses would refuse to show up, and the Crown would drop the charges. But here they were! Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that we wouldn't have time to examine them today. So they'll have to come back next time. But as she was dismissing them, the Judge ordered them not to discuss any testimony amongst themselves. I don't believe I am under any such restriction with regard to this blog; but I feel it would be outside the spirit of the Judge's intentions for me to crow about the day's events while my opponents...er...sorry, witnesses...are muzzled. So I'm going to keep a lid on it.

We return to court at 9:00 am (that's an hour early because the judge wanted to make sure we had time to do all my witnesses) on Wednesday the 25th of September in Rm 403. That's a big courtroom so they might move us down the hall to a smaller room after we get started. And it's open to the public. I know it seems funny to just drop in on a courtroom and watch the fun, but maybe people should do it more often.

In the meantime, the civil proceedings are heating up as well, so I should have some more stories on that front.  Stay tuned...