day 35.. attend court and offer your verdict to the judge!!

Here i am outside boro law courts.

day 35..."Today attend court and offer your verdict to the judge"

I was excited by this task..., i did jury service some years ago and loved it,the workings of the legal system and all that, however the offering my verdict to the judge (shouting it out) part made me a little nervous.

Benrik wanted me to hear the case , both sides of the argument  consider then lot then pass  judgement, i had to find a creative way to do this, as blatantly shouting it out would probably lead to my very own court case.

At about 4pm i headed into the law courts.. and went through the standard rigmarole "take everythong metal out of your pockets, and put it in the dish" this i did  but the arch wouldnt stop beeping .. this made the man at the otherside of the detector arch curious so i got frisked and wanded (wanded isnt some horrific euphamism) it means arms in the air  and the dude gets his hand held metal detector lashed.

mike was overjoyed to  find a court  open  with the lights off and noone in.. i was dying to chance my arm and take a seat in the judges chair, but thought better of it.. that would probably be fairly hard to explain.

 

Anyway i found a court that was in session and took my premier seat in the gallary upstairs.

Turns out it was a hearing to decide wether an iranian dude could be released on bail or not following having a knife to his ex partners throat and threatening to steal her (according to him their) kid. Prosecution and defence took turns outlining what they wanted and why... with a translator who had to repeat EVERYTHING   in persian as the defendent no speaka de english, i hope hes paying for that i thought to myself.. knowing full well he wasnt (typical, been here 3 years and doesnt speak a word of it, if the arguments hadnt made my mind up that certainly gave me a nudge)...As the magistrates got up to confur and decide wether to grant bail or not i knew the moment had come,  i let out a very audile cough that sounded identical to "NO BAIL".people looked up.. did they heed the message? no idea.

They must have been split as they didnt return in time for me to see if my donation had aided in the making of a righteous  decision... To be fair how can you say "yeah knife to some birds throat, and threatening kidknap , but its his first offence?" yeah until you grant him bail and he commits his second.

Well i went to court, listened, made a decision and let the court hear it.. did it make the difference? I have no way of knowing. But im gunna assume the desired result was achieved.

The funniest thing that occured today.. nay maybe this week was a brief moment when one of the magistrates fell asleep in the stuffy room while the case was going on... and the head magistrate( next to him) had to give him a sly nudge to wake him.. ill be honest for aminute there he looked dead.

mission accomplished.