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A criminal trial is not significantly different from a civil trial. Your case will be tried before a jury, and the first problem for your attorney will be to see to it that the jurors are not prejudiced or biased.
Your attorney will of course question the jurors as to their attitude toward narcotics, or the mere possession of narcotics.
After the jury has been selected, the prosecutor will make an opening. He must be expected to dwell on the evils of narcotics and the importance to the public of firm and severe treatment of narcotics offenders. Your lawyer will follow with a statement of your defense, stressing that there is no evidence whatever directly linking you with the narcotics traffic and that you have never used narcotics or even handled them in any way.
As soon as the prosecutor offers the paper bag in evidence, therefore, your lawyer should file a motion with the court to suppress the evidence on the ground that it was illegally obtained and that its admission as evidence deprives you of your constitutional rights. The judge may ask your lawyer and the prosecutor to submit legal arguments on the point.
Even if the judge denies your lawyer's motion your lawyer will "take an exception" to the judge's ruling, which makes that ruling reviewable by an appellate or higher court.
If your lawyer's motion is denied, the prosecutor will put the policeman who arrested you on the witness stand and examine him directly.
The policeman will tell the whole story in a manner most harmful or prejudicial to you. Your lawyer then has the opportunity to cross-examine the policeman. He will also do everything he can to discredit the reasons the policeman had.
When the prosecution has finished presenting its case and your lawyer has completed his cross-examination of prosecution witnesses, he will normally move that the case against you be dismissed. If the judge denies the motion, as is usually the case, your lawyer will proceed to present the case for the defense.
Character witnesses will be important in your case, which in the last analysis resolves itself into a conflict between your statement that you have no idea how the paper bag got into the car and the fact that it was there. Your own character witnesses may, of course, be cross-examined by the prosecutor.
At the end of the trial, it is customary for the prosecutor to sum up his case to the jury and for your lawyer to make a closing statement on your behalf. He may want to point out to the jury that nothing the prosecution has said or charged directly connects you with the narcotics found in the automobile you had borrowed. There is almost certainly a missing link in the case.
LESSON 28
| 1. Topic Activities: | Trial (part 2) |
| 2. Speaking: | Discussion |
| 3. Supplementary reading: | The Charge, Verdict and Sentence |
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