At work, probably the biggest highlight was that I did my first jury trial. I always thought I would spend lots of time preparing for my first trial, but this did not happen like that. I learned about a half-hour before it began that my case would be going and another prosecutor asked if I had voir dire prepared. I had time to jot down a few notes, but mostly I had to wing it. It was a lot of fun, especially once I realized I was just having a conversation with the jury. There was a constant underlying fear that I would do something appealable (like call the defendant a liar,) but since there was a not-guilty verdict, any mistakes I made have long since been forgotten. It all went pretty well, except my testifying officer, when I asked him to name the defendant, used the first name of the defendant and the last name of the victim: it was an assault case: a bar fight to be more exact. It was not an easy case to get a guilty verdict. Essentially it came down to deciding who threw the first punch and I believe the jury just kind of threw up their arms and came back not-guilty (the judge said it was clear that the defendant was lying through his teeth on the stand, but why do you think his lawyer wanted a jury and not a bench trial.)
In my own defense for not blogging, I was gone for a whole week in Alaska. Here is a picture of a grizzly bear we saw:
I really liked Alaska. Granted we only saw a very little of it (only a week cruise up the inland passage) but it still maintains such wilderness as I have never experienced, unlike Colorado, Washington, or anywhere else I have been. If we ever run away from it all, it is to Alaska we will go.
And now school starts this week. I only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays this week, so tomorrow is going to be just a plain old work day for me--except that I have to do homework. I have successful forgotten about homework until, well, right about now when I am going to start reading. As you can tell, I have chosen to blog instead. That must mean school has started. I am already looking for distractions. This is supposed to be the year they bore you to death.
There is really a lot more that happened in the last month, but sometimes life is just meant to be lived and not recorded.
