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Observation Of The Judge Petrolle: Court Case

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On the morning of Wednesday, November 5, 2014 I woke up at 8 a.m. and headed right over to the courthouse in Newark to witness my first ever court case. I opened up the doors, walked through the metal detectors and was finally at Veterans Courthouse. Due to your recommendation, I was looking for Judge Petrolle. The whole time I was there I helplessly walked around the courthouse for an hour following signs that said what room he would be in, but he was no where to be found. Finally, I decided to ask someone and ended up meeting Judge Carole(i think that was her name) who was extremely helpful and informed me that Judge Petrolle was off duty. I ended up talking to her for about 5 minutes or so and I told her about the assignment so she gave …show more content…

I learned that this happened because the witness testifying, David Fates, was dressed in prison clothes. State v. Hartwell declares that being in prison clothes immediately takes away that persons credibility and the prosecutor can use that against the witness. Now that we know the all the details about the case we can get into and better understand the details that took place during the short 2 hour period I was present in the courtroom. The entire time I was in the courtroom David Fate was at the witness stand being questioned by the prosecutor as Perry silently sat with his defendant. The prosecutor was going into extreme detail with questions to get every detail from what happened the day of February 22, 2009. She had photographic evidence and a projector at hand while she had Fate draw and label the pictures with his initials to point out certain scenarios and evidence found in the photographs. The responses that were generated from the questions being asked by the prosecutor revealed this story told by Fate. He was driving around in a stolen white mitsubishi with his cousin Tariq. They arrived at a travel to see what time they closed while Tariq was driving smoking cigarettes the whole time and Fate was in the passenger seat. After they left the travel agency they stopped at Burger King and got a large whopper with a Hersheys pie, Fate kept it on his …show more content…

I thought it was very obscure that you would have the criminals accomplice and own cousin as a witness for the trial. I find this weird because both of these men are criminals due to their criminal history and prior convictions. I thought it was extremely dragged out in the way that the prosecutor asked the simplest and littlest questions to Fate in order to generate the responses she wanted to hear. It seemed that every time she did not receive an answer that she agreed with or liked 100 percent she would pause for 15 seconds and then send out another question that would regenerate an answer that she wanted to hear. As this process proceeded the only thing the defendants attorney did was back his client up and made sure that none of the questions or responses were misleading. The judge seemed to be silent and just rolling his eyes throughout the whole questioning process, while he acted just as a mediator and listened to everyone talk without any input at all. I was not able to see anymore of this case so I do not not what the final decision will end up being. My guess would be that Mr. Perry gets a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of 28 years in prison or life. HIs cousin, the accomplice, should also see just as much time for being involved but I do not see him serving more than is cousin but possibly just as much. This case has dragged out for sometime now an it is due to Fate being accused of

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