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The Court Hearing At The Sonoma County Superior Court

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On Wednesday, April 6, I attended a court hearing at the Sonoma County Superior Court. At 8:15am I sat out in front of court room one, many of the people there were reading this paper out on the front of the court room which was the criminal calendar. Which sets the time and date to be called to in court. I entered court room one, which were all felony trials that were taking place. We all took our seats and sat down before the honor of Robert M. Laforge. To the right in front of me were the people who were being prosecuted, eight of them were males and two were females. Some of them had the same attorney who appointed to act for them in front of the judge. While in the court room I noticed many of their family members, or people whom they might have known in the court sitting beside me. First we had the arraignment which is when each of the criminals came before the court and the judge read out the criminal charges that were against them. Each of the defendants had a counsel appointed to them. After having read the charges to the defendant, a court appearance date was set, in which most of them were a preliminary hearing because most of the charges against the criminal were felonies. Many of the cases that were going out had to schedule for a preliminary trial which is a trial before a trial to see if the defendant is guilty or not guilty, and if there is even enough evidence to actually hold a trial. Most of the cases I observed were in the case of assault, in which one

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