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Sherry-Ann Joseph Court Case Assignment Before court began I went to observe a criminal case on October 9, 2019 at Forsyth County courthouse. The case was under the General Court of Justice District Court Division. Outside of the courtroom were witnesses, regular citizens (like the students at Wake Law), attorneys, and defendants. While time pasted, I observed some of the defendants talking to each other about their case, attorneys on the phone with other clients, and police officers of the court keeping watch of what was going on in the hallways.

First court proceedings Approximately five to six defendants were on the docket. They defendants were called one by one by the states attorney in order to acknowledge that they were signing waivers agreeing to represent themselves. Proceeding such actions, the attorney informed them by signing the waiver they would be joining the states Defer Program. Through the Defer Program they would be appointed to conduct community hours they had to complete.

Trial Case On the trial case, the defendants name was Mr. Spann. From the short testimony given (by the resource officer), Mr. Spann was a high school student who was illegally searched by a school officer. After the state attorney introduced the case, he called the first witness who was one of Campbell High School’s resource officers. The officer testified that he knew the defendant due to seeing him in school. He also explained that he heard from fellow officers that Mr. Spann was a suspect in a robbery that occurred on October 4, 2018. After getting this far with his testimony,

the Judge called both the states and defendants counsel to his chamber. Finally, after about twenty minutes the Judge and attorneys came out and both sides asked for a motion to dismiss. The Judge granted the motions to dismiss and explained why he felt that was the best way to handle the case. He explained that even though he is a conservative and believes that situations like discipline should he handled the way they were when he was a child, as a matter of law the officer was wrong. He informed everyone that the officer had a duty to get a search warrant before searching Mr. Spann. He sympathized with the officer and expressed that in today’s world discipline does not occur in school because of how the law has changed and does not fully agree with it. However, he stated that this is his job and he’ll do what his job entails him to do....