A day in court

A policeman delivered my handwritten summons at work. “Court number 5, 15th of October 2012 at 8am”. I had to take these details down elsewhere because my carbonated copy was barely visible.

I arrived at 7.30, excuse the punctuality but I have never been to court   so I may have been a tad bit nervous.

There the inefficiencies began…

I was only attended to at 10am, by the state prosecutor who wanted to run through our stories before the court proceedings. He spoke to us, the two witnesses, as well as the accused. He seemed to have grasped the general gist of what had occurred the day in question. Then he left…

About 30 minutes later he comes back and informs us that we should move from court 5 to court 2 where the case will be heard. And so we move…

30 minutes later he comes to inform us that the judge who was assigned to our case has expressed that he is too senior to deal with such a minor case and so we will be heard by a junior magistrate. We had to move to court 4…

30 minutes later, he comes to inform us that he has been handed another case and so he will be passing our case on to another prosecutor. He introduces us to the new prosecutor who has to familiarise with the case. This involves him reading the docket and again taking us in for a briefing.

The court session begins and we the witnesses have to leave the courtroom and would only be called in if necessary. Before our case had been heard, I had sat through two cases. One, a physical abuse involving a commuter omnibus tout and a passenger. The other involving a man who had stolen a fence from his neighbour because he wanted to purchase “groceries”. Both were sentenced to community service.

I digress…

The accused got called up to the stand, which meant I had to leave the courtroom. He was in the courtroom for 5 minutes and pleaded guilty (after months of denying the crime) and was forced to pay a fine of $40. This meant I didn’t even have to say anything. I was not required after all

5 hours of my time for a $40 fine!!!!!!!!!!

Where is the justice in that???