Firearms Field Trip and a Conviction

This has been an eventful week for me in the DA's office. On Monday, the law clerks had a field trip to the LAPD Firearms Unit. Before then, I don't think I had ever seen an actual gun. When we got to the Firearms Building, two geeky, sarcastic men in their forties led us on a presentation about guns. They went through a powerpoint presentation with a table full of various guns -- probably about 25 in all. They also went through the different types of guns, their origins, etc. And they let us take pictures. I won't post any here, but I have a picture with a huge four foot long gun of some sort. Definitely not my typical thing. :-) We also saw how they used this machine called IBIS to match bullets and how they tested various guns to reconstruct a crime scene.

Wednesday, I saw my first jury verdict live from the courtroom. In fact, if anyone follows the news, the verdict I saw read was for the Anderson case, the well-known USC geneticist who faced charges of molestation. After watching the trial unfold for three weeks, it was very dramatic to see the jurors march into the courtroom, hand the verdict sheet to the judge, who then handed the sheet to the bailiff, who then read the results in open court. The courtroom was packed with DA's, reporters, and others from the public. Since the case received such high media attention, the jurors declined being interviewed and their names were sealed by the judge. Perhaps what I found most interesting was how inaccurate or stilted the media often reported the trial. Since I actually heard much of the testimony and watched much of the trial, I was surprised to read news articles that did such a shoddy job of reporting the events as they actually were. I found many inaccuracies, mischaracterizations, and one-sided reports during the past few weeks. The larger newspapers did a better job, but I still found some of the reporting to be unrepresentative of what actually happened in context. It makes you wonder how much of the news to believe...