Introduction

• Jurisdiction: United States

Introduction

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.—H.P. Lovecraft

I was a new criminal prosecutor for Los Angeles County assigned to a misdemeanor courtroom in front of Judge Rodriguez. I felt that I had a good rapport with the judge, and generally had a good handle on the day-to-day proceedings of the courtroom. I was excited to have my dream job, and eager to learn the ways of criminal law. One day, Judge Rodriguez, in a rather brusque manner, kicked me out of court. I did not understand what was happening or why I was asked to leave the courtroom. I was in the hallway in tears. Visions of going before the bar and losing my law license floated in my brain. I didn't know what I had done to warrant such punishment. My colleague walked up to me and asked me what was wrong. Through my relentless tears, I described what just happened and stated the judge was conducting some motion from mars. My colleague, recognizing that the court was actually conducting a Marsden motion, started laughing uncontrollably . . . at me! He explained this was a motion between a defendant and the defense attorney, and as a prosecutor I was not allowed to be present. I wiped up my tears and swore from that day forward I would never be so naive in a criminal courtroom.

Later in life, after becoming a judge, I had a young lawyer appear in front of me commenting on how one of his colleagues from a new group of hires in the prosecutor's office seemed to be ahead of the game with understanding criminal proceedings. His colleague had taken a unique class at law school that introduced students to terminology used in a criminal courtroom. At the time I was also an adjunct law professor at a law school, so I proposed a similar class. I created a curriculum to expose the new criminal attorney to the workings and terminology of the criminal courtroom. I created a textbook of materials, including code sections, PowerPoint slides, and other materials to use in my class. One of my students showed the...