Trial time

Last week I did not spend one of my days with my sponsor. Instead, I followed around a different criminal defense lawyer. The reason I did this was because he had a trial going on. Basically, this is what happened. A young lady, around 22 years old I believe, was walking by herself in downtown Cleveland. She was walking down a deserted allie, where she was met by a 25 year old African American male. He told her to go with him into a garage, where he allegedly verbally abused her, and ultimately forced her to give him oral sex. He then told her to turn around and walk to the other side of the garage with her eyes closed. She refused this order over and over because she believed that if she did this, she would definitely die. Ultimately, the kidnapper "lessened" his demands to her counting to 100 before coming out. There after, she stumbled upon a family of 5 outside, and she begged for help. They gave her a phone and she called 911, in which case the authorities arrived immediately. Now, you may be asking yourself, how were they ever able to catch the man responsible? After all, couldn't he be anywhere in Cleveland? While this is true, there was a fairly important detail I left out earlier, because it is very graphic. When she was giving the man oral sex, at the end, he told her to "swallow." What happened was, she pretended to but did not, so when the police and the forensics team ultimately arrived and responded to her emergency phone call, the DNA team was able to use the sperm to find out who committed this hadious act. That happened about 7 months ago, which leads us to last week, trial day. My sponsor told me quite honestly that he has absolutely no idea why the defendent wanted this to go to trial. The woman says it was him, and DNA evidence proves it was him. Despite that, there I was sitting on floor 16 of the justice center awaiting the start of what seemed to be a very one sided trial. I watched 3 parts of the trial; the opening for the prosecution, the opening for the defense, and the cross examination conducted by the prosecution. The opening for the prosecution really tried to play at the hearts of the jury. The lawyer talked about all of the harm brought open such an innocent woman, etc. This pattern was repeated in the cross examination, in which the prosecution used this time to ask questions to the victim. There was a tremendous amount of sadness and crying, which even made me feel very emotional and inclined to send this man to prison if I was a member of the jury that day. And this also leads us to the opening by the defense. Basically, it went like this (2 parts). The lawyer said that first, remember they have the burden of proving him guilty, which is difficult to do; and second, that it was not a rape kit, it was a sex kit. All I can say is, I hope that man enjoys jail food, because I see no way he can possibly win.