LAW MODULE 2013

CRIMINAL LAW

LABS 1-3

LAB 1: COURT ADVOCACY

Task 1: Look at the list of crimes in the box, then look at the categories below. Decide which category each one comes under, and write the crime in the appropriate space in the table. Some crimes can be listed under more than one category. One of the words / expressions in the list is not a crime.

Crimes against the person

Crimes against property

Public order offences

Road traffic offences

Sexual offences

Political offences

Offences against justice

1. abduction 2. actual bodily harm 3. aiding and abetting (= assisting) an offender 4. arson 5. assault 6. battery 7. being equipped to steal 8. Bigamy 9. blackmail 10. breach of the Official Secrets Act 11. breaking and entering 12. bribery 13. burglary 13. careless or reckless driving 14. committing a breach of the peace 15. conspiracy 16. contempt of court 17. criminal damage (vandalism, and sometimes also hooliganism) 18. deception or fraud in order to obtain property, services or pecuniary advantage 19. driving without a licence or insurance 20. drug dealing 21. drunk in charge/drink driving 22. embezzlement 23. espionage 24. forgery 25. grievous bodily harm 26. handling stolen goods 27. indecency 28. indecent assault 29. infanticide 30. manslaughter 31. misuse of drugs 32. money laundering 33. murder 34. obscenity 35. obstruction of the police 36. paedophilia 37. perjury 38. perverting the course of justice 39. piracy 40. possessing something with intent to damage or destroy property 41. possessing weapons 42. racial abuse 43. rape 44. robbery 45. sedition 46. suicide 47. terrorism 48. theft 49. treason 50. unlawful assembly 51. wounding

Task 2: Look at these situations, then decide which crime has been, or is being, committed in each case.

1. TV Newsreader: Police believe the fire was started deliberately at around 2 o'clock this morning when burning paper was pushed through the letterbox. They are appealing for witnesses to the event. 2. Crown Prosecutor: Tell us in your own words exactly what happened. Witness: We were in the bar when a man walked up to the victim, pointed a gun at his head and said 'You're a dead man.' Then he pulled the trigger three times. 3. Police constable: You were going in excess of 60, and this is a 30 zone. Man in car: I think you're mistaken, constable. I was well within the speed limit. 4. Woman: When I got home, I discovered that my back door had been broken open. Police officer: Had anything been stolen? Woman: Yes, my new laptop, 200 in cash and my pet parrot. 5. Police officer: I'm sorry sir, but I have to report your actions to the proper authorities. Man: Look, officer, here's 50. Let's just pretend this didn't happen, eh? 6. Extract from a newspaper article: The two men were arrested and detained after police checks revealed that they had been distributing pornographic material over the Internet. 7. Interviewing detective: All right, Dagsy. We know you didn't do the Cornmarket Street bank job yourself, but we know that you were involved somehow. Police suspect: I was just driving the car Mr Regan, honest. And I didn't know what the others were up to until they came back with bags of cash. 8. TV newsreader: The car bomb went off in a busy marketplace, injuring several shoppers. 9. Radio newsreader: The police raided a house in New Street this morning and recovered 250 illegal copies of the latest Harry Potter film, along with professional film copying equipment. 10. Man reading newspaper: I don't believe it. The Foreign Minister has been caught giving government secrets to another country! 11. Political agitator: Now is the time to rise up and overthrow the running dogs that call themselves our government. Death to the Prime Minister and his cronies! Death to the Royal

Family! Death to the system that bleeds us dry and abandons us! Unwashed anarchist hordes: Hooray! 12. Shop assistant: I can't accept this 20 note, madam. It's a fake. Customer: What? You mean it's counterfeit? Shop assistant: I'm afraid so. Do you have any other means of payment? 13. Extract from a newspaper article: The investigation into the rail accident confirmed that it occurred because the rail company had failed to maintain the tracks properly over a five-year period. Eight people died when the train left the tracks and hit an embankment. 14. Police officer: Take your time and tell me

what happened, dear.

Pensioner: The man who came to my door said he had come to read the electric meter, so I let him in. I went to the kitchen to make him a cup of tea. When I returned he had gone, and so had my television. 15. TV newsreader: A journalist working in the city disappeared this morning. Police later received a note from a militant faction claiming that they had taken him and were holding him hostage. 16. Woman: The graffiti around here is getting really bad. Last week somebody wrote 'Chelsea are rubbish' on our garden wall. Man: That's not good. It should say 'Chelsea are complete rubbish'. 17. Man: Look at this note, Cheri. It arrived in the post today. It says 'Leave 10,000 in cash in the bin by the bus stop, or I'll tell everyone your dirty secret'. Woman: Don't worry about it, Tony. It's probably another little joke from him next door. 18. Prosecuting lawyer: Tell us again what happened on the night of the incident, Mr Williams. And let me remind you that you are still under oath. Defendant: Like I told you, I was at home asleep, so I have no idea what happened. Prosecuting lawyer: Don't lie, Mr Williams. We have video evidence that you were in the nightclub until 3am. And you were seen by several witnesses. 19. Defendant: I don't recognise this court. This trial shouldn't be taking place.

Judge: Sit down, Mr Dowling. You are out of order. Defendant: Oh shut up, you silly old woman. Go back home and do some washing up or something. 20. Accountant: We've audited these accounts very carefully, and they just don't add up. Office manager: What exactly are you saying? Accountant: I'm saying that someone in your office has been secretly helping themselves to company money. 21. TV presenter: Jimmy Bond, a former government intelligence agent, has just published a book about the Intelligence Service called 'Lifting the Lid'. In it, he gives us a revealing insight into the life of a secret agent. The government have strongly condemned the book, claiming it contains classified information that should not be in the public domain. 22. Magistrate: Constable, could you explain what happened?

Police constable: I was proceeding down Newland Street at approximately 8 o'clock last night when I heard a lot of shouting coming from The Newlands Inn public house. On entering, I saw the accused in a state of undress and dancing on a table. Magistrate: You mean he was naked? Police constable: Yes. As the day he was born. 23. Radio newsreader: The judge in the trial of notorious gangster Joe 'Pinko' Pallino adjourned the court today after it was revealed that several members of the jury had been offered bribes and other incentives to pass a verdict of 'not guilty' on Mr Pallino. 24. TV presenter: A bank account was opened in a false name in the Bahamas, and the cash deposited there. The funds were then sent by telegraphic transfer to another account in Switzerland, and the Bahamas account was closed. It was at this stage that the Metropolitan Police called in Interpol.

Task 3: Complete the guidelines for lawyers with the words from the list.

Examination-in-chief Opening speech Closing speech Leading questions Cross-examination The claimants lawyer will make __________________ to the court. It should: (a) state the nature of the case before the court; (b) state the issues that will need to be decided; (c) summarise the facts that you will seek to establish during the trial.

At the beginning of the ____________________, you should ask the witness to introduce himself or herself to the court by providing details of his/her name, address, and, if relevant to the case, employment details. Then you should refer the witness to the dispute being tried and to the point at which his or her evidence begins. You should then take the witness through the evidence in a logical way. It is usually best to approach the evidence in a chronological order. Then stop. Do not repeat yourself. ________________ are not allowed. These are questions that contain their own answers. Often, but not always, they are questions to which the only answer is yes or no. For example, the question, Did you last see him at 10.00 am? is a leading question. It should be rephrased as, When did you last see him? The purpose of _________________ is to challenge the version of events given during examination-inchief. You may challenge a witness either on specific parts of his or her evidence, or by challenging his or her credibility more generally, for example, by demonstrating to the court that the witness is biased, or untrustworthy. ______________ should summarise the argument that underpins the whole case, which you hope will persuade the judge to decide the case in your favour. The suggested structure for this speech is as follows: (a) Introduction; (b) Issues; (c) Narrative; (d) The argument; (e) Confirmation and refutation; (f) Result.

Task 4: Fill in the table with the suitable forms of address.

Title Mode of address in court

High Court Judge

Judge (except High Court)

Magistrates (when addressing several collectively)

Magistrate (when addressing a single magistrate)

District Judge,

Chair of Tribunal

Barrister

barrister or solicitor when addressed by a judge

Solicitor

solicitor or barrister when addressed by a judge

Claimant or Defendant in person

My learned friend (when addressed by another the title Mr/Ms/Miss/Mrs is likely to be used, followed by the barristers surname) OR Counsel for the [Prosecution/Claimant/ Defendant] My Lord/My Lady, Your Lordship/Your Ladyship Master Sir/Madam Your Worships

My friend (when addressed by another the title Mr/Ms/Miss/Mrs is likely to be used, followed by the solicitors surname) Your Worship OR Sir/Madam Sir/Madam If addressed directly, the Claimant or Defendant is referred to either as Claimant or Defendant OR by his or her title and surname (e.g. Mr Smith, Ms Jones)

Your Honour

Now, find and underline the above forms of address in the suggested phrases for the court proceedings.

Opening Introductions by claimants advocate Your Honour, I appear for the claimant in this matter, Mr Gerald Simmons, and my learned friend Miss Arkwright appears for the defendant, Grainger Ltd. Stating nature of case This case concerns a claim by Mr Simmons against the defendant company in respect of an item of equipment known as (Product X) purchased by him from the defendant which he says contains a manufacturing defect which renders the equipment useless for the purpose for which he wished to use it. Stating the issues between the parties Your Honour, this case falls within the ambit of the Sale and Supply of Goods Act 1994. It is not in dispute that the equipment contained a defect. However, my client argues that the full extent of this defect was not brought to his attention prior to completion of the purchase. The defendant argues that it was. The key issue to be determined by the court is therefore a factual one whether, for the purposes of section 1 of the Act, the defect was effectively brought to the claimants attention. Examination-in-chief

Calling witness Id like to call my first witness, Mr John Edmonds. Putting the witness at ease Mr Edmonds, what is your full name? Where do you live?

What do you do for a living? Connecting witness with relevant party How long have you known Mr Simmons? In what capacity do you know Mr Simmons? Focusing attention on the matter in dispute What were you doing on the morning of 2 May? What happened after Mr Simmons began discussing the equipment with Graingers sales representative? What did you hear them say about the equipment? Asking the witness for a particular fact What was the name of the piece of equipment? What was the name of the people you were with? What time was it when that happened? What did he say next? Finishing examination-in-chief Thank you, Mr Edmonds. I have no further questions, but please stay where you are as I expect the defendants counsel will have some questions for you. Cross-examination Mr Simmons, you mentioned earlier that you work as an accountant. Is that right? You were accompanying Mr Simmons purely on a social basis, not for business purposes, werent you? So its fair to assume that you dont have specific technical knowledge of engineering equipment, isnt it? You also told the court that the discussions Mr Simmons had with Graingers representative appeared to be of a highly technical nature?

Task 5: Listen to the recording of the court hearing and answer the questions. (1) Trandex Apartments Ltd is bringing court proceedings against Arturo Creations Ltd: a. because Arturo Creations Ltd has allowed significant arrears of rent to build up; b. because of non-payment of rent; c. because the arrears of rent have now reached 20,000; d. because arrears have built up over a period of 14 months. (2) The judge wants to know: a. whether Arturo Creations Ltd intends to defend the proceedings; b. whether Arturo Creations Ltd accepts the figures set out in the statement of claim; c. whether there is in the court file a copy of the tenancy agreement; d. whether the case has been settled. (3) The reason the rent was not paid was: a. costs involved in market repositioning; b. lack of orders for the defendants products;

c. intense competition; d. cash-flow problems caused by difficult business conditions. (4) A suspended order will be made, according to which: a. The arrears will be paid off in monthly instalments over the course of one year. b. The arrears will be paid off in 10 instalments over a period of two months. c. The arrears will be cleared within one year. d. A sum of 5,000 will be paid immediately and the rest on 5 August. (5) The judges point about the claimants costs is that: a. The defendants lawyer should agree with the amount claimed as costs. b. The court should have received a schedule of costs. c. The schedule of costs should be attached to the draft order. d. The defendant should have received a schedule of costs.

LAB 2: HANS REISER CASE Task 1: Read the article and do the tasks. COMPUTER PROGRAMMER'S ATTORNEYS USE 'GEEK DEFENSE' On Trial for Murder, Man Being Portrayed As Eccentric, Difficult By Karl Vick

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, February 24, 2008; Page A03

OAKLAND, Calif. -- When Nina Reiser disappeared in September 2006, investigators suspecting foul play looked long and hard at her estranged husband, the computer genius Hans. Eccentric, awkward and notoriously difficult as a human being, Hans Reiser proved quite accommodating when it came to providing clues.

After taking no part in the massive public effort to search for the mother of his two children, he listed the reasons he was happy that Nina was gone in a phone call monitored by police. He discreetly purchased copies of "Masterpieces of Murder" and "Homicide" from a local bookstore. Police discovered his passport in his fanny pack along with $8,000 in cash and a cellphone that could not be tracked electronically because its battery was removed, just like the phone found inside Nina's minivan, which was found abandoned on a side street smelling of rotting groceries; she had been to the store before dropping the kids at Hans's house.

Police also found soaked floorboards in his car and an empty space where the passenger seat should have been. In the courtroom where Hans Reiser is on trial for murder, all this might appear to indicate guilty knowledge. But his attorneys cast it as evidence of an innocence peculiar to Hans, a computer programmer so immersed in the folds of his own intellect that he had no idea how complicit he was making himself appear. "Being too intelligent can be a sort of curse," defense counsel William Du Bois said. "All this weird conduct can be explained by him, but he's the only one who can do it. People who are commonly known as computer geeks are so into the field."

And so this week, after a prosecution case that took almost three months, Du Bois launched what Wired magazine dubbed "the Geek Defense." In court, Du Bois has taken pains to portray his client as an irritating nebbish. He has repeatedly asked Alameda County Circuit Court Judge Larry Goodman to order his client to stop distracting him by talking in his ear at the defense table. He called Reiser "an inconsiderate slob" in front of the jury.

"We're leaving the right message," Du Bois said outside court. "He's a very difficult person. It's very difficult to represent a genius." The effort will be watched and appreciated down the breadth of Silicon Valley, perhaps the only place a computer genius might find a jury of peers.There, Hans Reiser's actions appear fairly reasonable, at least to people who spend much more time with computer code than with other humans.

"It strikes me that a lot of coders have a somewhat detached view of the world, and it's reasonable to assume that Hans might not even have stopped to think about how things looked," said Rick Moen, a local area network consultant in Menlo Park.

"I remove my cellphone battery periodically, and I've taught many people to do the same," noted John Gilmore, a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is challenging the Bush administration in court on wiretaps. "What can you do when the FCC mandates tracking capability to every cellphone? On the lame excuse that once in a while someone calls 911 and can't give the address."

On his LinuxMafia site, Moen maintains a timeline of the case culled from the posts filed from correspondents in the courthouse gallery 35 miles north, live-blogging the trial for the San Francisco Chronicle and Wired's Threat Level blog. "I met Hans a couple of times socially, and he did not strike me as being all that peculiar for a technical person," Moen said. "A little bit intense, a bit highly focused. Quite bright." Now 44, Reiser was accepted at the University of California at Berkeley at age 14. He wrote a role-playing game to compete with Dungeons & Dragons and dabbled in science fiction. His signal adult achievement was ReiserFS, a file system he named for himself, unusual in the programming world. The system organizes data on Linux, the "open source" operating system.

After opening a company in Russia, he met Nina Sharanova, a striking obstetrician-gynecologist using a dating service to meet foreigners. They married when she became pregnant, but after the second child was born in 2001, Nina began an affair with Hans's best friend, Sean Sturgeon. The cross-dressing bondage and discipline enthusiast had been "maid of honor" at their wedding.

The ensuing divorce was ugly. Hans accused Nina of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, saying she made their son ill for her own gratification. Nina complained of Hans's avowed enthusiasm for violent video games, which he encouraged the boy to play as a rite of passage. Relations were so brittle that a police officer seeing them exchange the children one day advised Nina to "get a gun." She was last seen at Hans's house, where she was dropping off the children for Labor Day weekend 2006. She was 31 then.

"His undergraduate thesis is on how if you change the perspective, the reality is different," said Ramon Reiser, the defendant's mathematician father, folding a pair of pants in the courtroom hallway as he waited to testify. The thesis might apply to the evidence, which the judge in the preliminary hearing termed thin. Ramon Reiser argued that it's likelier that Nina is back in her native Russia with funds embezzled from her husband's business than in an unmarked grave she was carried to in the soaked, seatless Honda CR-X. The children are with Nina's mother in St. Petersburg.

"When you look at it, would Hans Reiser turn a hose on a car to wash it? Absolutely, his mother told him to get that car cleaned up," the elder Reiser said. "I and my brother -- maybe it's genetic -- have driven our cars without the front seat. It's really convenient." If Hans Reiser testifies in his own defense, his attorney said the risk is that "this guy is so weird, it's a little tricky to wrap yourself around it if you're a juror." He described his client as borderline for Asperger's Syndrome, a condition that self-described geeks call unusually common in the computer industry, combining as it does an exceptional ability to focus with an inability to read social cues.

Gilmore added that the unforgiving nature of computers demands of coders "a perfectionism that makes it hard sometimes in social situations. When I see something that's a little bit wrong, and I ought to just shut up and roll with it, but I comment and it causes trouble with the people around me. Back-seat driving and that sort of thing."

Yet not all the strangeness in the case arises from computers. Du Bois takes every opportunity to mention Sturgeon, who in addition to his role as Hans's friend and Nina's lover, told investigators that he killed eight people years ago. It's unclear whether the claim is true: Sturgeon remains free. But the judge forbade attorneys from mentioning the claim in court.

In any event, Sturgeon reportedly has insisted that whatever his crimes, he had nothing to do with Nina's disappearance. Wired quoted him as saying that, in the Reiser case, he is red herring, or rather, he said, "a red Sturgeon."

Who are the following people from the article?

1. Hans Reiser 2. Nina Reiser 3. William DuBois 4. Larry Goodman 5. John Gilmore 6. Sean Sturgeom 7. Ramon Reiser

Law terms. Find the following expressions in the text and try to explain what they mean:

1. trial 2. attorneys 3. defense counsel 4. jury 5. defense table 6. preliminary hearing 7. embezzled funds 8. testify 9. defendant

Find words for the following definitions:

1. separated, withdrawn - e...................... 2. participating in guilt/ guilty - c........................ 3. wiring the phone in order to listen to sb elses conversation - w.......................... 4. separated, selected - c........................ 5. following, the next one - e............................. 6. fragile - b..............................................

Match the following collocations and idiomatic expressions and try to explain their meaning:

1. take a. slob 2. irritating b. of passage 3. inconsiderate c. excuse 4. lame d. pains 5. dabble e. bondage 6. cross-dressing f. herring 7. rite g. conduct 8. red h. nebbish 9. weird i. in

Comprehension questions: a. Make a list of examples of Hans Reisers weird behaviour. b. What is DuBoiss line of defense? c. How do Hanss peers perceive his behaviour? d. What do we learn about Reisers background? e. Who else might have been involved in Ninas disappearance and why?

Over to you: Do you think that Hans Reiser is guilty of murdering his wife? Task 2: Watch the first part of the video material on Hans Reiser. On the basis of evidence, make hypothesis as to the solution of the case. Now, watch the second part and find out the solution.

LAB 3: MOCK TRIAL Task 1: Enact scripted mock trial, using appropriate language and going through the required steps.