‘Your Honours, counsel, my name is Gerry Hall and I am the attorney representing Lyndell Howard, the defendant in this case. You know, I got up early this morning and I reviewed the trial court pleadings, and the motions we had filed there in the trial court, the transcripts of some of the testimony. I looked at the trial court briefs, and then the Supreme Court briefs, trying to better develop my argument and then it kind of dawned on me — this is all stoopid. You’ve all read everything we’ve put before you, and I don’t need to bore you with recitations of what Greever or Felinar or all those other cases say, or the significance of s. 5-3-1 of the Criminal Code, and how that applies here. They may have helped to get us here, and I think they certainly are supportive, but I think the real problem, and the reason we have cases interpeting this official misconduct statute, is that it’s just not entirely clear. If it were, we wouldn’t be here. Because it would be, you know, black and white.’
So began the case of Williams v Manchester in the Supreme Court of Illinois. They upload video of the submissions to the internet. It’s an appeal court, so many of the objections to televising court proceedings do not apply with the same force. Watch the case here, if only for an insight of how differently they do things over there (see above: ‘You know, I got up early this morning and…’). Or you can look at a case summary, read the written arguments as .pdf files, watch the oral arguments, and read the judgments in certain cases of the Florida Supreme Court here. More options at the bottom of this page. All this I learnt from this blog.
