Law and Justice experience

On December 8, 2008 I went to the court house to talk to some police officers about scheduling a ride along with them. Then i found the list of all of the criminal and civil cases that were happening at the time that i was there. After debating for about five minutes. I picked a criminal and civil case that was happening to the same person. The parties in the case were getting divorced. The criminal part of the case was that the defendant broke the restraining order that his wife has placed on him. The defendants lawyer rescind the case right in the middle of the case so the defendant was left to defend himself. Wile that has been happening i was just thinking to myself that what would I do if this would happen to me? I was already nervous just from being in the court room and I didn't even have to do anything except take notes and listen. I was not involved but being in the court room still made me nervous. During the trial the defendant wanted the judge to remove the restraining order because he wanted to have the opportunity to see his son. The judge did not remove it and did not modify anything. The defendant got the short end of the stick on that part but the judge had made a way for the defendant to be able to see his son. So the defendant got a part of his claim. Toward the end of the trial the defendant was trying to prove his point to the judge but he was not prepared and wile speaking to the judge the defendant was thinking of what to say so it made his closing argument very lacking of facts. During the closing argument I thought to myself that the defendant should of stopped when he had his facts straight and did not have to look up information and did not have to think of what to say but knew what to say. I thought that he was just digging him self a hole that he could not get out of. After being in a court room for two hours and listening how a regular person was defending himself I thought that if this situation would happen to me I would hire a good lawyer and have the lawyer defend me. From this experience I learned that it is not impossible for a regular person to defend themselves but it is really hard to defend yourself against someone that knows laws much better then you. I never knew that there were so many different things involved in a divorce case, before I thought that the people who are getting divorced they sign some papers and agree on when each person gets the kid, who pays the child support and how they get to divide the property. I am glad that I went into a court room instead of going on a ride along with a police officer. I believe that I learned much more from this experience then I would from a ride along.