Hey everyone! I have another assignment for Government that I need to blog for :)) so I hope you enjoy.!
So on September 20, 2011 I went to a teen court offered in my community. Teen court is where teenagers that have committed a crime come to be juried by other teens that will hear the case and come to a conclusion on what the punishment should be. We the jury were sworn in at the beginning to try the case equally and fairly. After we sworn in, the defendant would be sworn in and then we would hear what the case was about. We did a grand jury first. The defendant in this petty theft crime pled guilty and admitted to stealing the items. We as the jury asked the defendant different questions about the crime, why she did it, what she learned, would she do it again, etc etc. After we felt like we asked enough questions that we could come up with a reasonable punishment for the defendant we went back in to the jury room and went through the list of things we could check off for them to do. I said I would be the foreman (The one who writes on the punishment paper and then reads the verdict the the defendant when we rejoined the court.) We went through each punishment and voted for the different things listed. Came up with what we thought was good punishment for the person. We then rejoined the court and I read the verdict aloud to the defendant and the the ones sitting in the court room. After that case was done we moved on the the next case that was a trail case. The defendant was an underage person with a alcoholic beverage in their hand. This case we had other teen training to become attorneys be the defendant attorney and then the state. They presented their opening arguments (which was no evidence) and then we moved into calling the defendant to the stand where both the prosecutor and the defendant attorney questioned the person. After that we moved into the closing arguments (which was also not evidence) after we heard all that was going to be said like we did before we went to the jury room and came up with the best type of punishment the defendant needed to do. This case was harder then the first because there was not enough presented but we did what we could. Again went out and I presented what the jury's verdict was. At that time all the cases were heard and the verdict given to so we were dismissed. It was all very interesting, one harder then the other but it was good. It was also a very nice experience to actually know what a court room feeling feels like and what its like to serve on jury. I enjoyed it very much. The two ways to become a citizen are one being born in the United States or two by naturalization. Both apart of the 14th amendment. Citizenship should not be taken lightly, its a honor to have the rights you do as a citizen. But to have rights there are things the country needs you to do in order to keep the nation going.
So heres my government assignment :))
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