And continuing the crime themed week, I visited our mock courtroom today.

This is a new suite of rooms that's replaced our old refectory which is a bit of a shame as it was a great place to eat cheaply when necessary.

Anyway, it was designed for the law students of course, but my digital forensics masters students had use of it for three hours to be 'expert witnesses' in a trial involving a defendent accused of having child pornography on his computer.

Before I knew what the actual crime involved I'd said that sounded interesting and could I come and watch the proceedings... but the academic telling me about it could go one better. They didn't actually have a judge so could I sit at the front and ask questions as appropriate and referee the prosecution and defence counsels? Certainly, sounded daunting but interesting.

Fortunately, there was no requirement to review any of the 'evidence' and in fact I wasn't judging a trial in any case, it was in effect the same quarter of an hour over and over again as each of the dozen students in the class did their expert witness stint on the witness stand. Two academics were the lawyers for and against and went through the same set of questions.

So it revolved around their qualifications as a witness, what processes/tools/software they'd used to analyse the hard drive in question and what they'd found etc. If they used any heavy duty jargon I could interrupt and ask them to explain to the jury what that meant - and I loved the way the student would then address the 12 chairs of the imaginary jury for a moment or two!

I wasn't certain before I started that it wouldn't be deadly dull, but in fact it was interesting in any number of ways.
I was intrigued by the deference and respect I got just because of where I was sitting.
The poor students found the whole set up much more real and nerve wracking than they expected and so were much more nervous. In fairness they almost all did pretty credible jobs without too much incomprehensibility.
The two academics got more and more into it until I really was refereeing them towards the end with their objections and deliberate attempts to lead the witness or confuse them etc.
Given that all the students were working to the same scenario and hard drive that they'd dissected, it was astonishing how varied your view of the case/testimony/witnesses actions you could get depending on their responses to the questions.
And there was absolutely no chance to fall asleep or do the crossword as you really had to pay attention if you wanted to not only follow the witness but to follow the way the questions were being asked to ensure fairplay.

All in all, a really fascinating experience.