EH 1010 Unit 4 Journal

Columbia Southern University

The day I learned Federal Court is no joke

With my line of work I am in court several times a month with depositions, pre-hearing trials, and jury trials. I had a real eye opening experience when I was to attend a trial at the Federal level. Without going into details about the case, I will say that I was assisting the D.E.A. on a case, and I had to testify in Federal court of my participation during the case. Like all other cases, I had written a supplement report, that I felt was detailed and informative, boy as I wrong. I had gone to a pretrial interview and that is when I initially learned, that when a case goes federally, the attention to detail I much more important. So being somewhat prepared as to what I am going to be asked I had in mind my “excuses” as to why so items was missing in my supplement. Now I am talking small items, like times that I did what I did or colors of something that I described, small things like that but big things in the eye of federal court. When I was on stand, I did learn that I need to be much more detailed and specific with items that only I am seeing. I took it as constructive criticism more than an attack, although it seemed like an ambush. It didn’t affect the outcome of the case so I felt I did ok, but from that point on, my reports and supplements are much more detailed and specific. I now treat all my cases with the same attention to detail because never know at the time, but the case you’re working could go Federally.