Contempt of court???

Today, I got back an assignment I did last week - covering a court case. And looking over it, I remembered some of the details of the case, and one very dicey situation that I could have found myself in.

I arrived at the Queens County Criminal Court at about 8:40 (early again, what's happening to me?!?!?), only to find out that the court clerk's office, where I had to go to choose a case to report on, only opened at 9. I bumped into a couple of other girls from my class, and we tried to see if we could find any other way to locate an interesting case. We finally found the Supreme Court clerk's office, which was open and one of the girls asked them what the most interesting case was. (Now me, I wouldn't have asked them to recommend a case. I would have asked to look at the cases on trial and decided myself, because they could have sent us to the least controversial one, or the one where they didn't want any outsiders to be - good journalistic thinking, eh? I'm getting good at not being so gullible.) But anyway, they directed us to one of the court rooms, and we went in. Time passed, and no judge, no jury, nobody, though we did see the defendants in the case outside the courtroom, probably waiting as impatiently as us.

There was one Guyanese woman (of Indian origin) sitting in the viewing area, on the bench in front of us. She turned around at one point, and seeing me, I think felt some affinity towards me, since I looked to be of similar background. I was encouraged by this, and, being the enterprising journalist that I am (heh heh!), decided to approach her and talk to her. She told me she was the ex-girlfriend of the alleged victim, and that she was testifying about what happened (the case was that the defendants had beated up her ex-boyfriend outside a bar in Jamaica). We didn't talk about any other particulars of the case other than that. She said she was sick of the case, and having to go to court, when she wasn't even with the guy anymore. I moved back into my seat and waited for the trial to begin, which it did, about 70 minutes late.

The witness was continuing her testimony, so she went up and took the stand. As soon as did so, the defense attorney fired the first question at her, which sent my heart rocketing into my mouth. "Have you spoken with anyone about this trial between yesterday and today?" he asked her.

OHMIGOSH!! What have I done???? Have I just broken the law? Am I going to be in contempt of court? And how did the defense attorney find out that I had spoken to her? And why didn't any of the court staff say anything when they saw me talking to her??? Is this the end of my career as a journalist, over before it even really began? I turned in panic to one of my classmates, only to be greeted with a blank stare.

I turned back to the witness. She maintained a stony silence, which had guilt written all over it. I'm finished, I thought.

Then, the attorney rephrased the question. "Did you call the owner of the bar to tell her what happened in court yesterday?" he asked her.

PHEW!! My heart settled back down into its normal place. So he wasn't talking about me after all! It took a few minutes for my nerves to settle down, though, and to get back to following the case.

Needless to say, I stayed far away from her, and the other two witnesses, for the remainder of the day! Darned Columbia professors - why don't they tell you that you can't talk to witnesses before sending you out to cover a trial??