Huckleberry Finn: A Fictional Court Case Analysis

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As I chose to be a defense attorney in this fictional court case, I had no idea what kind of month I had gotten myself into. There was a lot of work, a lot of confusion, and a lot of uncertainty. At the end, however, the jury deemed Huck “not guilty.” Despite the decision in favor of my side, I feel that we had much room for improvement in every aspect our trial, from the opening statement to redirect examination questions. However, through the course of this project, I learned about laws and the court, and greatly deepened my understanding of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Initially, I was satisfied with our opening and closing statements. I felt that we had successfully pushed forward our arguments, appealed to jury emotion, attacked the prosecution’s credibility, and responded to their arguments. However, in retrospect, we could have improved them in many ways. In our opening statement, we neglected to mention the prosecution’s burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt. We could have shortened our closing statement (around seven minutes long) by eliminating repeated claims, such as how the duke and the dauphin testified that Huck did not fully understand their …show more content…

In the testimonies of Tom Sawyer and the Widow Douglas, I did not adequately ask and modify questions in response to the witnesses’ answers. For example, when the Widow Douglas did not give me the desired response to one of my questions, I simply moved on to the next question I had written on my list. Even though the information she gave was ultimately unimportant in the jury deliberation, I feel that I missed an opportunity to benefit my side’s argument. Likewise, in these two testimonies, I did not fully utilize my redirect examination questions. I simply asked questions that I felt I should have asked in the cross examination, and did not further expand on the witnesses’

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