This paper should be a 3-5 page paper.  A maximum of three pages should detail your observation experience.  The remaining pages of the paper should tie the observations you made into the concepts that youve learned from the text or other sources.  You can use the website for this particular text to enhance your understanding and supply sources.  You can watch an entire criminal trial or parts of a criminal trial using the on demand feature on the Court TV website https://www.courttv.com/ .  It must be a criminal trial for this exercise.  There are several different trials available. Submit the paper by 4/3 for extra credit added to your paper.

1- State your observations.  Talk about the judge, the attorneys, and the defendants and their families.  Does the ideal stated in the text mesh with the realities of your court experience?  What happened in the case or during your observations?  Were you surprised by the outcome?  Were the proceedings conducted fairly?  Did you observe any bias?  What was the racial composition of the participants?  Did that have an effect on the outcome?
2- Did your understanding of the proceedings change from the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester?
3- What theories or explanations do you have for your observed result or conclusion? Briefly discuss the opposing view and basis for it.
4- Support your position and analysis with the text or other research. Is there a school of thought that explains what you saw or the result?
5- State the strengths and weaknesses of your position.
6- What are the implications of your position?
7- What did you learn from this experience?