Dan Small: I was never an English major, but sometimes it's fun to play around with the origin of words and phrases. The word trial is defined as "the act or process of testing." It's from the Anglo-French trial, a noun formed from triet or "to try." Try comes from the Gallo-Roman word triare, which, at its most basic sense, means "separate out the good by examination." That's pretty good. This series attempts to entertain, explore and share lessons from that process of examination. Throughout many of these stories and lessons learned run three core themes:
- Know your court.
- Tell your story.
- Do the right thing.
I was fortunate to learn these core themes at the very beginning of my career in, of all places, the U.S. Magistrate's Court in Hyattsville, Maryland. It was basically a permanent traffic and misdemeanor court. However, there was no full-time prosecutor. At some point, the magistrate who ran the court agreed with the U.S. Department of Justice to have a program where new lawyers at the department would come in and act as the prosecutor in court for a period of time as training. I was one such new lawyer.
It was an intimidating experience at first. I'd get in at about seven or eight in the morning and there would be a stack of 50 or more case files on my desk. I'd spend the next hour or two walking through the files with the various law enforcement officers who came from an alphabet soup of federal enforcement agencies who were involved in the cases. The idea or the goal was to get a feel for what cases were important, which officers you could best rely on and what the real issues were.
While I studied the files and met with the officers, a crowd would start to build with defendants, families, friends, lawyers and others waiting in the courtroom for things to get underway. At some point, I would walk out into the courtroom and introduce myself to the crowd: "I'm Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Small. I'll be handling all the cases for the government today. If any of you would like to discuss your case with me before court begins, please form a line starting at the bar." And a long line would form spreading out of the courtroom and into the hallway. One by one, I would meet with the defendants and their lawyer, if they had one.
Each defendant was different. Some people wanted to object. Some people wanted to give excuses, or at least beg for mercy on the amount of the fine or on the points on their insurance. In the right circumstances, there were adjustments that I had the freedom to give. Sometimes I would go back and ask the magistrate for guidance or permission. If we couldn't resolve the matter, I'd simply say, "We'll put this up for consideration when the judge takes the bench."
Soon enough, the magistrate, who had been back in his chambers having coffee and going through his paperwork, would get impatient and come out on the bench. It was an amazing experience for a brand-new lawyer. We would try at least several cases a day. Now, many trials were a little more than "and what happened next, officer?" But it didn't matter. I was on my feet, looking through case files, reading the law and witness statements, questioning witnesses, trying cases and resolving matters.
In some cases where defendants had questions, they'd be dealt with by the magistrate, and then if the magistrate got to someone who clearly had not had the opportunity to "discuss their case" with me, the magistrate would suggest that he put their case off until after the next break so they'd have an opportunity to do so.
It was real justice for real people. At least, that was our goal. Everyone who worked in the courthouse knew that I was just a beginner, and many of them were very helpful, particularly the magistrate, from whom I learned a great deal, including those three core themes: Know your court, tell your story, do the right thing. In the next few episodes, we'll discuss each of them. Together they form the heart and soul of this challenging world of trials.
