My morning at winchester crown court

After being turned away yesterday, I was preparing to be turned away again. But i was lucky enough to get my first experience in a court room (hopefully I only ever will experience a court room from the public gallery). Not 100% sure about what I'm allowed to say and how much detail I can go into but with reference to McNae's, heres my account just to make sure I'm not digging a hole to lie in.

On arrival to the court myself and Ellen had our bags searched and had to walk through a metal detector - lucky neither of us had anything we shouldn't have had. We then went to reception and asked the very nice lady from yesterday if there was anything we could sit in on, we were in luck and sent to court seven. We were quite early for the trail and so we had a little chat in the cafe, surrounded by people, a few who made me feel a little uncomfortable, though I did try to work out who were family members of defendants and witnesses based in quite lame stereotypes. One thing that did strike me was that there were two very young children there.
Once the defendants name was heard on the speaker we made our way to the court room, we waited for about ten minutes before entering and realised we'd missed a bit, but still the trail was very interesting.
There were some funny little funny things i think im allowed to comment on; the judge was smirking, silently laughing and rolling his eyes at the defenses' barrister when she made a point he thought to be ridiculous. Made me think he'd seen this kind of case wayy too many times.
The defendant was male, charged with possession of class A drugs. During the hour and a half we were there I was able to hear the statements and questioning of 4 witnesses, as well as the claimants barrister finding a further statement that wasn't previously know. The jury was dismissed so that cross examinations and arguments could be evaluated by the barristers on this statement, which ultimately gave the defense a push up on the point she was making.
After this, the barristers moved on and had witnesses for a different event, which I was a little confused about, seen as it wasn't anything the defendant had done, rather what someone had done to him. A little after this I left, it would have been nice to continue watching but the case had really only just started to I would assume its probably still going on now...

It was really good experience to sit in on a trial and would recommend it to anyone, journalism student or not. It allowed me to see the true workings of a court, quite different from what I've read in books and totally unrehearsed, unlike the TV drama I've seen, yet still there was the same kind of tension created and was incredibly engaging.