- describe the roles of prosecution and defence;
- describe the way lawyers and prosecutors prepare their case;
- explain the way judges decide on verdict;
- ask questions and find arguments to support the points of view of both
parties; - ask questions as judges.
c. Investigations prior to the trial
In criminal cases the preliminaries of the trial may be divided into four phases:
- the role of the police;
- the role of the investigator;
- the role of the prosecutor;
- the role of the judge.
Each phase is about to be described in brief.
d. The stages of trial simulation
Normally, in trial simulations pupils are first presented with the phases.
Many questions asked by the judge, prosecutor, and lawyer for the defence often try to
clarify the ambiguities and contradictions in the statements so as to determine whether
witnesses are reliable or not. This task has largely been done by the investigator,
prosecutor, and judge in the preliminaries of the trial.
Identifying facts
In order to make sure that pupils have understood what happened in a certain case, they
should receive a set of information regarding the trial simulation containing the
indictment, an abstract of what happened, of the law, the list of witnesses and their
statements. Each pupil should be asked to read the indictment, the abstract of the most
important facts, and the individual statements of the witnesses of both parties involved in
the trial. Then the counsellor should detail each of them so that pupils understand what
happened before explaining the law relevant to the case.
Identifying the law
The stress is laid on respecting or breaking the provisions of the Criminal Code. The
relevant articles in the Code must be explained to the pupils. The kind of evidence that
the prosecutor must present to the judge so as to prove the suspect guilty will be
discussed with the pupils. Further on, attention must be paid to the evidence that can be
used by the defence.