I arrived at the Four Courts with some of my classmates at roughly 10am. We were slightly overwhelmed and weren’t sure where to go, we looked around and there seemed to be a crowd around courts 44 and 45, two District Court sittings. We enetered courtroom 44, which was full to the brim. One thing that struck me was that there were Gardaí everywhere, and some of the people were quite rough. It was cramped and very uncofomfortable as we had to stand. It was almost impossible to hear anything but nothing much seemed to be happening. We decided to leave in the hope of finding a case in the main courts.
As we enetered, we had to go through a security check. Everything was very official. I was in awe at the vastness of the courts. It was quite confusing with small staircases and important people in black cloaks rushing about with piles of documents. I felt extremely underdressed and out of place. We finally mustered up the courage to ask for a schedule for the day or if there were any interesting cases to view. We were dismissed with vague answers. The Ian Bailey trial was due to start at 11 in court 3 so we made our way there. The courtroom was packed and we stood at the back. 11:19am and it was announced that the trial
Meanwhile, the judge noticed the amount of students in the room and asked him to give some background information to the case. I was extremely thankful for this and opened a new page in my notebook to concentrate from the start. I couldn’t keep up with the proceedings at all however and I was immediately lost in a language of legalese.
The barrister proceeded to give a timeline of events, which should have given some order, but it confused me further with all the dates and names. The details of the case were very complicated in my opinion and the language used in court added to the confusion. One thing I noticed was that the barrister referred to the judge as ‘President’ as is appropriate in High Court