First 2 Days of Project - Abi Moeller

I've been shadowing Mrs. McClelland, a public defense lawyer for cuyahoga county, for the past two days. Most people would probably presume that would have been fairly boring. However, watching and learning what a normal day looks like for Mrs. McClelland has been really interesting and informative. I get to her office around 9 (she leaves at 4, basically as she told me she has the best hours ever) and we head over to the Justice Center, which is kitty corner to her office building. This morning though she did make cappuccino for us both before heading over, so that was awesome! No, I don't just wake up late and drink free coffee all day. In the Justice Center she normally meets with clients / goes to court. I've seen two pleas and two sentencings. Meeting in the holding cell with her clients prepping for court has been one of the most interesting parts so far. It's not everyday you sit across from a man in a locked room who is being charged for attempting to shoot a woman in a car or from a nefarious con-artist. It's a world that normally I'm fairly sheltered from. I got to meet one of the head defense lawyers for Anthony Sowell, the alleged murderer of 11 women who's bodies were found in his duplex. It's a high profile case, and the defense lawyer was discussing how this could have been cleared up pretty fast but the public and the victims families are expecting a long trial, so the prosecutors haven't agreed on quick plea deal (even though it would save the state of Ohio a ton of money, and not waste the time of a lot of public judges/lawyers etc.). Eventually, the prosecutors are expected to agree to the terms the defense has already laid out (11 consecutive life sentences), but the public nature of the trial has made it so a quick resolution is impossible. So the politics behind this high profile case were interesting. I've gotten to learn about a lot of different cases and how each case is tackled. It's never really boring because there is always another case to learn about. Mrs. McClelland is an experienced lawyer, and so she gets most of the top cases (the f1 & f2 cases, which are murder / rape for f1 (3-10 years sentence) and basically really bad assault etc. for f2 (2-8 years sentence). The cases she is discussing and letting me witness are thus pretty fascinating and not at all dull. There is one where a young man is being charged fora attempted murder for beating a white man and his black girlfriend (all highschool age) so badly he was in a coma. Technically, it really wasn't attempted murder (f1) and more of an assault (f2), and the prosecution agrees with it. However the victim won't accept to agree to a plea deal that is not an f1 charge, which means this case may go to trial. It really shouldn't be an f1 (attempted murder), but because of the race component it gets way more tricky (the person who beat up the white kid was black). I'll probably be here still for that trial / get to meet the guy who beat up the white kid pretty soon (probably thursday). So, no not exactly boring. I'm excited to go back on thursday (wednesday I have my AP calc test).