Rock, Paul. "Witness and Space in a Crown Court". The British Journal of Criminology, Vol.31, No.3 (1991): 266-279.

Rock, Paul. "Witness and Space in a Crown Court". The British Journal of Criminology, Vol.31, No.3 (1991): 266-279.

• Trial in the United Kingdom is by its nature an intense experience, since two alternative viewpoints and claims to truth enter an area from which only one can emerge victorious. By this logic, all direct participants actively fight for a viewpoint and must defend it from open attack (267).
• Both witnesses, and even victims, in trial will find that there character is seriously attacked in an attempt to prove that they cannot be serious trusted (267, 269).
• Intense questioning by lawyers elicits an emotional response, which in itself is a necessary aspect of being a witness because the jury expects that certain emotions be displayed in response to certain questions. Not displaying emotions, or displaying emotions at the wrong time, both lead to less favorable responses from the jury (267-268).
• The only legal limitation on the intensity of interrogation is the professional desire of lawyers to maintain the sympathy of the jury, which they may lose if they reduce a sympathetic witness to tears too soon (269).
• This can be compared to the forced composure of legal professionals, like judges and barristers, who are strictly forbidden from expressing any emotions or losing their formality. Only defense lawyers can be emotional, and even then only in the rational interests of their client's appeal to the jury (272).
• One of the key reasons that witnesses are segregation so enormously from all other participants in trails in that there knowledge of events in valuable and the state does not want that 'pure' firsthand knowledge to be contaminated by the accounts of the victim or other witnesses (270-271).
• Although there is an overarching unity and sense of community among court employees, staff in the crown court typically divide themselves into three groups: civilians, the staff of that court, and legal professionals from outside that court (271).
• The divide between these groups is especially extreme between professionals and civilians, mainly in their conduct within court: whereas professionals should be unemotional and organized, civilians are unpredictable and represent a constant threat to the controlled order of the courthouse (272-273).
• Friendliness is maintained between court employees despite the necessary antagonism associated with the adversarial roles of defense attorney and prosecutor. It is implied that all rancor stems from professional duty, often signaled by opposite factions chatting during breaks (273).
• The divide between court officials and civilians is built into the architecture of the courthouse, with physical barriers, locked doors, and security personnel preventing clearly demarcated public and private areas of the courtroom from mixing. These barriers also mark out the border between the chaotic outside world and the orderly, official inside world of the court (275).
• "Victims themselves experience their attendance at court chiefly as a succession of lengthy and lonely periods of waiting in public space, periods which culminate in the pain of cross-examination. Instead of vindication and redress, they may find themselves treated as unclean and untruthful" (279).