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I am enjoying working on my Alicia story but I have ran into a problem outside of my preview of experience big time.
You see, I plan on this pretty soon after a few chapters to turn into a courtroom drama as i hope those reading can tell from the police interrogations.
My problem is this, I have no experiences in this area and not even enough to fake it.
I was lucky enough to find a manual to help me write a good enough police interrogation scene. It was fun but when the time comes to write out the examinations for court, the aggressive crossings, I dont know how that should go or would go.
And i am having trouble with Kathy. A majority of her crimes took place before she hit 18. Would they be admissible? Could they be included i assume there would be a way but surely her lawyer would argue against it but i think there could be a way her crimes against Al could be included in her list of charges with the right set of arguments from the states attorny.
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Crimes commited as a Teen
For what it's worth... In the US, if the crimes are considered bad enough, and the teen aware of what they were doing, sometimes a judgement is made, and said teen is tried as an adult.
Write what you know
One of the basic tenets of writing is write about what you know. If you don't know about legal matters, then get ready to do a load of research. It is what writing is all about and it makes your writing soooo much better!
Mr. Ram
No ideas except Court TV maybe!
I've no idea on how you should go about the court stuff, except that maybe court TV might help. I'm not a lawyer type, and know nothing really. A crime is a crime regardless of the age it's committed, the difference (to me) is that if under 18 when tried it's juvie court if over 18 when tried it's adult court with maybe some special circumstances.
I do know that I went back and searched for the original and found it interesting and like you said the ending was disappointing. I'm very interested on how this works out. Good luck. Vicky
crimes commited by a child
Yes. I studied enough and watched Law and Order enough to know that its difficult to charge a child as an adult.
And crimes committed under 18 is iffy. I dont know if a child committing crimes turns 18 and then charged, if the DA can include crimes committed while under 18.
Kathy's were so awful i plan on including them but how could they be realistically.
And crimes charged as a child are usually alot less and expunged after they reached 18. Kathy might get off for a majority of her crimes if it was the real world. But, its fiction.
A different tack
Thinking about high profile cases involving children over the last few years a lot of media coverage has been prompted by charges not being pressed. Perhaps you could shift emphasis away from the courtroom to news coverage, and how this affects the characters (charges not being pressed / issues over anonymity / press intrusion). It doesn't have the tension of a courtroom scene, but would avoid getting mired in too many technical issues, and raises some deep questions of the characters.