State court hears arguments, takes questions at IU Kokomo
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An actual court proceeding took place in Havens Auditorium earlier this month. That’s not a typical place to find judges and lawyers, but Indiana University Kokomo played host to the Indiana Court of Appeals, bringing the experience of the courtroom to the classroom, so to speak.
The event was part of the high court’s Appeals on Wheels program, in which appeals court judges travel the state, hearing cases in front of the general public to give them a taste of what the legal process is. Appeals court judges Melissa May, Leanna Weissman, and Dana Kenworthy sat for the hearing in front of a crowd of high school and college students, as well as a few members of the local judicial system.
The case being heard on appeal involved a man on in-home detention who asked his probation officer for assistance in using an app as part of his drug screening requirement. During this assistance, the officer viewed images depicting child pornography. Seeing this, the officer notified other authorities, and the man was arrested and convicted on 17 counts of possession of child pornography.
The questions raised on appeal centered around whether the search of the man’s phone was reasonable, whether that search exceeded the scope of the warrant, and whether the man’s waiver for consent to search applied to the materials found as they were not related to the terms of his probation.
On Sept. 30, the court ruled that the waiver was valid, the search was reasonable, and the search did not exceed the scope of the warrant.
At the hearing, the three judges heard arguments from the prosecution and the defense regarding the issue. No ruling was handed down at the proceedings, as the court of appeals publishes its decisions after deliberation, but the three attending judges did take questions from the audience about general matters not related to the case.
Students lined up with no shortage of questions, the first of which asked how a case is chosen and whether the judges “know the answers” to the questions they ask of the attorneys.
“We pick cases that are difficult, about issues of law, so that we can really hone in on the difficult parts and figure things out together,” said Weissman. “Do we know the answers to the questions? Some of them we may anticipate what they’re going to answer, and then if we don’t get the answer we want or like, we may push back.
“Maybe we don’t all agree, and so some of my questions could be geared towards convincing Judge Kenworthy or Judge May or whoever I’m sitting with of the rightness of my way. Sometimes we know the answers, but most often not.”
May added that the judges have read the cases and the briefs. With that research in hand, they ask questions to define the differences in the arguments for and against an issue of interpretation of the law.
A related question was posed to the judges concerning how they know what to study before a hearing.
“We are very lucky because both attorneys have provided briefs and the appendices in the case,” said May. “Then they access the transcripts, the testimony at trial, and they prepare briefs, which are sent to us. Then, we have clerks in our chambers who prepare a bench brief that basically puts all these cases together.
“We don’t actually have copies of all those things, but we have access to them. It’s through the briefs that are provided by counsel, and our own separate research based on those briefs, that we prepare for the oral argument.”
One student asked the judges how they decided to enter the legal profession. None of the three originally intended to even practice law, it turns out.
“When I went to college, I was a music major, so my goal was to be a concert pianist,” said May. “When I was in college, I realized that wasn’t exactly where my talents lay. So, I eventually went to law school. I did not know I wanted to be a judge.
“But I got the opportunity to apply for the court of appeals, and it’s really the best thing I ever did. It’s given me the opportunity to kind of expand my knowledge, and after 27 years, it feels like home.”
“When I went to Ball State, it was my intention to become a therapist,” said Kenworthy. “I added a major of criminal justice and started to get interested in the justice system. After Ball State, I worked in social work positions, working with victims of crime for about four years, and that’s when I decided to go to law school.
“I wanted to be a deputy prosecutor, handling special victims cases, and it wasn’t until I’d been a prosecutor for eight to 10 years before people started asking me, ‘Have you thought about becoming a judge?’ that I even considered it.”
“I really never thought I would be a judge,” said Weissman. “I was the first woman in my family to go to college. I come from a small farming community in the southeast corner of the state. We grew soybeans and tobacco, and so the idea of going to college, going to law school, and becoming a lawyer was pie in the sky.
“But I had a lot of people who encouraged me along the way and said they saw something in you. Eventually, I did apply to become a judge, and I was lucky after my third try to get on the court of appeals, the best job ever.”
On more general questions, such as how to avoid burnout during the years of study to become an attorney, the judges recommended maintaining other interests, spending time with family, and exercise. Judge Weissman even suggested a “gap year” between high school and college to help prepare for another round of studies.
The judges also contended that which law school a person attends isn’t nearly as important as what a student does with the opportunity they are given. To that end, May suggested that reliance on artificial intelligence in one’s studies should be handled carefully.
“If you rely on AI too much in the beginning of your life, you will not learn how to write, and you won’t learn,” said May. “You’ll rely on something else to write, and then when that is taken away, you don’t have that ability. So, what I would do is try to stay away from having AI write for you until you’re older and until you have a good foundational writing basis of your own, and then it can help you.”
Howard Circuit Court Judge Lynn Murray was in attendance at the hearing, and afterwards she expressed her pleasure in having the opportunity to watch the court in action, and more importantly, to watch the students respond so enthusiastically to the experience.
“What an opportunity for these young people to actually see how the process works!” exclaimed Murray. “This certainly was a good issue for the students to experience, and I’m sure that’s why they chose this case, involving cell phones and issues of privacy on your own cell phone.
“The case is an example of how the law has is changing all the time. Technology changes, and the way people do things change. I always learn a lot hearing these arguments, and I hope the students did, too.”