Washington Courts

The presentation of evidence part of the trial came to an end just before noon today. This afternoon Judge Kathleen M. O’Connor took steps to ready the case for the next to final step, giving the case to the jury.

Judge O’Connor excused the jury when Attorney Kosnoff, for the plaintiff, told the court he would not be presenting any rebuttal witnesses. There is a story there and I tell it in a later post. The jury will return tomorrow.

This afternoon the judge, along with the attorneys, took care of an number of items. There were some final motions which had to be dealt with. Next, all of the exhibits had to be put in order. This meant that the court wanted to be sure it had full agreement with counsel regarding the exhibits which were admitted during trial. Some items were not admitted and they were taken out of the exhibit books.

After this task was accomplished, judge and counsel worked through the jury instructions to be given to the jury tomorrow. This took the rest of the afternoon. Each side presents jury instructions for consideration and use. The court, too, will present instructions. The instructions tell the jury what must be done and what various presumptions and standards are. The court will send a copy of the final instructions to me and I will put them up on this site.

Tomorrow morning, the judge will instruct the jury on the instructions and will give the jury a working copy of all of them.

Then counsel will make their closing arguments to the jury. This will take the rest of the morning. The jury should begin its deliberations in the afternoon. The jury members have not discussed the case amongst themselves. They will begin that task when the jury is given the case for deliberations.