Thursday, April 02, 2009
A cold day at the Brampton courthouse
If I told you specifically what I was there to see (on my only "day off" in the last month and a half), I would be in violation of a publication ban.
Well I can tell you why my personal life led me there: a new play in the works based on an event that took place 3 years ago involving a number of young men doing something that looked like a legally unfashionable form of rebellion. I wanted to see why they are still in pretrial, these now 11, not so young, brown men.
I got to listen to a polished and powerful man run rhetorical rings around a defense lawyer who was struggling to get an answer to a complicated question. I almost nodded off a few times. I've forgotten how even intense, charged language can be deadly boring - which is one aspect of strong rhetoric (i.e, words with power).