Oral Argument

I had a terrifying but incredible opportunity this morning! Tuesday at the end of class, my criminal law professor called on me and another girl to prepare oral arguments for class the next day. We were to be appearing before the Supreme Court of North Carolina. I was the defense counsel for a woman who shot her husband while he was sleeping--it was an actual case from 1988. The facts were horrendous. She suffered from battered wife syndrome. He had beaten and abused her for 20 years on a daily basis. He never worked a day in his life but forced her to prostitute herself daily in order to financially support him. It was awful. The problem with her assertion of self defense is that the threat needs to be imminent...but he was sleeping. So, my argument was that when you consider her situation suffering from battered wife syndrome, the threat from her husband WAS imminent and that during the violent attacks, she is incapable of defending herself. I said that requiring her to act in this violent moment or not at all emphatically denies her the right to self defense.

Professor Butler described the case as the worst we'd see in our three years of law school. So, needless to say...I was a little nervous. Wednesday I came to class ready to give the argument, but we ran out of time and so it was post poned till today, Thursday. AND...it went really well. Seriously, it was easier than I thought it would be once I got up there. I was actually excited about it. The difficult part was afterwards because the class (of 110 future lawyers) got to ask us questions for ten minutes. But, I survived--and Professor Butler even said that he thought this was one of the best arguments we've had in that class yet!! And, one of the other students in our section came up to me afterwards, and sked: "Carly, is there was anything you don't do?" He then told me that he was leaning the other way on the issue but some of the arguments that I made really made him think. So, yay! It's over...but I learned that I really enjoy public speaking and oral arguing.