A New Way to Look at a Courtroom- Raphael Golb, Dead Sea Scrolls

Prosecuting attorney Antoine Quentin Fouquier de Tinville,
 who had engineered the Terror, and who signed off
on Robespierre's execution, was within days
guillotined for engineering the Terror, in 1795,
"condemned by his own hand."

The District Attorney's office sought up to 4 years for Raphael Golb, upstate in Reikers Island State Penitentiary. And in fact after the sentencing, rather than let Raphael wait for the Appeals office to open in 2 hours, it was ruled that Raphael should be shackled immediately and sent upstate on the very next bus to Rikers Island State Penitentiary. I wonder what horrendous crimes they thought Raphael Golb might have committed in those 2 hours. 

I like to compare Raphael Golb's sentence to that of a man I once met who also served 4 years in the same State Penitentiary, for the rape of a woman he noticed jogging along the parkway. The rest was parole.

The system can be lopsided, capricious, arbitrary.


This was the first trial I ever saw, and it did indeed remind me of a game, with agreed-upon rules: 

Two Lawyers, their Personal Styles of Speaking- Raphael Golb, Dead Sea Scrolls

Summation to the Jury

The closing arguments by the two attorneys to the jury, in the Dead Sea Scrolls trial of Raphael Golb, was an interesting study in contrasts. One of Golb's two lawyers, summing up to the jury in Raphael's defense, relied on emotion to appeal to the jury: he was expansive and inclusive, warm, and often used generous terms in describing others.