My new book Roadways to Justice: Reforming the Criminal Justice System was just published and is available now on Amazon. America’s criminal justice system is grappling with multiple issues – police officer-involved deaths and violence; mass incarceration; racial, gender,
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Randy Cox, a friend of mine and a trial lawyer in Missoula, MT, sent me an email telling the tale of a Chicago lawyer named Frank Oliver who defended a client against a federal prosecution that hinged on the testimony
Continue Reading Cross-Examining a Government Informant
F. Lee Bailey’s cross-examination of Mark Fuhrman was legendary. It is a good example of an effective cross of a liar. In 1995, then detective Mark Fuhrman was testified about his discovery of evidence including a bloody glove in the
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Cross-examination can expose the improbability of a witness’s testimony. The evidentiary authority for probing the improbability of a witness’s testimony is found in Evidence Rules 401 and 611. Rule 401 states the test for relevance: “Evidence is relevant if: (a)
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Cross-examination should vary depending on the type of witness you are examining. British barrister David Paul Jones’s Golden Rules of Cross-Examination, which he wrote a century and a half ago, expressed this idea as follows: “Be mild with the mild; shrewd
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Beginning this Summer Seattle University Law School will offered an online course entitled “Visual Litigation and Today’s Technology.” Cross-examination visuals were featured because visuals can be extremely powerful weapons for cross-examination. They can be used to gain concessions supporting your
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As we have said here and in Cross-Examination Handbook, the primary goal of cross-examination is to capture the truth from the witness. On cross, you shouldn’t be trying to discover anything; you shouldn’t ask any interrogatory questions. You know
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Don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Leading questions on cross. Leading questions. Leading questions. Open-ended cross-examination questions can have repercussions.The following is a courtroom cross-examination exchange between a defense attorney and a farmer with a bodily injury claim. It came
Continue Reading Humor: Cross-examination with Open-Ended Questions
As we discuss in Cross-Examination Handbook, there is no specific time frame that fits all cross-examinations because the extent of cross will vary depending upon the circumstances of the case. However, endless cross is tiresome, and the jurors will
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In Cross-Examination Handbook we explain that if the witness is nonresponsive, one countermeasure is to object. The objection to a witness’s nonresponsive answer belongs exclusively to counsel who poses the question. You can also move to strike the nonresponsive answer.If
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