Public Defense

Maybe it?s in the job description

By Gideon

Which might explain why lawyers love to hear themselves talk (I’m guilty of this too). The problem is that while this may we tolerable outside the courtroom, it can have disastrous consequences inside the courtroom.

Reflecting on Norm’s coverage of the Fieger trial some other nonsense I’ve read in the past week or two, I’ve come to the conclusion that we have to learn to talk less. It seems that sometimes we just can’t get out of our own way.

Maybe we need to have second chairs that will tell us to just STFU and sit down. The oft-repeated advice about cross-examinations is to never ask that final question that’s just sitting there on the tip of your tongue. You’ve made all your points and the conclusion is obvious. You don’t need to ask it, but you just want to. There’s this uncontrollable urge that comes from deep within you that eggs you on, pushes you to ask that question, just to see if you can push the envelope, just to see if you can make it any more painfully obvious that, say, the witness lied. Your training tells you not to, there’s a little voice in the back of the head telling you not to. And yet you do - and everything unravels. The question isn’t as slam dunk as you imagined it to be, the witness starts to waffle and wiggle out of the iron-clad suit you’d dressed them in and suddenly the impenetrable wall has been breached.

So stop talking, be aware of what’s happening in the courtroom and don’t ask that question just because you want to.

Oh, and while you’re at it, make sure you prepare your client to testify. Don’t just throw him up there and think it’ll all go okay. Even the best prepared defendants are itching to embellish and throw their version of the case down the toilet. Imagine what the ill prepared ones are doing.

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Full post as published by A Public Defender on May 14, 2008 (boomark / email).