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Plotting Your Strategy: Does Your Trial Have a Theme?
A theme acts as the unifying thread of your case. It is a thing that motivates the jurors to take action. Your theme needs to be integrated into your jury void dire, opening statement, direct and cross-examination, closing argument and jury instructions. There are number of potential themes. Watch movies and see how things are →
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Lights, Camera, Action: Directing and Producing Your Trial
You are the “director” and “producer” of your trial and the witness’s testimony. We can’t change the facts, but you do have the power of when and how to present them subject to the limits of the Rules of Evidence. Indiana Rule of Evidence 611 controls the manner and mode of interrogation of witnesses. This →
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There is a Difference Between “I Don’t Know” and “I Don’t Remember”
A client or witness needs to be thoroughly familiarized with what it means to forget as opposed to not knowing something. If one says, “I don’t know,” something, it means it was never in their brain. “I don’t remember,” on the other hand, means that the information was once in their brain, but cannot be →
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Practice… We Talking ’bout Practice…
“Practice… We talkin ’bout practice.” – Allen Iverson 2002 Just like Allen Iverson of the Philadelphia Sixers, no one likes to practice, but it is necessary if your witness and you are going to stay in sync. In order for your witness examination to be credible and persuasive, both the questioner and the witness must be →
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Direct Examination and Airing Your Dirty Laundry
There is no tactic which will better serve you and your client in establishing credibility with the jury then to bring out negative points during direct examination and confronting them head on with believable explanations. If you wait until redirect, then it may be too late to salvage your witness. I always make a list →
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Helping Your Client Connect with the Jury
The more significant a witness is to your case, the more important it often is to let the jury know exactly who they are. Usually, your client is one of the most important witnesses the jury will hear from during the course of trial. When dealing with such witnesses, I will generally cover age, where →
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Teaching Your Client How to Mind Their Manners While on the Stand
It costs you nothing to be a gentleman or lady. However, a lack of civility can be very costly. The manner in which a witness or party testifies is critical to their credibility and understandability to the jury. You want witnesses to testify in a natural manner, but they need to be understood and well →
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The Million Dollar Question: How Much Should I Ask For?
There is no set rule. I would recommend that you play it by ear. If you have a case that is clearly worth a good deal of money, give the jury guidance as to how you calculated damages by breaking down each separate category covered in the jury instruction on damages and assigning a number to it. →
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The “Dos” and “Don’ts” of Closing Arguments
What are some common “Dos” and “Don’ts” when it comes to closing argument? Here is a list I put together: Do: Speak loud and clearly. Be confident. Vary your tone and location as you move from point to point. Be organized. Begin and end on a high note so your points will be remembered. →
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Closing Argument – What to Do When Your Opponent Deals from the Bottom of the Deck
It is important to stick with the argument that you’ve planned out. Then aggressively and positively put forward your case. You don’t want to waste too much time responding to the other side’s argument to the detriment of their own. You want to help the jurors reach their own conclusions about the case with the use →
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Puzzled Jurors? Piecing it Together for the Jury…
Your job is to help the jury see how the jury instructions apply to the evidence and that you’ve proven the essential elements of your claim, covering the essential facts and promises you made in your opening statement. You want to check your story provided to the jury in opening statement and show how various →
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Burden of Proof, David Ball on Damages 3, Gerry Spence, Jury Forms, Jury Verdict Size, Moe Levine, Only Chance to Recover Damages, Pain & Suffering, Polarizing the Case: Exposing and Defeating the Malingering Myth, Pre-Existing Conditions, Redistributing Wealth, Speak like Churchill Stand Like Lincoln, Sympathy and Vengeance, The Whole Man Argument, Theater Tips and Strategies for Jury Trials/
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Closing Argument: How to Combat Guilt by Association
Oftentimes, we have clients who through no fault of their own grow up in difficult circumstances or are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The opposing attorney may try to paint your client as less than worthy in the eyes of the law. However, remember that lady justice holds the scales of →
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Looking Good and the Art of Cross-Examination
Cross-examination is the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth. You can do anything with a bayonet except sit on it. A lawyer can do anything with cross-examination if he is skillful enough not to impale his own cause upon it. – John Henry Wigmore There are a number strategies out there regarding →
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Challenges to the Composition of the Jury Pool
A fox should not be on the jury at a goose’s trial. – – Thomas Fuller A right to trial by jury is guaranteed under both state and federal law. In a civil matter, a trial by jury is provided for under Article 1, Section 20 of, and the 7th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. →
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Use of Peremptory Challenges and the Improper Exclusion of Juors
Ending racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely. – – Thurgood Marshall Number of Peremptory Challenges: There’s no such thing as a free lunch and likewise, even the free strike of jurors provided by the use peremptory challenges is not its own costs and problems. However, there will be people →
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Trials, Lies & Videotapes
“One Picture is Worth a Thousand Words” – 1918 Newspaper Advertisement for the San Antonio Light. Often I look to my own law practice and find inspiration for a topic on trial advocacy. In preparation for an upcoming trial and mediation, I decided that a sprawling case involving boxes of documents, video interviews, audio recordings, →
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Zen and the Art of Trial Advocacy
“The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences. What other body could pull an entire ocean from shore to shore? The moon is faithful to its nature and its power →
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Witness Outlines: Which came first, the question or the answer…
You getting ready for trial and you are outlining your examination, so how should you do it? What? There is more than one way to outline your questioning? Well, yes… There is. Buddy Yosha, the Melvin Belli of The Midwest, meticulously outlines his examination and writes out every question and expected answer. He also uses →
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Statistics: Why Figures Don’t Lie, But Liars Figure…
More and more, figures and statistical information finds it way into litigation, both criminal and civil. At some point in your career as an attorney you will need to understand what can and cannot be accomplished in utilizing statistics. Most laypersons and attorneys are ill-equipped to handle such information. Oftentimes experts can find refuge in →
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Oscar Pistorius Trial: Lying, the Truth and Inaccuracy
The Oscar Pistorius Trial poses a basic question about human beings and credibility. The question being asked: Is he telling the “truth”, or is he a “murderer”? The death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, happened in the dark of the evening after he was roused from his slumber. He claims to have awoken to sounds →
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