If you want to know how an expert should testify, there are countless books written on the subject. If you want to know the truth about expert testimony that you will never see on TV, here it is: IT IS SO BORING!
98% of court time is waiting. Prosecutors want you there in plenty of time, so they don’t have to go looking for you, so they don’t have to ask the judge for a recess or to change the order of their witnesses, so they don’t appear to be disorganized in front of the jury. You, the expert witness, don’t exactly relish the thought of a contempt of court charge, so you don’t want to be late, either. But some prosecutors are more reasonable than others. Some want you there at 8 am even though they haven’t picked a jury yet (and they always think they’re going to pick a jury in a morning, though sometimes it’s more like a day and a half). Some will graciously give you until 9. Some, though I don’t know any, will page you with a certain amount of lead time. In Cleveland we were a half hour drive from the courthouse, not including trying to find a parking space in the underground garage. In Indianapolis, the crime lab was across the street, which I thought sounded terrific until they said it means prosecutors are comfortable with giving them about five minutes notice that they’re needed to testify. Prosecutors have spent weeks (okay, maybe days) working with this case. They don’t realize that you haven’t given it a thought in the past eleven months, have to print out a report and track down the evidence. After, of course, you drop what you’re doing and find your “court clothes”, a set of attire we all keep at the lab for just such emergencies.
I’m not criticizing prosecutors, by the way. They’re public servants too, making much less money than they could in the private sector, and as soon as they’re done with one case, another is dropped on their desk. I’m sure they feel just as crime lab personnel do, that you never, ever, have enough time to do your job as thoroughly as you’d like. But the scenes on TV, with attorneys spending endless hours consulting with the forensic specialists, even over lunch (hah! I wish!) is the exception rather than the rule. I actually had a juvenile court prosecutor call me up the day before a homicide trial and—I swear I am not making this up—say, “Now what evidence did you get again, and what did you find on it?” It was all I could do not to respond: “The trial starts tomorrow—don’t you KNOW?”
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