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MY WORST TRIAL EXPERIENCE EVER

© Elizabeth Becka Lansky

Most court testimony is essentially dull. Expert witness testimony follows a set routine: Name, title, employer, education, training, duties. Occasionally the defense will stipulate to your credentials and you can skip all that, either because they want to give the impression of cooperating, not wasting the jury’s time, or they don’t want the jury to dwell on how qualified you are.

Next, you start identifying things. Items of evidence, your report, the victim’s clothing down to his socks. You are there to state that this is the actual item you received, in much the same condition as when you received it. In Cleveland the prosecutors would enter not only the victim’s clothing or evidence but the photographs of same, so I’d spend fifteen minutes saying things like “State’s Exhibit 42 is a photograph of the front of John Doe’s blue jeans.” It would put the most fervent courtroom junkie to sleep.

Then you get into your findings, things like “the suspect cannot be eliminated as the donor of the blood on the victim’s blouse,” “the muzzle to target distance was approximately two feet”, and “the chip of paint on the victim’s pants is chemically indistinguishable from the paint on the suspect’s front bumper.”

Things get more interesting when it’s the defense’s turn. They are likely to ask, “What factors can affect gunshot residue?” and “How many paints have you analyzed with the FTIR?” Sometimes they’re happy with your results, as in a case where both suspects were eliminated from a semen sample. Sometimes they’re not.

(Hint: If you say something like “it was four or five feet”, they might say, “what was it, four or five?” Don’t panic and say “Four!” because you just told the jury you weren’t sure. Always stick to your answer.)

Occasionally the defense won’t ask you anything at all. If you’re testifying that the victim was shot from four feet away, it isn’t relevant to them if they’re saying the defendant was out of town at the time. Usually, though, they’ll ask something, just to earn their salary if nothing else.

I have never experienced the standard TV version of lawyers getting up to your face and screaming, or accusing you of a) covering up for corrupt cops, b) incompetency or c) trying to frame their obviously innocent client. More likely they will be polite, even charming; slightly sarcastic here and there, but not outwardly confrontational. They want the jury to see them as professionals, not con men. My current partner (in Florida) says he has had such experiences, so it could be a north/south thing. It could also be that lawyers change their approaches based on the jury’s response. I happen to be a small woman and look younger than I am, so perhaps they don’t want the jury to think they’re beating up on a ‘poor little girl’. (And make no mistake, prosecutors can get just as snotty if you’re not saying what they want to hear.)