In Crim Practice, each person was assigned to a case as either a prosecutor or defense attorney. I am a defense attorney. And each prosecutor was assigned an agent, and each defense attorney was assigned a defendant. LawLady was assigned as my prosecutor's agent. And until this week, it didn't occur to me what that meant.
I must cross-examine LawLady. And I'm afraid.
Cross-examinations in themselves are challenging. The attorney's goal is to elicit yes or no answers in such a way that their case is strengthened. It requires a lot of patience (which I have loads of) and the art of "thinking before you speak," (another trait I really excel at). I imagine cross-examining LawLady will kind of be like cross-examining the teenager: when I don't get the answer I want, my instinct will be to break character in an inappropriate way.
Example:
Me: "You are sitting on this chair, aren't you?"
LawLady: "What do you mean by sitting?"
Me: "Dang it LawLady you know what I mean!"
Me: "You are sitting on this chair, aren't you?"
LawLady: "No."
Me: "You aren't sitting on the chair?"
LawLady: "No."
Me: "How do you figure?"
LawLady: "I'm resting on this chair."
Me: "You are sitting on this chair, aren't you?"
LawLady: "Yes."
Me: "So you admit this chair is holding you up?"
LawLady: "No."
Me: "What? You just admitted you are sitting on this chair! The logical inference is that it is holding you up!"
LawLady: "No, [insert creative, technical legalese here that I have never even remotely considered that will totally 100% ruin my entire planned argument], and that is why I am sitting on this chair, but it is not holding me up."
Me: "Shoot me now."
Oh LawLady. I'll be happy when we're back on the same side of the courtroom.
Web Site Hit Counters
No comments:
Post a Comment
Reminder: The Administrator deletes messages that identify freetobeme350 :-)