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Leading witnesses | 687 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Lawyers can't lead their own witness
Authored by: bugstomper on Friday, April 27 2012 @ 06:31 PM EDT
From wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading_question

"The propriety of leading questions generally depends on the relationship
of the witness to the party conducting the examination. An examiner may
generally ask leading questions of a hostile witness or on cross-examination,
but not on direct examination."

And the purpose of the rule is explained in the following:

"However, the court must take care to be sure that the examining attorney
is not coaching the witness through leading questions."

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

You can also badger the witness too!
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 27 2012 @ 06:50 PM EDT

But only if it's your own witness as shown in the movie Liar Liar ;)

Caveat: for the humor impaired, the reference to the particular movie should show the comment should be taken with a grain of salt the size of Cincinnati. If it reflects actual Court allowances it's only purely coincidental.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Leading witnesses
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 28 2012 @ 06:53 AM EDT
This may not travel the pond very well, but in the second episode of Yes Prime
Minister (The ministerial broadcast) Sir Humphrey Appleby shows Bernard Wooley
how to do a survey to get Bernard to agree to the reintroduction of National
Service and then immediately follows with another "survey" where he
agrees to NOT reintroduce National Service.

The point being that the questions are leading up to the required question of
agreement (ie in this case agree to, or agree to not, reintroduce National
Service) and based on previous answers, Bernard can only but agree to the
required view.

Obviously Sir Humprhey had a view he wanted to be agreed upon; similarly, I
would agree, with leading witnesses by counsel. With the Judge, he has no prior
agenda of required agreement (as he is supposed to be unbiased) and can ask a
question of clarification which may have been part of a leading set of questions
before.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

It is OK for the judge to lead the witness?
Authored by: ais523 on Saturday, April 28 2012 @ 05:35 PM EDT
You're allowed to lead the other side's witnesses, just not your own. Presumably
the judge is allowed to lead either side, due to not providing any of the
witnesses.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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