"....Nothing an advocate does is simple, but all of the things an advocate must do, by far the most difficult, the most complex, and the most subtle is cross-examination. The talent to cross-examine is a rare commodity. No more than three lawyers in all of Rome have it, and sometimes I wonder whether I myself am one of them."
#Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman statesman, lawyer and academic skeptic philosopher, expressed the aforementioned views on the art of Cross-Examination in one of his letters, which in turn, outlines that the cross-examination is not something which can be learned only through books.
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This post is in pursuance of the series titled, "How to excel in the National Mock Trial Advocacy Competitions?"
In this post, I'm going to delve into the 'Anatomy of Cross-Examination' with certain examples.
As I said earlier that there is no straight jacket formula for conducting a cross-examination. It differs from case to case.
So, the Cross-Examination aims to achieve the following goals:-
(1) Discarding the Credibility of an adverse witness;
(2) Establishing the favourable narrative before the Court;
(3) Highlighting the Behaviour of witness;
(4) Impeaching the witness;
(5) Demonstrating the Bias or Prejudice of a witness.
So, let's start discussing the aforementioned points with examples:-
#Discarding the Credibility of an adverse witness:-
While convincing the Court for discarding a witness testimony on account of his/her credibility, one must have a intelligible basis.
#Illustration 1: Suppose if the Prosecution asks questions from DW-1 that:-
DW-1: Mr. Robin, It is correct that your business runs on the basis of clientage possessed by the Accused in the instant matter. If we analyse this question, it aims to destroy the credibility of Mr. Robin by outlining his financial interest connected with the conviction of the accused.
#Establishing the Favourable Narrative before the Court:-
This can be explained through a given example:-
#Illustration 2: Suppose as a Counsel for Defense if I want to establish that Deceased was mentally ill to the extent that she can cause harm even to herself. Furthermore, I call PW-2 who is a Psychiatrist and was looking into the treatment of the deceased, then my question in such a case can be:-
PW-2: Dr. Anant, you have diagnosed the deceased with severe mental psychotic disorder which can motivate such a person to even harm herself/himself. If you analyse, this question aims to establish the narrative that the deceased is suffering from such psychotic disorder that she can harm even herself.
So, the Teams are required to take into account the aforementioned rules and examples for the purpose of conducting an effective cross-examination.
Moreover, the next post aims to deal with the remaining points.
#CrossExamination
#Impeaching
#Narrative
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