Understanding the Main Phases of Trial Testimony
Understanding the Main Phases of Trial Testimony
After you have been sworn in, your hiring lawyer will start with questions designed to show your accomplishments, and to present opinion testimony. This is the voir dire' phase. The term voir dire' comes from the French and roughly means "to speak the truth." In the United States, voir dire applies twice during a trial. The initial time occurs during juror selection. prospective jurors are questioned about their backgrounds and any potential biases to determine which of them will be chosen for the jury. Voir dire also occurs when expert witnesses are questioned about their backgrounds and accomplishments to determine their admissibility for offering expert opinions.
initial will be the easy questions from your retaining attorney about your name, your current and past employment, and your education. You will also answer questions about any additional training you received in your specialty, memberships in any professional organizations, and any special credentials or certifications you may have. The opposing lawyer may ask questions in this phase in an attempt to clarify parts of your background and expertise. He may attempt immediately to discredit or disqualify you, or simply lay a legal foundation for questions to be asked later.
The second main phase of trial testimony is the direct examination in which you will be asked familiar questions by your retaining lawyer about your opinions and your investigations. His series of questions will enable you to recount how and when you joined the case, what work you performed, what factual findings were determined as a result of your analyses and efforts, and what your expert opinions are about those findings. The lawyer will ask you to explain to the court the foundations for those opinions, largely drawing on your particular methodologies, any known industry standards or guidelines, and any peer reviews that were done on your work.
The third phase of trial testimony is the cross examination. The opposing attorney has the opportunity to ask you questions about any of the facts in evidence you have reviewed, and about any of your responses to questions during direct examination.
Cross examination can be damaging, demeaning, and frustrating. The cross examining attorney may attempt:
1. To discredit you personally for your conduct, or for your limited experience and expertise in the particular subjects covered by the trial.
2. To discredit you professionally for your choice of tests, for the scope of your analyses, for the extent of your investigation. His questions will try to make it seem as if you didn't do enough, or you didn't do it right, or you didn't even do the right things.
3. To discredit your final opinions. This can come in a host of ways. He may try to convince the jury that your conclusions do not logically, completely, or accurately lead from the set of facts that you considered. He may try to confuse you to make you seem less knowledgeable or competent than you are. He may point out errors in your data or propose other conclusions that could have or should have been drawn.
A fourth phase may occur. 'Re-direct examination' occurs after the opposing lawyer has cross-examined you. If your retaining attorney feels that the cross examination damaged you in a repairable way, or misled the jury about your testimony, he can ask a series of additional questions. Your lawyer may only ask questions about subjects that were broached by the opposing lawyer during cross examination. Both his intention and yours will be to minimize the Value of any points made by the cross examining lawyer, and to give you a final opportunity to restate your main opinion. This will generally be short, if it even occurs. Act and answer as confidently as you did earlier in the trial.
Another phase may still occur. If your lawyer has asked any questions in the re-direct phase, then the cross examining attorney will be able to ask extra questions. This final phase is called "re-cross-examination." Each of these phases is short because the regulations limit the attorneys to questions only on topics broached in the preceding phase. During re-cross examination, the opposing attorney can only ask questions about what your lawyer brought up during re-direct. Nevertheless, you need to maintain your alertness just as you did throughout the cross examination phase.
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