Despite being not a fan of speaking in public, um, speaking in general, it seemed crazy of me to get involved with a class that requires a lot of speaking. As in arguing cases in front of actual judges for a grade. For a person with a severe lack of public confidence, taking this class is a major step up. This may seem odd, even paradoxical, considering how I write about doing stand-up comedy and saying strange stuff in law school classes. Actually, it's not.
During those times, I act my socially inept self and start saying things that are on my mind. I turn off the "socially correct" button and let loose because I particularly don't care what you think at those times. There is a very fine difference. In Trial Advocacy, you have to follow the "lawyerly correct" way of doing things. This mode does not consider sarcasm, deprication, and other Un-ways of humor or speaking as proper legal decorum. Unless you're outside of the court drinking heavily after a long day at work. Even then, there's somebody watching how you behave.
Anyways...I digress from the point of this post.
So, I did my Trial Ad small section. To add a little difficulty and to reflect the real world, the adjunct decided that, as witnesses, we would assume a personality. You know, the drunk dude, the crazy dude, the overly-talkative girl, and so forth. I got to be the hard-of-hearing man who can't hear anything at all and misinterprets words. That was fun, though I wanted to be the crazy-delusional guy. I think that acting like a crazy-delusional guy suits me very well. I guess I'm a natural at that. Acting, that is. Being crazy, that's a different story.
I guess I was having a lot of fun seeing people do strange stuff like pretend to be drunk, see imaginary people, and other funny things. This lack of legal decorum probably affected me in a negative way. It did.
During my direct examination, I am going very well. That is, until I ask my witness (the overly-talkative girl who likes to ramble) to describe and identify the person who shot a sheriff(but did not kill a deputy). This is where Stupid Mistake Number One rears in its ugly head.
This is, quite possibly, one of the worst mistakes any attorney can make, other than being totally unprepared for a trial.
STUPID MISTAKE NUMBER ONE
While asking said witness to ID the shooter, I inadvertantly turn around and point in the general area of the Defense table. Damn. Not good.
As if the thing can't get any worse, I go straight into Stupid Mistake Number Two during the Defense's Cross Examination. They decide to go to the Prior Conviction impeachment route, where you try to make the witness look liike an evil criminal who can't be believed. It's an easy route towards making the witness look bad. But I am prepared to counter such an attack. During the direct examination, I cover the bases by talking about the plea bargain. And I also know my Federal Rules of Evidence very well. The opposing counsel can't use it. It's considered improper impeachment. Consider this post a free legal education to impress your friends and laugh at legal shows like Law and Order, Boston Legal, Injustice, or any other shows of the same vein.
EXPLANATION OF LEGAL STUFF
Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, prior convictions can be used to impeach a witness with some qualifications. To get a prior conviction in, you must show that the crime was a felony and you must pass the Rule 403 Balancing Test on truthfulness. That is, you must show that the relevance to truthfulness of the crime outweight the prejudicial value.
A crime that is more probative of truthfulness would include crimes that involve deceit or lying as an element. Examples of such crimes are perjury, fraud, false statments, embezzlement, tax evasion, etc. Under most jurisdictions, burglary and robbery are not examples of such crimes. Deceit and lying are not elements of the crime, so it fails. Yup, robbery is not a crime involving lying or deceit. If you're a prosecutor, that sucks. If you're a defense attorney trying to show the witness is a damn liar, this sucks also cause most likely, it won't get in.
Wasn't that informative? Now you know. You can quit yawning right now. The funny stuff follows. This leads me into Stupid Mistake Number Two.
STUPID MISTAKE NUMBER TWO(The final one)
When you are arguing that it is improper impeachment, you should never do the following as I did. Conversation that follows in verbatim with some summarization done to make this sound good for me. Except for that last bit:
Me: "I object. Improper impeachment."People laugh. Wait, I was having fun. Damn. I seriously did a SNAFU there. Maybe a TARFU.
Judge: "Your legal reasoning?"
Me(confidently): "According to the Federal Rules of Evidence, in order to get that in for impeachment, it must pass a two pronged test. Since it is a felony, it must be withing ten years of the date of trial and it must pass the Rule 403 balancing test involving truthfulness. Because it is robbery, the felony is not a crime of truthfulness. It obviously fails this test."
Judge: "Response?"
Other Side basically said that it passes and that it is a crime involving truthfulness.
Judge: "Your answer?"
Me: "A crime of truthfulness is any crime that involves deceit or lying as an element. This would include crimes like fraud, perjury, and such. Robbery is not a crime that involves deceit or lying." (I'm doing well, so well, I'm getting cocky and I should have reined myself in at this point. Dumb mistake follows.) "With robbery, you steal money face up. It's one of the more honest crimes that doesn't involve deceit."
IMPORTANT LESSON LEARNED FROM THIS
Remember, there are better ways of saying robbery is not a crime involving truthfulness than saying "It's one of the more honest crimes that doesn't involve deceit." It may make for an entertaining transcript quip, but in the real world, it is a pretty f-ing serious no-no. There is always the "Federal Rules don't define it as a crime involving truthfulness" or even better, cite a case or two that proves this point. Nice bells and whistles instead of the 100 megaton nuclear warhead that wipes your credibility clean away.
Well, things wen't very well after this. I got a pretty good grade, despite the pretty glaringly, moronically stupid mistakes I made. I'm an amateur at this, so it wasn't too bad. OK, it was bad, but not the worst thing I could have done.
I had a good laugh and I'm still laughing about it. This might go down into the Trial Ad history books. The people in my small section got a kick out of it. Oh well. There's next week to rehabilitate my image. As if I had a positive one to begin with...
That's all for now.
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