A defense attorney has an obligation to rigorously defend their client. The attorney must put fourth his best efforts to protect their clients’ rights. Their methods used should be in line with the law. Their efforts must also be ethical. A good lawyer will be very keen, and have a good attention to detail. They have the incredible role of dissecting witness testimony and bringing out whatever inconsistencies exist in the given statements.
There are a wide variety of tactics that may be employed by the defense to probe a witness’s statement. During the cross examination of the officer or witness, the defense attorney will have the opportunity to hone in on particular parts of the given testimony. The defense can employ leading questions, in order to set traps. They can also raise issues with hearsay, and opinion testimony. The defense can also attack inconsistencies between a police report and their testimony.
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Some other strategies employed in an effort to raise doubts over witness credibility involve raising the issue of any existing biases, be they gender, or racial. The officer’s confidence in his report can also be attacked. The witness’s points of observation can be brought into question. Their ability to actually see an act take place obscured by obstruction, or poor lighting. Also, the officer’s personal history can be brought up in an effort to discredit their overall integrity.
I do not have any issue with a defense lawyer employing any given tactic in an effort to defend their client. I feel that a lawyer should have a wide ranging arsenal of strategies and tactics in their tool bag. The prosecutor should fight just as hard to prove their facts. Truth should be the ultimate by products of the adversarial
Eyewitness accounts play a huge role in general in trials and verdicts, but may be unreliable many times, with certain views placed on evidence provided by children. Unreliability may arise from not being able to recount the identity of the accused, the actions and speech occurring during that time, the relationship of individuals towards the person in question, and many
The prosecution represents the state/the victims in criminal trials. A prosecutor’s responsibilities are to be professional, seek justice, and strive for the truth. Prosecutors live up to their responsibilities by gathering evidence, collecting witness testimonies, and obtaining other information to present a case against the defendant. Throughout the movie My Cousin Vinny, Jim Trotter is the prosecuting attorney. In the entire movie he is using evidence and witness testimonies to try to get the jury to find Billy Gambini and Stan Rothenstein guilty of killing the clerk in the store.
In each of these cases, the defendant was questioned by police officers, detectives,
(Craig Hemmens, 2017)” 3. What role did the defense attorney play in this case? What sort of defense did s/he mount for the defendant? Did s/he seem to perform to the best of his/her ability in regard to the case? Did s/he do anything that seemed to violate his/her duty?
In the Central Park jogger case: The boys were told that hairs linked them to the victim’s body, which turned out not to be true. Interrogators are encouraged to falsely tell suspects they believe them to be guilty, and that another suspect or physical evidence has implicated them. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau’s report supporting reversal of the convictions reveals other troubling aspect of the five suspects’ confessions-besides investigator’s lies that physical evidence linked the boys to the victim’s
Anthony Robinson strove all his life to escape the caste system of the ghetto he grew up in. He graduated from a prestigious college and joined the military, only to be falsely identified in a rape case and convicted. He argued many times that he was innocent and was devastated that he ended up in jail, adding to the reputation of those who grow up in the ghetto usually end up in prisons. He had to serve thirteen years in jail before he was paroled able to prove his innocence; he accomplished this with a DNA sample after saving his own money to fund a DNA examination to prove he did not commit the crime and clear his record(1,2). Sadly, Robinson is not the only one who's life was ruined because he was falsely convicted and given no fair trial.
In the book “Picking Cotton”, the former Burlington Police Chief Mike Gauldin, who was the lead detective on Jennifer’s case, was certainly sure that Ronald Cotton was the guy he was looking for after Jennifer picked him twice (Jennifer, Ronald, Erin 80); also, on the McCallum’s case, the polices also chose to trust eyewitnesses when they did not have enough physical evidences. Furthermore, judges can be wrong sometime. Wise and Safer, who are authors of the report “ what US judges know and believe about eyewitness testimony”, surveyed 160 U.S. judges to determine how much they know about eyewitness testimony on a small test( Wise, Safer, 427-432). However, the survey responds the average judges in the U.S. only 55% correct within 14 questions (Wise, Safer, 431-432). Moreover, most of the judges who were surveyed did not know key facts about eyewitness testimony.
When a person has been charged with a crime, it's after the police have conducted an investigation. There are many times when the investigation has caused the police to arrest the wrong individual. The accused has the right to have their own investigation conducted by professional detectives working for the defense. Defense attorneys can have their own in-house criminal defense investigator to find facts and evidence that will proclaim their clients' innocence. (-- removed HTML --) Associate Degree Criminal Justice (-- removed HTML --)
The description of the Lockerbie bombing may provide image on how lengthy and complicated an investigation and a trial process could be. Eyewitness would have to go through repeated interviews. The purpose of this procedure is to assess the consistency and accuracy of the testimony. Unfortunately, it is often not realized that repeated interview may also have a negative effect on the quality of the testimony given. A study by Sharps, Herrera, Dunn, and Alcala investigated the effect of repeated questioning in the format based of police procedure (2012).
Sydney Caparaso Mrs. Sherry AP Psychology 27 August 2015 Witness for the Defense: Elizabeth Loftus Human memory may not, as many think, resemble a permanent tape of our lives ' events, replayable at a whim. Elizabeth Loftus discusses her theories of memory and accuracy in her book, Witness for the Defense. Loftus has testified as an expert witness in more than 150 court cases, several of which she sites, discussing the different ways a memory can be fallible.
However, this story of Mrs. Stephens being helpless is all the defense has. But how can you, the jury, believe a story from a woman that would lie to doctors, to police,
Therefore, they could be lying in order to not be in more trouble. The witnesses, then, cannot be trusted. The witnesses are not trustworthy because they are in fear. They could be lying to get out of
A junior lawyer was sitting on a separate table behind him. They were both close enough to have a discussion and I observed the prosecution requesting the junior lawyer to do some research or get clarifications on few points. The prosecution also stood up whenever making a point. The witness box was on the far right.
(Behrman & Vayder, 1994). According to United States vs, Funches (1996) eyewitnesses believe that when an officer presents a suspect for
1. A paralegal is “A person who performs certain substantive legal work for and delegated by a lawyer”. Paralegals will assist attorneys with clerical duties along with, meeting clients and keeping in contact with them, assisting in trials, take care of legal documents and proceedings, as well as planning and developing case information. To me they are the lawyers “backbone”.