Courtroom testimony: closing the loop
Close the loop.
Law enforcement officers: You have an incredibly difficult job. And it doesn’t end with what you do in the field. You can conduct a perfect traffic stop, perfect search, perfect interview, perfect evidence collection, and perfect investigation and still see the case lost if you can’t articulate in your courtroom testimony what you did and why you did it. And if you can’t effectively handle cross-examination from defense lawyers who will chide you, criticize you, and even ridicule you – you haven’t done your job. That’s the reality.
Here are some of my random thoughts about how to effectively testify in court and close the loop on justice:
Preparation is everything. Never go to court unprepared. If the prosecutor doesn’t contact you about prep, call her and insist on it.
Review everything before testifying. Videos. Reports. Notes. Documents. Evidence. You do a LOT of things, and many months may go by between your initial actions and your courtroom testimony. It’s easy to get fuzzy on details or mix them up.
You have one job: tell the truth. That’s it. Very simple. But not always easy – especially if you made a mistake or two along the line during the investigation. And that leads to this:
Own your mistakes. Everyone makes them. Juries will forgive you for the mistake, but they won’t forgive a lie or cover-up of the mistake.
Eliminate cop speak. Talk like a normal human as if you were telling your neighbor about the case (because you are). You didn’t “see a vehicle infraction, activate my emergency equipment, exit my vehicle, and proceed to the driver’s side door of the suspect vehicle where I made contact with the vehicle operator and sole occupant.” Instead, you “saw the defendant’s car speeding, stopped it, and asked the driver – who was alone in the car -- to get out and show me his ID.”
Remain calm and unfazed by frivolous accusations. If you keep your cool in those situations, this is what jurors think: “That officer keeping his cool is reflective of how he handled the matter on the streets. Also, the defense lawyer is a jerk and making false accusations.”
Be ready to take the defense lawyer’s question and run it up his keister. They know juries expect the CSI factor in trials now, so they will ask questions like this:
Example Question: “Isn’t it true that you did not even send the gun in for fingerprinting or DNA testing?”
Now, the truthful answer to that question – and the one the lawyer wants you to give so she can argue it later – is, “No.” But here’s the thing. Sometimes simple truthful answers unexplained are actually misleading. AND, you are not bound to answer “yes” or “no” just because that’s all the question calls for.
Example Answer: “Yes, that’s correct. We did not send the gun in for prints or DNA testing for several reasons. First, I saw the gun in the defendant’s waistband when I approached him. Second, he spontaneously said, ‘The gun isn’t mine; I was just holding for a friend.’ Third, we talked to several witnesses who saw the defendant with a gun like that on multiple occasions. So because there was zero doubt that the defendant had possessed that gun in violation of the law, there was no need to waste taxpayer money and precious laboratory time to unnecessarily conduct such tests.”
Boom. Watch the defense lawyer slink back to his table with his tail between his legs.
