Sunday, October 1, 2017

IMPEACHMENT CROSS-EXAMINATION - INCONSISTENCY


Inconsistency is probably the most frequently employed method of impeachment during cross-examination, especially in cases where depositions have been taken.  Sometimes the inconsistency is not an internal conflict between what the witness now says and what the witness once said. Sometimes it is a conflict between what the witness says and another witness or some irrefutable fact. An example of this type of impeachment was seen in the trial of George Zimmerman. 

In the early days of the investigation, Zimmerman had gone on a nationally televised talk show and asserted that he had never heard of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law (SYG). Given the pervasive coverage of the public debate surrounding the passage of SYG, this assertion was inherently implausible. The prosecution was not content to simply rely on the inherently implausibility, but went on to call a professor who had taught a criminal justice class which Zimmerman had taken in college. The professor thoroughly contradicted Zimmerman by revealing that he had been taught about SYG in the class. This impeachment of Zimmerman tends to validate what we have said before  - that impeaching a witness oftendoes very little toward the primary objective of persuading the finder-of-fact to accept your case theory.

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