Impeachment cross-examination helps to build your case theory
only in a negative way, by eliminating competition from the opposition’s
theory. As we have previously noted, a cross that reveals that the witness’s testimony is essentially nonsense is one way to impeach.
If you can demonstrate that the witness is saying something illogical,
you have gone a long way toward impeaching the witness. In a horrific domestic
violence case tried a few years ago, a man claimed that his wife had received
her injuries by jumping from a moving car. He explained that she had been high
on drugs and acting out in bizarre fashion for the past two weeks. The problem
with his story, which was pointed out quite well on cross examination, was that
he and his wife had just the previous night arrived in Florida on a commercial
flight from Nevada. One fertile area of cross examination proved to be a
line of questions on how his severely drug impaired wife got through the TSA
screening to get on the plane. The defendant also had some difficulty
explaining why, after his wife jumped from the moving car, he took her home,
hogtied her, and stuffed her in a closet rather than taking her to the
emergency room.
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