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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