Cross Examination vs Direct Examination

Unlike direct examination which allows the requester to obtain information from a person willing to provide answers, cross examination seeks to obtain answers from individuals that may not wish to provide answers (i.e. the opponents witness).

Techniques

Leading Questions

• Every question that you ask must be a leading question. The respondent should agrees or disagrees with the question.
• Syntax = (statement + tagline)
• Good Examples: "you went to the store, right?" "three other people were with you that day, weren't they?"
• Bad Example: "where were you on the night of July 15th?"

Danger Words

• Avoid using danger words such as "who, what, when, where, how, tell us, explain"

One New Fact per Question

• Avoid compound questions. Focus on facts, not opinions or feelings.
• Good Examples: "you were at the shopping center last week, weren't you?" "You bought a six pack, didn't you?"
• Bad Example: "you were at the shopping center last week and bought a six pack, didn't you?"

Ask Short Questions

• Avoid long questions
• Longer questions have longer answers

Eliminate Surplusage

• Avoid using adverbs (words that typically end in -ly)
• These dilute the power of your cross examination. They provide the witness opportunities to disagree with your questions, due to the subjective interpretation of the question.
• Example: "you walked south on elm street away from the crash scene, right?" vs "you quickly walked south on elm street away from the crash scene, right?"

Remove Perceptions

• Remove perceptions to focus on the event rather than how the witness observed the event
• This will strengthen the imagery and is easy to do by removing "you saw" from the question
• Example: "Johnny walked into the bedroom." vs "You saw johnny walk in to the bedroom."

Taglines

• Tagline Examples: is that correct? didn't you? is that true? right? weren't you? isn't that a fact?
• To avoid sounding like a broken record, consider removing taglines from your cross examination questions.
• Example: "you own 30 mil shares of super mega company stock?; Your best friend is the CEO of that company?" vs "You own 30 mil shares of super mega company stock, right?; Your best friend is the CEO of that company, isn't that true?"

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