Why don’t those darned jurors hear what I am telling them? Or, asked differently, what did that lawyer mean by giving such an incoherent opening statement – didn’t they realize that details were missing? The answer is that the opening statement may been ‘internally coherent but externally incoherent.’ And how this can occur is best
With Valentine’s Day less than a week away, I am again trying to become a better, more romantic version of myself. It is the season for it. It started me thinking about poetry and, specifically, Shakespearean sonnets and the works of Lord Byron. The most famous poems from the two authors both start with the
It is beyond question that we inhabit a nation where, to some, a trusted voice is more valued than hard data and science. Why? Are some people hard wired (or might we say “politically wired”) to view scientific evidence either as credible or untrustworthy? And if the answer is “yes,” what does that imply for
Tremendous time and effort are spent on word choice – drafting the perfect motion in limine, opening statement, and/or closing argument. However, it may be that the more time spent on how the ideas are delivered will enhance persuasion more than the words used. This is brought home in a new research paper, How The
I [Grant] discovered recently that Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the hilarious movie about two con-men competing to swindle a rich heiress, was released on December 14th, 31 years ago. You may recall the premise of the movie: A dashing and debonair swindler, played by Michael Caine, gets into a winner-takes-all swindling battle for an heiress’s money
In honor of national Adopt-A-Dog and Adopt-a-Shelter-Dog month, we will look at an interesting study on drug-dog evidence and mock-juror decision making, examining whether jurors would credit the alert of a drug-sniffing dog as a *sufficient condition* for guilt in a trafficking case. The researchers in this study tested how much credit mock jurors would
After 300+ exonerations, and the attraction to forensics engendered by television series, one might think that the recovery of DNA at a crime scene – DNA that does *not* match the defendant – would quickly lead to acquittal. The contrary has occurred, however, particularly where a ‘good story’ to ‘explain’ the foreign DNA is told.
I [Grant] have been teaching again in my Advanced Trial Advocacy class on Patsy Rodenburg’s book, The Second Circle, and decided this month that I would dovetail a bit with Jules’s excellent post last month on how the voice persuades.[1] While this month’s post isn’t necessarily about new research, my hope is that you find
Too often, the mindset in negotiating is completely adversarial – we are good, they are bad; we are right, they are wrong; we are just and they are unjust; and, perhaps most perniciously, we are reasonable and they are not and will not be so. Even Ronald Reagan didn’t posture in this way – his
Consider an argument you made to your jury just before they deliberate and hand you your hard-fought victory. Did you persuade them or did you convince them? Perhaps you just dissuaded them from finding for the other side. However, if you dissuaded them, why can’t you also say that you dis-convinced them? Or disvinced them?