I’ve known and admired my friend Gerry Spence for thirty plus years. I’ve been privileged to have been invited to teach at his Trial College in Wyoming every year since it began over a decade ago. He is particularly gifted in the skill of jury selection. He tried a case in October of last year in federal court in Iowa. It involved two black men who had been wrongfully convicted and in prison for some 25 years until their innocence…
I just returned from an Inner Circle of Advocates meeting in Aspen where Dr. Charles A. Morgan MD, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale gave a talk about deception detection. He has a wide background of experience in this area. I learned that time honoured methods for determining the truth, including the lie detector are not reliable. The whole subject of truthfulness is part of mankind’s history The Bible tells us Pontius Pilot asked Jesus a question which philosophers have…
What is the most common defense we find in our cases? It is to blame someone or something else. It might be an “empty chair” defendant or another party or more often, the plaintiff himself or herself. Dealing with evasion of personal responsibility is one of the things we need to learn to deal with in representing our clients. Let’s look at the reality of the situation. We don’t have to look very far for numerous examples of the reluctance…