Tacopina’s client, Trump, has repeatedly stated that he believes that anyone who watches the segment would conclude that Carroll must be lying. Instead, Tacopina ceded control to a video, playing an entire segment (over 10 minutes) of a CNN interview where Carroll talked to Anderson Cooper about being raped by Trump. A good attorney will command the attention of the jury, using the witness as a prop who can only say “yes” when the attorney finishes a leading question with only one possible answer.
Martin’s daughter, what you wrote was true?Īnother rule for strong cross-examination is to never lose control of the courtroom. Q: So, with that adjustment in my question, that this was sent to Ms. This, in fact, was a text message that you had sent to Carol Martin, correct, and then to pass on to her daughter?Ī: Yes. Even after he was corrected, Tacopina repeated his assertion that the message was to Carol Martin. On Monday, he did more of the same, asking about a text message to “Carol Martin” (who will testify for Carroll), when the text exchange was actually with “Carol Martin’s daughter Courtney”. During the first day of cross-examination, he jousted with Carroll about a SNL skit that she had written, which he clearly knew nothing about. Tacopina, however, repeatedly asked questions where it was clear he had no idea what the answer would be. Tacopina also forgot the cardinal rule to never ask a question where you don’t know the answer.Īnyone who watches an episode of Law & Order (more on that shortly) knows that an attorney should never ask a question on cross-examination where they do not already know the answer (and have the evidence to control the witness). Once she admitted that she found it amazing that she went from bantering with Trump to being a rape victim in the course of a couple of minutes, he had no place left to go. Rather, he repeatedly just tried to get Carroll to admit that her testimony was “incredible” or “extraordinary”. When he then tried to debunk it, he rarely had anything of substance to convince the jury that she must have been lying. He spent minutes at a time giving Carroll the opportunity to repeat her direct testimony. Good cross-examination will then lay out, in simple and direct assertions (phrased as questions), why the prior testimony had to be false. The best cross-examination usually avoids this problem by using this formulation: “When you said on direct examination, that was not the truth, was it?” The witness will either defend the prior testimony or appear confused. This is difficult, because it is a challenge to remind the jurors of the testimony that the attorney intends to discredit without recapitulating that testimony. One of the central rules of cross-examination is to never reinforce the testimony that the witness provided during direct testimony. Jane Rosenberg/Reuters Tacopina Violated Cardinal Rules Of Cross-Examination
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