My Trials – Page 2

Herding Witnesses

We argued motions in the morning on the day my second felony was supposed to begin. I had two witnesses, both cops, subpoenaed to be in court at 10, to start out the case. My civilian witness was taking a bus from 300 miles away, and wouldn’t arrive until the afternoon session. But I had the two cops to fill the time while she traveled in. When we finished arguing motions (all adverse rulings), the already angry judge turned to me and asked me who my first witness was. The jury was waiting outside. I turned around to and there was no one there.

For anyone who has ever had to herd witnesses, this is the nightmare. There wasn’t a single other person in the courtroom, much less an officer. I asked the court for a moment and looked down at my phone. There were several texts. The first officer said that he was sick and couldn’t come in at all today. That’s bad, but not fatal, I would just have to scramble to put my evidence on another way. I saw that there were other text messages; that must be the other cop telling me that he is waiting outside. I’ll have to start with the other cop, but whatever, I can still make it work. I check the other text message. Sure enough, it’s the other officer. My heart is racing already, no one likes surprises, but I’m feeling confident that I know what he’s going to say. The judge is watching. The Defense counsel and the Defendant are sitting silently next to me, probably wondering what the hell is going on. I read the message: the other officer is on an arrest and can’t come in. My stomach drops.

We approach, I tell the judge the situation. Not in a calm or collected way. Like a person vomiting information in chunks with a going film of apology and self-justification. The judge, who was already mad, becomes incensed. He says, “Ok. You’re unable to proceed. I’m going to dismiss the case.” That would be extremely bad for the case: the defendant would be let go without me putting on a shred of evidence. And the Defendant has a horrible record. Moreover, I would have to explain why my scheduling problems robbed the People of California of their right to a trial. And I’m new! It’s not like I have a record of smooth success behind me.

I can sense the judge wants to protect the time of the jury, who have jobs and lives of their own, afterall. I ask him if we can open, and tell him the cops will arrive while we are opening. He tells me to call the cops and make sure that they can be there. I do. I call them on the record, with the judge sitting there watching and listening, with a horrible look of pain and worry on my face. The second officer, who was in the middle of the arrest, picks up. I tell him to stop what he is doing and come to court right now. He agrees. I tell the judge, and he brings in the jury.

The judge asks defense counsel if she is going to open. She’s not an idiot. She says, “I’m going to waive opening statement.”

I normally spend about five minutes on my opening statement. In this case, a robbery, five minutes would be a stretch. I just don’t have that much to talk about. “He came in, he used force and fear, you find him guilty.” But based on where the officer is coming from, I know that I need about 25 minutes, plus parking and elevator time. So I start my opening. And I’m dragging out it. I’m literally going through every fact I intend to elicit. I’m holding up picture after picture, saying things like, “here’s another exhibit I will introduce.”

I get to the end of everything and the officer is still not here. I sit down, defeated. Then defense counsel, miraculously, changes her mind and decides to give an opening. Deliverance! It takes about 7 minutes, as I’m frantically watching the door and bouncing my knee like a recovering drug addict. And then, somehow, she’s done and the cop is still not there.

The judge turns to me and says, “call your first witness.” I have nothing. But an idea forms in my mind. The jury is watching. I say, “your honor, can I have a 15 minute bathroom break?” I know what he’s thinking. He wants to appear reasonable in front of the jury. He says, “ten minutes.” The cop arrived on minute seven.

My First Felony

It was after dark in a small coastal town, and the sea fog was coming ashore off the ocean. Just a few blocks from the water, a fight broke out between several men, and a neighbor called 911. The police arrived a few minutes later, to find only one man left out on the street: the Defendant. He had his shirt off, even though it was a cold night after dark, and the officers could see his tattoos. These included the name of the town in black letters from shoulder to shoulder across his chest, a “locals” tattoo on his hand, and many others, each discrete, so that they appeared to be the accumulation of many years.

Two officers approached the Defendant. He was sweaty and obviously agitated. They immediately recognized him; he had a long local history of fighting and public intoxication. Defendant recognized the officers. The white officer had previously encountered the Defendant when he was outside fighting with his girlfriend. Ever since that night the Defendant hated the officer. Defendant walked towards the second officer, who was Hispanic. The officer told him to sit on the curb – standard practice for the police deparment in this small town. But the Defendant refused. He was too riled up. He seemed to know that the officers had been called there to respond to a fight. He said that they ought to talk to some other people, and motioned with his head towards an apartment building. The officers kept their eyes on the Defendant. The Hispanic officer told him a second time to sit down. Defendant insisted he didn’t do anything.

After the Defendant ignored the second command to sit on the curb, and as he kept advancing, the Hispanic officer put his flat palm on the Defendant’s chest. He told him to sit down a third time. But the Defendant wasn’t having it. He slapped the officer’s hand away. Both officers then grabbed him, one on each arm, and tried to move him to the ground. The Defendant broke free, but after a struggle, the officers were able to get him down to the ground. Other officers arrived. It took four of them to get the Defendant handcuffed on his belly. As they flipped him over onto his stomach to begin to talk to him about what happened, the Defendant kicked at the officers standing over him. He was able to kick both of the original responding officers several times. Then, he looked the Hispanic officer for a brief pause, and spit in his face.

The officer didn’t take a baton to him, or tase him, or shoot him. He just continued working with the other officers to restrain the Defendant. They flipped him back over onto his stomach, wrapped his legs up in nylon, and put him back into the patrol car, but not before he struggled his way back out and landed face first on the sidewalk.

Defendant spent five days in jail. The officers have video and audio of him sitting in the back of a patrol car, screaming his lungs out. Challenging the officers to fight. Questioning their manhood. Telling them he didn’t do anything. He was charged with two counts of using force to resist an executive officer. This is a pumped up version of a regular resisting arrest charge. Defendant faced a maximum of three years eight months in state prison on those charges.

To the surprise of many observers, the Defendant found representation with an extremely competent, razor-sharp Defense counsel. But one look at this lawyer’s resume told the whole story. He was a “civil rights” attorney, who made a living out of suing police and their employers. He would collect damages, and then use the civil rights law to make the losing party pay his legal fees as well. These fees can, and have, been set by courts at $800 per hour and more. Clearly, the lawyer was using this Defendant as part of a plan to sue the City. But first he had to win this criminal trial.

I got the case on a Thursday, with jury selection to begin on Monday. Sitting at my kitchen table that weekend, I reviewed the photographs and video of the incident. I noticed photographs of a man arrested at the same time as the Defendant. He had a six inch swastika tattoo on his body. And the Defendant in my case was also covered in tattoos, although I didn’t see any swastikas.

I don’t know if it was lack of focus or what, but I stopped working on my pretrial briefing and started looking into Defendant’s tattoos. In another context I might even criticize myself for failing to stay on task, but it paid off big time. I found a lot of material. In particular, a powerpoint listing tattoos banned by the military had a symbol that matched one of the symbols on the Defendant’s body. I don’t know how long I had been searching, but it wasn’t long, and it paid off.

1. Aryan Nations; 2. National Alliance; 3. National Socialist Movement; 4. Volksfront; 5. Blood& Honor; 6. Hammerskin Nation; 7. Northwest Front; 8. American Front; 9. White Revolution; 10 Klu Klux Klan.

I immediately began to find out as much as I could about the tattoo and the organization it referenced. I found out that it stood for a well-organized neo-nazi gang that promoted white power music. I found out that they had a gang sign. I then reviewed the preliminary hearing transcript in my case and discovered that the Defendant had flashed this gang sign during his arrest. And I noticed the officer that the Defendant initially assaulted was Hispanic.

Everything started to come together. I found an expert on white supremacists and convinced him to come testify, virtually for free. That part was actually pretty easy: it turns out that no one likes racists and everyone jumps at the chance to put them behind bars. I drafted a motion to admit the evidence.

We had a rough and tumble argument in court about what evidence to admit. But the court agreed to allow me to present evidence of the defendant’s racism. After the hearing, the court said, “now, is the Defendant still considering any offers?” He talked with his high-priced lawyer for about 30 minutes and pled open. That’s the criminal law equivalent of throwing yourself on the mercy of the court.

I didn’t get to conduct the trial, but I did get the satisfaction of watching the Defendant realize he was going to lose and give up. Even more than that, this Defendant was planning on suing the City that arrested him. In today’s climate, with the lower civil standard, the City had a very real chance of being found liable. The conviction I obtained, however, bars this suit. In other words, the conviction may have saved the city and its officers hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages and legal fees. A very satisfying way to begin what I hope is a long career trying felonies.

How Does Everyone Normally Do This?

The Defendant was an older man, in a slightly out of style suit, the kind that might be worn for church ten years ago. He was barrel-waisted, at least 45 inches around, and wore a neatly trimmed mustache. He scowled continually from behind his glasses, with one hand on his cheek, a single finger pointing up to his temple. His attorney was at least 6’6″ tall, maybe 250 pounds of shoulders in a sport court and black slacks. His blond hair was slicked back, and he appeared to be in his late twenties.

Defendant’s wife and victim did not wear church clothes to court when she testified against him. She wore a t-shirt with shiny costume jewelry studs and simple black pants. She had been sitting in the back of the gallery as the trial winded its way towards completion, with a skeptical look on her face, with her arms folded over her chest.

Defendant was accused of punching his wife several times in the face during the course of an argument. He had returned home from playing golf to find out that his mother in law was going to be spending the foreseeable future in his house. He was understandable upset. He went to bed alone, his wife chose to sleep on the couch in the den. Defendant woke up in the middle of the night and walked into the den in search of his wife. He flipped on the light, had a tug of war over the blanket covering her on the couch, and began yelling.

Both the victim and the Defendant testified. They gave different accounts of what happened next. Defendant tried to hold the victim down on the couch. The victim kicked the Defendant to the ground. He got up, pinned her hands to her chest. He struck her several times in the face. She grabbed his testicles and squeezed them until they bled and he was forced to get off of her.

Defendant was charged with spousal abuse in violation of Penal Code section 273.5. Defendant claimed self-defense. He argued that he had to punch his wife in order to get her to stop injuring his testicles.

Defense counsel, despite his imposing appearance, was relatively docile during the trial. For example, his cross-examination of the victim was only 20 questions or so, and lasted about 5 minutes. He actually apologized to her afterwards and told her that his questioning was “not personal.” He said that he hoped if he saw her “around town” that she would not hold anything against him, because he was just doing his job. After the jury returned a guilty verdict, they told him that he seemed like he was “not there to fight.” I thought that he was deliberately being a nice guy in order to make the Defendant seem less threatening. I thought that he may have been worried that if he was a jerk they would be more likely to see the Defendant as a jerk, and thus one step closer to a batterer. If this was his strategy, it fell flat. After speaking to him, it seemed like this might have been his first trial. He continually asked me how I “normally” did basic things, when it seemed like his real question was, “how does everyone normally do this?” He asked me what the result of the preliminary hearing was, even though this was a misdemeanor that did not require a preliminary hearing. And he didn’t ask the normal cross-examination questions that every defense attorney seems to in virtually every case, no matter what the charge.

I was lucky to have a cooperative victim. And the victim’s daughter witnessed most of the violence. She was extremely credible when she testified. The responding officer came off exactly as you would expect: he didn’t remember anything and was extremely suspicious of defense questioning. I also had 911 calls, from both the victim and the witness, but they were both much more calm than you would expect them to be given what had happened. I had photographs of the victim’s injuries, but these were actually less than helpful, because the victim did not appear to be injured, despite the general agreement that she was punched repeatedly in the face.

Defense counsel, despite his inexperience, did make an interesting closing argument. He argued that if the genders were reversed, and the man had done to the woman what the victim had done to the Defendant, “would we even be here?” I saw a few jurors nodding along to this line of argument.

But as I said, they returned a guilty verdict. And during the post-verdict interviews, I found out that the young lady who I though was one of my strongest jurors was actually one of the two initial holdouts. Another great learning experience.

Step One: Throw a Fit. Step Two: Give Up

The Defendant just gave up halfway through my sixth trial. It was a DUI with a refusal allegation. It’s a difficult misdemeanor because a lot of jurors want to have a chemical test to rely on when they are deliberating. Without a chemical test, some don’t feel comfortable convicting. The police didn’t see a lot of objective symptoms of intoxication which might make up for the lack of a chemical test. In fact, some of my witnesses disagreed on whether the Defendant smelled like alcohol. And the police didn’t observe bad driving, another factor that is normally used to argue that the Defendant was under the influence. All the Defendant was pulled over for was a speeding ticket.

In addition to the weak evidence of intoxication, the Defendant had an alibi. He claimed that he was the victim of a shooting which left a bullet in his body. This bullet cut off oxygen to his brain when he was under stress. Despite this alibi, the defense had not noticed any witnesses, such as doctors, nor did they intend to introduce any medical records. All they had were photos of lumps in someone’s body that I assume they were going to claim were bullets in the Defendant’s body. That’s it. I think the Defendant was intending to get up there any say, “Hey, I’m the real victim here.” “I was robbed back in the 90s and I was shot three times. One of the bullets has traveled to my heart. Because of that bullet, every time I get excited the bullet cuts off oxygen to my brain and I pass out.”

There were several problems with that theory, even if you don’t consider the total lack of independent evidentiary support. First, and most important, I had a report by an EMT on scene showing that defendant’s blood was properly oxygenated. In other words, his defense was a complete fabrication. Second, the Defendant didn’t even pass out, he just fell down. Third, the robbery part, and the bullets part are completely irrelevant. Fourth, again, there was no evidence of any of this other than Defendant’s self-serving testimony. And of course, if he really had this condition, should he be driving in the first place?

The case was won on motions in limine. I was able to exclude virtually every aspect of the other side’s defense. I successfully argued that his statements about the prior robbery were an irrelevant attempt to garner the sympathy of the jury. Then I pointed out the lack of medical records, and argued that Defendant should not be allowed to give his lay medical opinion as to his injuries, nor should he be allowed to repeat a doctor’s diagnosis, since this is hearsay. These motions were granted as Defense counsel threw a fit and cursed the name of the judge to anyone who will listen. I think he was putting on a show for his client. He made several comments to that effect.

This case taught me the value of discussing your cases with your coworkers: they suggested the motions that I used, even though I was more than capable of coming up with them myself. I knew it was valuable to write motions in limine, but they were so effective in this case that the Defendant just threw in the towel.

Twi Travails

Twi is an African dialect with 14 vowels that is spoken in West Africa. There is only one Twi interpreter in the State of California and she was present to assist the Defendant in my fifth trial, a DUI involving a hit and run. He claimed that he did not speak English, even though he was from Liberia, whose official language is English.

It’s Hard To Cross-Examine In Twi.

Cross-examination was extremely difficult with an inexperienced translator interposing herself between me and the Defendant. He spoke English well enough to take classes at a local college and to pass a drivers’ license exam but was using her anyway. This additional layer allowed him more time to think about his answers and avoid incriminating himself. I also did not speak up when the translator appeared to be conversing with the Defendant after my questions. I should have found out whether the translator is allowed to explain my questions to the witness, or whether her role is just to translate. If he is pretending not to understand even simple questions then the jury she see that, so they can use it to evaluate his credibility.

Another prosecutor analogized cross-examination to playing ping-pong. The most successful cross-examination is done with rapid questions and rapid answers. Each questions should be designed to throw the Defendant off just a little bit. Once he’s thrown off, he may lie, or at least contradict himself. He may also go too far, and say something the jury is not likely to believe. But the method is impossible if the defendant has a lot of time to think about what he’s going to say. If he slows down the pace, the chance of him slipping up disappears almost entirely.

If you can’t play ping-pong on cross-examination, then you need to try a different strategy. Ask questions that you know the answers to. Ask questions where the answer doesn’t matter: questions that reinforce your theory of the case regardless of what the defendant’s answer is. Stick to your main points and hammer them home. This alternate method means many fewer questions and a much shorter cross-examination. But it avoids the problem of getting stuck in the weeds with the defendant. It also helps you avoid looking like a bully, which I found out during my second trial can be death.

The Defendant denied being under the influence and being involved in a hit and run. But he still had to explain his poor performance on the field sobriety tests and his refusal to submit to an alcohol test, as the law required. He claimed that he fled the scene of his accident and did badly on the FSTs because he didn’t understand English well. He also claimed that he could not understand the officer’s instructions on how to submit to a chemical test. The most effective portion of my cross-examination involved the Defendant’s ability to speak English. I pointed out that he was from a country whose official language is English. I pointed out that he spoke English at school and with his friends. I pointed out that he worked a job for an English speaking boss and that he passed a drivers’ exam in English.

The Importance of Jury Selection

The jury convicted him after several days of deliberation, showing that jury selection really can make or break a case. Here, there were two holdouts that eventually came around to vote for guilt. I interviewed the foreman after the trial, and the jury really went through some herculean efforts to convince the holdouts. They went from excuse to excuse, even at one point forcing the jury to send a note to the judge asking if the officer’s failure to give a Miranda warning prior to the FSTs invalidated the Defendant’s subsequent performance.

There has got to be a better way to identify and challenge these jurors. I really need to be extremely careful and deliberate during voir dire. I will say that one of the leading jurors, who also stuck around to get interviewed was an engineer, and I don’t know how the defense allowed him to remain on the jury. True to every stereotype that I’ve heard since I’ve started, he was right in my camp and helped persuade the holdouts.

Snatching Victory From The Jaws of Defeat

It finally took an instruction on the judge to get unanimity: a very aggressive instruction. At the close of evidence, the Defense brought a motion for a new trial. This was denied. The Defense renewed this motion after the verdict. This time, the court granted the motion, to my surprise, and the surprise of others in my office. The judge decided that his instruction to the jury was too aggressive, so aggressive, he said, that it coerced them into coming to a verdict. Then, on his own motion, he dismissed the driving under the influence count. He said that he did not believe the arresting officer, who he believed was angry at the Defendant because the arrest occurred at the end of his shift and out of his jurisdiction. That left the hit and run count. This count was supported by the testimony of an independent witness (as was the DUI count, by the way) but it only involved minimal damage. The judge then allowed the Defendant to plead guilty in exchange for diversion.

I’m ambivalent about the wild twists and turns that this case took after judgment. On the one hand, I wanted to win the case, and I feel like I did win the case by persuading the jurors. On the other hand, the Defendant completely escaped accountability, which makes me feel angry. His bad attitude made this even worse, especially the way he acted outraged even after the judge had saved his case from the jaws of defeat. He was not even grateful for this last minute generosity. At the end of the day, it was just a misdemeanor, and maybe he learned his lesson regardless of whether he goes to jail.

Branch and Area

I was sent from my branch office to an area office, like going from the provinces to the capital, for my fourth trial. I was happy to be there, several people from my training class were assigned as prosecutors there, and a couple of other people that I really liked. Trial took about a week. I put on two witnesses and used two exhibits, an audio file and some pictures. As part of my ongoing self-criticism project, I think there are some things that I could have done better. I could have done a little investigation into the case and maybe found some more witnesses. That would have helped corroborate my existing evidence. One of the jurors even said as much after they jury hung. I could have prepped a little more in advance. I could have used 911 call documentation to find another key witness that I didn’t have. I didn’t go to the scene. I could have prepared my opening and closing farther in advance.

During my rebuttal argument I also was playing with fire a bit. I know from our training materials that prosecutors often commit error during argument. I argued the failure to call logical witnesses, which is close to commenting on the defendant’s failure to testify, a clear error. After the trial a supervisor suggested that I not do that unless the defense puts on some kind of a case (any kind of case). I also took a risk during my rebuttal argument by injecting some emotion and feeling into my argument in response to the suggestion that I should just let this case drop because there were no prior incidents.

My Third Trial

I just finished my third trial. I’m sitting at counsel table in a mostly empty courtroom, with a few other lawyers as we await the jury’s veridct. I can hear the muffled voices of the jury through a vent as they deliberate. They are arguing, but it’s impossible to hear what they are arguing about. I’m sitting alone at counsel table. The defense attorney asked a young collegue to sit in for him while the jury deliberates. He’s sitting at counsel table as well, a few feet away, playing on his phone. The bailiff is at his desk in a corner. Listening to the jury argue is making me crazy, and I can’t stand thinking about it, so I make small talk with the defense counsel, who turns out to be a pleasant guy. But I can’t make small talk for the hours its taking the jury, so eventually I move to the back of the room and begin typing this latest entry in my ongoing series on the mistakes I’m making and how I can improve.

The first thing that jumps out at my is that I didn’t get my hands on the key piece of evidence in this case, the blood split, until the second day of trial. And I had to rely on the defense counsel’s sense of fair play in order to get it. I should have gotten the blood split earlier, so that I could have worked it into my argument.

I should have been more prepared with a cross-examination script for the defense expert. As it was, I went off-script a little and used a prosecutor’s manual that they provided me. It worked out, but the one mistake I can’t afford to make is lack of preparation.

I made some additional mistakes:

I should have actually subbed the nurse who drew the blood, so that I could make sure that he attended;
I should have been more careful about “drunk” vs. “under the influence.”
I should have showed my exhibits to the defense prior to trial to make sure that any problems were resolved, instead of wasting time editing the transcript of the DMV hearing on the fly;
I should have been more carefully about letting the defendant off of the hook for testifying by getting his testimony through the DMV tapes.

Multicolored Letters On A Map

When I think back about my second trial it will be a memory of a mess of papers on the podium, with computer printouts of garden supplies overlapping a map of Home Depot marked in multicolored letters in in different departments, confusing even to me and I asked for them. It will be holding impeachment documents without a thought in my head about what I might eventually do with them. Asking questions literally as they occurred to me, with no firm sense of whether I would draw an objection or when I should stop. The sensation of talking too quickly and too angrily. Of lecturing on a subject I knew but without teaching anyone anything. Watching a juror that I thought was my partisan slump and slouch as I continued my argument. Or sitting in at my laptop in the middle of the night struggle to put together a slick presentation for use with my closing argument and failing to come up with anything more complex than just reviewing the jury instructions.

After each trial I’m going to do a little self-analysis. The goal is to look at my performance objectively before a verdict is returned, to avoid letting the jury’s verdict color the analysis. I wasn’t able to get around to this analysis at the right time, but I don’t think it will matter that much because the jury came back “not guilty” this time, and I don’t think there’s too much danger in being too critical. I made mistakes at three critical points: jury selection, cross-examination, and with impeachment evidence.

Heraclitus said “character is fate,” but in jury selection it might as well be “demography is fate.” I found that out the hard way last week. I allowed on several jurors that I had misgivings about, even though I had enough peremptory challenges to get rid of them. Looking back, I thought my charming nature would be enough to overcome any demographic or temperamental difficulties they may have returning a conviction. But I could tell that I made a mistake when one of the jurors that I had been on the fence about would not look me in the eye during my closing argument.

I had the chance to cross-examine three defense witnesses, including the defendant herself. I was trying to be aggressive, but I ended up in a bit of a schoolyard argument with the youngest of these witnesses. I could sense that I was turning the jury off during this encounter. I was told as much after the trial by an uninvolved lawyer. With another witness, I had impeachment information about his criminal history, but I didn’t dwell on it long enough. I felt nervous in front of the jury and I didn’t take the time to come up with enough impeachment questions. I ended up basically asking, “You lied about your criminal record, didn’t you?” without much follow-up. I think the jury may have needed a few questions of follow up before they could really grasp what they were being told and why it was important.

Finally, I was really at sea when it came to impeachment evidence. I had several prior written statements by defense witnesses. I had a document from the public defender’s investigator detailing an interview she took from one of the witnesses. Another witness wrote a confession directly to the district attorney’s office. It differed in small ways from her actual testimony. I had both of these moved into evidence by reference only.

My First Trial

I just finished my first trial with a guilty verdict. During my celebratory lap around the office, another prosecutor gave me some good advice. He said that after a win most prosecutors pat themselves on the back and tell themselves what great lawyers they are. They look back on their trial as a perfect performance: no errors, no mistakes. Instead, he suggested that I think of all of the things that I had done wrong during the trial and to write them down so that I wouldn’t forget. This would also help balance what might otherwise be an extremely optimistic and congratulatory narrative developing around the trial.

First, I should have been more specific with my motions in limine. The judge took one look at my trial brief and asked me if there was anything in the motions in limine section that wasn’t “standard.” There was nothing. I could have litigated the issue of defendant’s prior convictions, for example. I could have made sure that the judge would allow me to elicit testimony about what happened after the incident so that the jury had more of a complete picture.

I could have thought of more questions for voir dire. I only had a few lines of questioning about reasonable doubt being an “abiding conviction.” I could have asked about how they use their common sense to tell if their children are lying, for example. Luckily I was able to clean up some of this on the second day.

I should have interviewed the witnesses earlier on in the trial process. Because I didn’t interview them until the day before they testified, I was totally blindsided when one of them mentioned facts that were not in the police report. I had also just made myself a witness. When I tried to amend the complaint later to add a count regarding the new facts, the judge denied the amendment as untimely.

There were certain questions that I didn’t ask on cross-examination because I had no set plan for cross-examination. That tended to work out well in some ways but led me to missing what might have been some of the most important questions.

Finally, everyone tells you to make sure your technology works, but I didn’t, and I couldn’t get my upright projector working in time for closing. Although this worked out fine because I was able to use a whiteboard, that was just pure luck. I could have fooled around with it a little bit over the lunch hour. And my failure to get it going meant that most of the time I spent working on my powerpoint was wasted.