OK, this may sound dumb, but if I, as a witness can he held in contempt of court for refusing to take the oath, what happens to a judge who doesn’t give the oath, be it by him/herself, the clerk or the bailiff?
:dubious:
In the unlikely event that the judge or clerk forgot to give the oath, one of the attorneys would object to politely point this out. If he refused to give the oath, that’s an entirely different thing, and would be grounds for a mistrial and complaint for judicial misconduct.
Can’t say if they purposely neglected to give the oath or not. Can say, it definitely was not given and the only lawyer there did not comment.
I’ve seen it happen. But it was caught in time and no harm done. Hell, I saw one case where the judge forgot to swear the jury in. With a witness, I’m guessing you’d have grounds for a mistrial.
Eta: the lawyers could easily miss it, they’ve got a hundred things going through their minds as a new witness takes the stand. 99.9% of the time they’d catch it, but there are a lot of courtrooms going all day every day in every county in the country.
No one was sworn in…
This incident happened in small claims court where, according to Legal Advisor for the court, swearing in is indeed needed for testimony and all evidence.
Attorney for the defense did not comment.
No attorney for plaintiff.
Important to note, singular witness for defense is in her 80s and has dementia and alzheimer’s. When asked a question, she had a sudden outburst of unintelligble noise which the judge found quite funny.