It’s a routine part of trials - a lawyer asks a question and the opposing lawyer objects and then the judge rules. (Similar for introducing evidence and such.) Question is: if the judge believes that a line of questioning is improper/invalid, why wouldn’t he or she object on their own? Isn’t part of the judge’s job to ensure a fair trial?
But I don’t recall seeing or hearing of such a thing, so I’m guessing it’s rare, if it happens at all.
Only thing I can think of is that sometimes a lawyer might deliberately allow an improper question because they think it will help them in some manner, and judges don’t want to interfere with this possible strategy.
It is rare. I’d say most judges never do it. Some seldom do it. There are times I’ve received an encouraging look from the bench, inviting me to object. Some things aren’t improper if no one objects. Un-objected to Hearsay, for example. If the parties don’t care, a judge isn’t going to. Things like “wasting the court’s time,” and getting close to things the judge has already ruled out of bounds might provoke a sue sponte objection from the bench.
A friend of mine was a reporter covering an otherwise uneventful trial where a guy was pro se. He was surprised when the judge interrupted a question and said, “Mr. Defendant, you might want to object here, since the prosecutor is asking the witness to speculate.” I don’t remember if the guy took the judge up on his suggestion or not.
IIRC it was a bench trial. Not sure what the judge would do if a jury was in the room.
Related question: If one of the lawyers starts asking questions that the witness thinks is objectionable, can the witness object? (Or ask the judge to on his behalf?)
I was a juror on a trial and the judge objected repeatedly- as in 20-30 times in two days. It was a special case though and touched an area similar to Procrustus’s out-of-bounds. It eventually resorted to a tap of the gavel or a “Move on”. Initially there was a statement about, “that question is NOT for this court of law and will be decided elsewhere”. It was clear that the judge and prosecutor didn’t really mind and they knew the defense was in a bind. There was another trial occurring at the federal level about “Should the police have stopped at all?”, i.e. racial profiling. So any discussion that veered toward the “why?” or “what were you expecting to find?” instead of the “what did you find?” was objected to by the judge. The difficult part was where the cops assigned the discovered evidence/weapon to one of the 4 youths at the scene. So the prosecutor could ask “why did you assign it to the defendant?” but not “why did you have to assign it to anyone?” The prosecutor objected maybe twice in total.
It was evident that the judge wasn’t happy with the situation but was happy with the defense attorney for trying as best as he could. I’m really curious what would have happened if we had gone for jury nullification
No, not technically. A smart witness will say something like “are you asking me to speculate, counselor?” Or “I only know what that guy told me, and that’s probably hearsay.” If the witness said they were “objecting” to the question, the judge would tell him that’s not his job. Of course, if the witness has his own objection, I guess he could voice it (“I’m sorry, but that subject relates to a conversation between me and my attorney and I can’t talk about that.”)
My courtroom expertise rests solely by watching TV crime dramas, which is to say I realise I know nothing.
Lets hypothesize that I am instructed by a prosecutor to answer his question with a simple “yes or no”. However, I feel that such an answer is bound to be misleading to the jury, and possibly preventing me from being able to “tell the whole truth”.
Can I object to the instruction to answer “yes or no”?
This seems overly legalistic to me. If there’s no jury, then the judge is going to decide anyway, and can ignore the answer to that question if he wants to. I don’t see why he needs to object.
Unless he’s worried about being reviewed by a higher court and needs to have on record why he’s ignoring it.
An example I’m thinking of is a question that relates to a personal matter that is not really relevant to the case at hand. The attorney is not objecting because they don’t care one way or the other, but it makes a big difference to the witness, who really doesn’t want to discuss this in public.
But it’s not some protected right. Just that to the extent that it’s not really needed for the trial, the witness feels that he shouldn’t be compelled to answer.
Not sure if it was dealt with formally as an objection, but I objected once while giving testimony.
I was a witness to a traffic accident. The plantiff’s lawyer started with an innocuous question but mis-stated the question something like “Were you driving a 1956 <make> <model> that day?” I answered “No” and the attorney started down a line of rapid fire very hostile questioning.
I objected and asked the judge to have the court reporter read back the question as he got the model year wrong in his question. It was a 1996 model year.
You can always say, “I can’t really answer that question yes or no.” The judge will not generally allow the examining lawyer to force you into giving a yes or no answer if you can’t honestly give one. At the very least, the opposing lawyer can always ask you to elaborate upon cross-examination.
Except in many non-TV courtrooms, you’re only swearing to tell the truth, not the “whole truth.”
Usually, if you’re not being an ass, the judge will allow you to politely say, “That question really can’t be answered yes or no, because…” If the judge things you’re being evasive or playing games, he or she might indeed get impatient and simply tell you to “answer yes or no if you can.”
In PA, nothing prohibits a trial court judge from raising an objection sua sponte (of his own accord). However, calling counsel up to the bench for a side bar to discuss the issue out of the hearing of the jury is the better practice (in my humble opinion at least).
Yes they can. I tried a bench trial in front of a judge who argued about every little thing my client (another lawyer and former prosecutor with over 40 years experience) wanted to introduce as evidence. He kept encouraging us to move on, I kept asking him if he was ordering us not to introduce evidence on a subject and back and forth for several hours over a few different afternoon sessions. He never ordered us not to try to enter the evidence, just that he didn’t think we should try to put it into the record. This was just idiotic in a matter that should have taken 15 minutes over weed height.
When I asked, above, if a witness could object, I actually had in mind those presumptuous yes/no questions that lawyers love to ask, demanding a “yes” or “no” answer, when the question really doesn’t have a meaningful binary “yes” or “no” answer. Lawyers love to do this when they want to befuddle the witness and the jury.
Or do they? It’s not like I’ve seen this happen myself. Everything I know about Law and court procedures, I learned from the CSI School of Law on TV. That is, from all the TV shows I’ve seen about trials. I know so much, I’ll be getting my J.D. forthwith. :dubious:
So, to put my question a little differently: Does it actually happen much like that in Real Live Courts, or is that a bunch of TV hokum? If lawyers really ask those impossible yes/no questions, how are they best dealt with – by the witness; by the other lawyer; by the judge? And by the jury?
ETA: If I were a witness, my inclination would be to ask the judge if I can object. If the judge says I must answer, and answer with just a “yes” or “no”, I would probably answer, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know the answer to that question.”
Others above have explained that “Answer yes or no!” questions are generally objectionable. Rather than try to bully a witness like that, if the witness is being unreasonably evasive, you are better off asking questions that draw attention to it. Thus (in a case where the man the witness is describing was wearing a yellow shirt, and nothing much turns on it):-
Counsel: was the man wearing a yellow shirt?
Witness: I can’t answer that.
Counsel: Very well, was he wearing a red shirt?
Witness:No
Counsel:Was he wearing an orange shirt?
Witness:Well, no.
Counsel: Was he wearing a green shirt?
Witness:No
Counsel:Was he wearing a blue shirt?
Witness:No.
Counsel:Was he wearing an indigo shirt?
Witness:No
Counsel:Was he wearing a violet shirt?
Witness:No
Counsel:We have now been through every colour of the rainbow, and still we do not know what you can tell us about the shirt colour. Perhaps you can tell us what colour the shirt was?
Witness:Well, it was a sort of goldy colour…
Counsel:And you made us go through that excruciating process just to maintain the critical, vital, all-important distinction between “yellow” and “a sort of goldy colour”?
Witness (sheepishly): Yes, I suppose…
You see the technique. Don’t immediately ask the question “Well, what colour was it?” Instead put a series of faux-naive questions you know to be wrong, forcing the witness into a series of no answers to questions further and further from the truth and pretend it’s the witness’s fault, and the witness is being cute.
Of course, as counsel, you have to sense your moment and whether momentum is with you from the perspective of the jury, because they might think you’re a smartarse, but that is one of the risks you always take. Note that counsel has at no point insisted on a yes or no answer.
If it’s “gold-y” then it’s not yellow; and not orange; but somewhere in between. I have a running argument with my wife over whether one of my shirts is blue or black (it’s fine lines of plaid). I had a running argument with my grade 2 teacher that skin was orange not pink. (In fact, to get flesh tone you mix several parts white and red to one part yellow…) This presumes the lawyer has ascertained you are not partially colour-blind, either. Also depends on your definition of “is”.
Just how egregious do you have to be to get convicted of perjury? “Oh, maybe it was a sort of yellow. I can’t say for sure…”