I’ve been watching Boston Legal, and while I have no illusions that the show displays proper courtroom proceedings as it’s a comedy, there is one point I’d like to know about…
Often, someone will Object during a trial. I assume the judge “has” to address the objection, either by saying “sustained” or “overruled.” I further assume (not being a lawyer, I don’t know) that it’s important for him to sustain or overrule it so that
a) the jury knows whether to pay attention to the objectionable statement
b) the court reporter knows whether or not to record the objectionable statement
There may be other reasons, but these seem like enough.
In the show (depending on the episode) a lot of times, objections go unanswered.
Does this happen at all in actual practice? Does it differ from state to state? Or court to court? (District to state supreme to federal, etc.)
So for example…
Prosecution says something, defense says, “I object on (grounds).” Prosecution keeps talking, the judge barely glances at defense counsel.
Is there a reason that both prosecution and judge ignore the objection (or at least don’t reply to it)? It happens in many episodes over many seasons.
No, it is extremely rare. One might say nearly impossible and not be accused of hyperbole. It makes great drama, perhaps, but in real life, the court will rule on an objection and the lawyers are expected to conform their actions to the ruling.
As an aside, in most cases, unless the grounds for the objection are blindingly obvious, the lawyer is required to state the grounds for his objection, rather than the TV trick of tossing out a general objection and assuming the judge will telepathically pick up on your reasons.
Hey, perhaps that’s why TV judges ignore the objections. We just are never shown the scene beforehand, in chambers, where the judge tells both lawyers, “Now, if you can’t be bothered to state grounds for your objections, kids, I’m just going to ignore them as though they were never uttered!”
And the continued "Objection"s, either ignored or answered with “Noted” (since the objection was already overruled), would be [del]really annoying bad “lawyer” acting[/del] to preserve the error in the trial record for appeal?
Highly generous. The objections seldom, if ever, appear to be on grounds related to one another. Even if they were, how is the appellate court to determine that this objection was part of an (unseen by the TV viewer) effort to announce a particular assignment of error to a particular ruling?
For this idea to be true, at the very least we might imagine hearing something like, “Same objection, your honor,” which would at least alert the reviewing court that the current objection had its roots in an identical, fully-laid-out, specific claim.
That’s interesting. When I was a juror on a murder trial in DC a few years ago, neither attorney once explained the reason for an objection. It was curious to me because there were several times in which there was an objection, the judge would lean back in his chair, chew on a pencil in deep contemplation, and then respond to the objection. I recall thinking at the time that the judge was trying to divine the reason for the objection, and then whether it was valid.
The first trial I ever saw, the judge didn’t verbally rule on most of the objections, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t rule on them. A glare from the bench can be enough to let the lawyers know how to conform their conduct. However, this is poor procedure because it doesn’t show up in the record.
As to the OP’s assumptions, the court reporter should transcribe everything said in the courtroom, even if it’s later ruled inadmissable. While sustained objections can and do force the questioning lawyer to change his tactics or the testifying witness to shut up about something he isn’t allowed to talk about, just as important is what happens to objections on appeal.
The rule is that, since trials are costly, they take a long time, and they’re a big imposition on witnesses, that each side has an obligation to try to correct errors as they happen. Instead of letting an error fester, and then on appeal bringing it up and demanding your client get a new trial. So if you thing there’s improper testimony or questioning, you MUST object contemporaneously. If you do, the trial judge has the immediate ability to consider and rule on the objection and, if you’re right, that nips the problem in the bud. If the objection is overruled, then it’s still plain in the record what you thought was in error, and so it can be considered on appeal. If you don’t object immediately, you will almost never be permitted to raise that error on appeal.
Hey, if you’ve got a judge that will do that, sometimes it’s better not to state your reasoning. The judge may think of a reason the question is objectionable that you didn’t think of.
Our rules around here are that if the objecting attorney doesn’t get a ruling on the record, he generally loses his right to complain of the error on appeal. If the judge doesn’t make a ruling, the attorney has to interrupt the proceedings and request a ruling on his objection for the record. If the judge doesn’t make an explicit ruling after a request or two (“I said move on, counselor!”) the courts of appeal will rule that the judge’s refusal to rule was an overruling of the objection, but the attorney has to make the requests. The best bet is to be a tad apologetic but insistant that you really need the ruling.
I served on a jury about 3 years ago, both attorneys objected to a number of things. If the judge did not agree with the objection, he would just tell the other attorney to continue. If he agreed with the objection, us jurors were instructed as to what to ignore. On at least 4 occasions, the judge and attorneys would take a short recess in the hallway behind the courtroom and discuss the objection. The judge would come back and give his decision. The judge explained all this is the pre-trial instructions and pointed out it would not be like the stuff we see on TV.
The rules say the lawyer needs to state grounds for an objection. However, trial lawyers rarely state grounds for two reasons:
Most objections that arise in court are obvious ones; the difficult objections get worked out in pretrial conferences, so you’re usually limited to a small subset (like hearsay or improper phrasing).
If you object and don’t state the grounds, the judge will do one of two things: she will either sustain it on grounds that she finds obvious, or she will ask for grounds if she doesn’t see anything objectionable. This gives you two bites at the apple – if you object on the wrong grounds, the judge is (mostly) obliged to rule against you even though she knows it is objectionable. The judge will rarely/never just overrule your objection without asking your grounds, as you might have something she missed (unless it’s an ongoing renewal).
Most of the time when grounds are given, they are merely renewing their objection for the record to give them grounds for appeal later.
Will the judge in real life pick up on something that the defense counsel should have objected to and give him a gentle (or not so gentle) reminder? (I’ve seen judges do this on TV now and again.) Or isn’t that the judge’s job?
And if defense counsels do miss things is that grounds for the client to appeal afterwards?
Generally, no. There are some actions that a judge can take sua sponte in trial, but he or she won’t usually take any action on something one or the other parties should be objecting to. Occasionally a judge will be looking imploringly to an attorney to please make a relevance objection to irrelevant testimony, and gratefully sustain it when they do.
Only if failure to object amounts to ineffective assitance, a pretty high standard. If the attorney can articulate a valid trial strategy for not having objected, or if the defendant can’t show that the outcome would have been different, the ineffective assistance claim will fail.
As a side note, if you just ignore the judge and keep going on (particular with obvious intent to influence the jury with material you’re not supposed to talk about), you can get into big trouble. In the original L&O, McCoy is punished at least once for this behavior (case tossed out, IIRC). In the newer CO, I was rather disgusted when the judge let Vincent “One-Note” Don’Ofrio get away with this in spades. Then the trial continued. Perhaps not unrealistically, they put the defendant away with very little evidence and without any confirmation I can recall he did the crime.
You do have to state specific Constitutional or Declaration of Right’s grounds in Md however, often leading to, “I object your honor, as this is against the rule of evidence and the Defendant’s Due Process, 4th, 5th and 6th Amendment Rights.”
