As mentioned above, seldom will an opposing attorney ask you questions and want you to just answer “yes or no”. Most attorneys will advise their clients that are being questioned, to just answer simply “yes or no”, and they will come back on re-direct and get the clarifying response. Opposing attorneys want you to talk and be very verbose, that gives them more to work with. Your own attorney, will normally advise you to listen carefully to the questions and only answer the question and not supply supplemental information.
Not quite. On cross examination an opposing lawyer will quite often want to have a go at getting a series of yes and no answers that get the witness to accept the opponent’s position.
“Isn’t it true that . . . .”
and so on.
Answering “yes” or “no” to a question that’s been narrowed down so as not to need clarification is the key, and the witness can get there by the kind of polite resistance to giving absolute, commital unqualified answers to vague, open-ended, or misleading questions I suggest above.
Clearing up ambiguity on re-direct is not a first-line strategy for at least two reasons. First, as mentioned, on direct, leading is not permitted, so if the piece of context that you’re particularly concerned about was that he only needed approval for shipping blue widgets, not red, you may have a hard time getting him to volunteer that fact without asking an inappropriate leading question. Second, the other side is going to play a series of him giving unqualified “admissions” to vague questions. “Yes, I did. Yes, I did.” Then you’ll get up and . . . elicit testimony or play video of him trying to “fix” those answers when his lawyer took him on direct? It’s going to look fishy.
Actually, no, I was describing what happens in court - my court, at least, and virtually every one in which I appeared before becoming a magistrate.
Not necessarily. There’s at least one other correct answer: “I don’t know.” Even if the witness was in the room with X at the time of the alleged action or question, the witness might not have been paying attention, may not have heard what X said, may have been chatting up that cute chick and wasn’t watching X, and so on.
My apologies, EH. I will asume state court?
Cross-examining counsel can insist on a responsive answer, and should draft the question so as to avoid giving the witness the opportunity to hold forth at length (unless he wants that to occur). Thus, a cross-examiner will typically not ask “Why did you go to the shop?” but say “The reason you went to the shop was X, wasn’t it?” Although in a formal sense a yes/no answer would do, a witness is entitled to say “No, I went because of Y”. That happens every day, and any lawyer who tried to stop that on the premise that the answer was not responsive would a) lose and b) look like a dick to the jury.
On the other hand, lawyers can shut down self-serving justifications as non-responsive:-
Q: You shot Mr Henderson, didn’t you?
A: Only because he was mean to my kid sister that time back in 1985 and he is well known to be having affairs behind his wife’s back and I won’t stand for that and any way I was late taking my meds this morning…
is not a responsive answer. Lawyer will say “Stop! My question only asked if you shot him and did not enquire why. I take it the answer is yes, you did shoot him?”
It is a question of degree in many cases to decide the point at which the answer is or is not responsive and is not completely determined by the formal grammar of the question.
IME, counsel are rarely allowed to ask a question in a form that expressly demands only a yes or no answer (they might just get away with it if the witness has shown a habit of evasion or circumlocution). This is precisely because it can’t often be known in advance what qualifications might apply. Even a question like “You shot Mr Henderson, didn’t you?” might rightly attract the answer “It depends what you mean by “shot”. The gun went off in my hand accidentally, so in that sense I shot him, but I did not intend to do so or even to discharge the gun, so if you mean by shot “deliberately discharged the weapon” the answer is no, but if you do not, the answer might be yes.”
No apology necessary. I’m a muni court magistrate, applying state law and local ordinances typically, although once in a blue moon Federal law is at issue.