Lawyers forgo valid objections because jurors read technicality as concealment.
Evidence
Schlichtmann sat quietly at the counsel table. He looked completely calm, his features bland and inscrutable, but he was seething inwardly. If this were a deposition, he would have interrupted a dozen times and fought bitterly with Facher. But now, in the courtroom, he rarely objected to any of Facher’s questions, even when he had legitimate cause. He disliked objecting in front of jurors. He didn’t want any juror to get the idea that he was trying to conceal something under the cloak of a legal technicality. … It seemed peculiar to Schlichtmann. After court that day, on the walk back to the office, Schlichtmann asked Drobinski about it. Drobinski took from his coat pocket a snapshot of his family—his wife, his young son, and his daughter. The snapshot was creased and dog-eared and stained with sweat from the palm of Drobinski’s hand. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 1758
Categorization
- BMF: Parallels A Very Minor Prophet’s Birtwhistle, who refuses a doctrinally defensible argument because his flock would misread the technicality as bad faith.
- DEEPTHINKING: The deeper point — that a trial’s real audience is not the judge but twelve bored strangers who judge the advocate’s character — reshapes how any legal or rhetorical performance should be staged.
- XREF: connects to: Jurors displace guilt onto the legal system’s decisions — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2001; Nervous, inexperienced expert witnesses read as more honest to juries — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action , 1414
Broader Connections
- Nervous, inexperienced expert witnesses read as more honest to juries
#exemplifies(0.80) — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 1414 - Jurors displace guilt onto the legal system’s decisions
#complicates(0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2001