(4-12-23)
- I. Issues involved in entering into forensic evaluations: Who do you serve?
- Your role: the expert
- The attorney’s role: the advocate
- The relationship between the helping professions and the legal system: imperfect
- II. Responding to subpoenas
- What a subpoena is: Never ignore a subpoena
- What a subpoena isn’t: fishing trips and other forms of activity
- III. The role of an expert witness: assist the trier of fact
- Opinions: “within a reasonable degree of professionall certainty”
- More certain than not–51%
- IV. A basic strategy for preparing to testify as a expert witness
- 1. Review your notes and any documents
- 2. Prepare a basic chronology of events
- 3. Outline the logic and data behind any conclusions you have reached
- 4. Ask to meet with the attorney prior to trial
- V. Going to court
- 1. Dress professionally & conservatively
2. Check your phone/answering service before leaving for court
3. Arrive on time & be prepared to wait
4. Take several copies of your vita
5. Take any documents you were instructed to bring
6. Do as you are told–it’s someone else’s playground
7. Ask the court’s permission to refer to your notes if you wish to do so - depositions
- 1. Dress professionally & conservatively
- VI. Testifying
- 1. Make sure you understand the question you are being asked
- 2. In general, answer only the question you are asked
- 3. If the question you are asked makes no sense to you, ask for a restatement
- 4. If the question still makes no sense, try redefining a sensible question and answering that
- 5. If you don’t know something, even if it seems you should know, say you don’t know
- 6. If a “yes-no” answer, in your opinion, obscures important considerations; attempt to elaborate
- 7. Let the attorneys and court sort out the legal issues involved
- 8. Repeat yourself as needed
- 9. Be polite
- 10. Try not to trip on your way out of the courtroom
- 11 Do not remain in court after you have testified
- VII. Martin Orne’s two “golden rules” for testifying as an expert witness
- 1. Only talk about issues you are expert in
- 2. Tell the truth
References
Blau, T.H. (1984). The Psychologist as Expect Witness. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Ewing, C.P. (Ed.) (1985). Psychology, Psychiatry, and the Law: A clinical and forensic handbook. Sarasota, FL: Professional Resource Exchange.
Loftus, E.F. (1979). Eyewitness Testimony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Shapiro, D.L. (1984). Psychological Evaluation and Expert Testimony: A practical guide to forensic work. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co.
Valciukas, J.A. (1995). Forensic Neuropsychology. New York: The Haworth Press.