I learned early in my practice that one cannot make sense of all judicial decisions.
Judges are people and, like everyone else, they make bad decisions from time to time.
And, because they make more decisions than the rest of us, they also make more bad decisions than the rest of us. However, Judge Wright's decision to permit certain deposition questioning during the course of case investigation can be reconciled with a later ruling that his answers failed to yield relevant information. In the Paula Jones case, Judge Wright permitted her lawyers to investigate the President's alleged pattern of sexual misconduct during the course of his deposition to determine whether his answers would ultimately generate admissible evidence. Not every question during a pre-trial deposition will uncover useful information, but an effective investigation requires a broader range of questions than one may ask at trial. Unfortunately for Ms. Jones, when Judge Wright read the President's deposition transcript she was not persuaded that the answers would be admissible at trial.