Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-899_97be.pdf
Page Number: 36.0

Cite as:  602 U. S. ____ (2024) 

5 

ALITO, J., concurring in judgment 

The  Guiteau  example  illustrates  many  other  problems
with hypothetical questioning.  For one, hypothetical ques-
tions were “difficult for the attorneys to frame, for the court 
to rule on, and for the jury to understand.”  M. Ladd, Expert
Testimony,  5  Vand.  L.  Rev.  414,  425  (1952)  (Ladd).    Like 
the  question  above,  the  hypotheticals  were  often  “so  built
up and contrived” that they were impossible for either the
jury or the expert to follow.  1 J. Wigmore, Evidence 1095
(2d ed. 1923) (1 Wigmore 2d); accord, Ladd 427.  One case 
involved  a  hypothetical  that  extended  over  “eighty-three
pages of typewritten transcript, and an objection involved
in fourteen pages more of the record.”  Treadwell v. Nickel, 
194 Cal. 243, 266, 228 P. 25, 35 (1924).  Such questions re-
quired an expert to have the extraordinary ability “to com-
prehend in one mental operation the entirety of what has
been asked so as to give any answer.”  Ladd 427; see, e.g., 
Editorials, The Hypothetical Question Again, 24 J. Crim. L. 
& C. 517, 517–519 (1933).  And juries surely found following
lengthy hypotheticals even more mystifying.

For another, lawyers often used hypotheticals as a pre-
view of their closing arguments.  See, e.g., Rosenberg 144 
(“Assume  . . .  that  he  committed  the  act  of  shooting  the
President under what he believed to be a Divine command 
which he was not at liberty to disobey . . . so that he could 
not resist the mental pressure upon him”); see also S. Gross,
Expert  Evidence,  1991  Wis.  L.  Rev.  1113,  1162  (Gross);
Wigmore  2d  §686,  at  1095;  Ladd  246.    In  doing  so,  they
sometimes sneaked in “irrelevant” information, Gross 1162, 
and excluded necessary details, W. White, Insanity and the 
Criminal Law 86 (1923) (White) (describing the hypothet-
ical question as “eliminat[ing] from consideration every hu-
man  element  which  every  common-sense  man  takes  into 
consideration when he formulates an opinion”).  One medi-
cal expert declared that he “ha[d] never known a hypothet-
ical question, in a trial involving the mental condition of the 
defendant, which in [his] opinion offered a fair presentation