Opinion ID: 1750964
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: He had to have been, there was a man driving.

Text: Trial lawyers are keenly aware of the vulnerability of hadda witnesses and musta witnesses. When a witness says that the driver had to have been speeding, or must have swerved this way or that way, his very choice of verbs betrays that he is stating his conclusions rather than his observations. For the purpose of demonstrating the difference between timely and stale cross-examination, let us suppose that a cross-examiner had been present at the time Burditt made his statement to the police officer. And let us suppose, for the sake of discussion, that the following had taken place: Q. William, you say that the man had to have been driving, is that right? A. Yes. Q. Did you see the man behind the wheel before the accident? A. No. Q. Did you see the man behind the wheel after the accident? A. No. Q. Did you ever see the man in the car? A. No. Q. Why then, do you say that the man had to have been driving? A. Because when I first looked over there after the accident, the woman was lying out of the door on the passenger's side, and if she was on the passenger's side, she must have been the passenger and the man had to have been the driver. Q. Isn't it possible that the man was thrown out of the car from the passenger's side and the woman was thrown across the front seat from the driver's seat? A. Yes, that's possible. Q. Do you still say that the man had to have been driving? A. No, I guess not. Now let us see whether the stale cross-examination of Burditt with respect to his statement, as envisioned by the Uniform Rule and advocated by Professor McCormick, would have the same effect: Q. William, you say that the man had to have been driving, is that right? A. No, I'm not saying that. Q. Well that's what you told the police officer, isn't it? A. Yes. Q. Did you see the man behind the wheel before the accident? A. No. Q. Did you see the man behind the wheel after the accident? A. No. Q. Did you ever see the man in the car? A. No. Q. Why then did you tell the police officer that the man had to have been driving? A. Because when I first looked over there after the accident, the woman was lying out of the door on the passenger's side, and if she was on the passenger's side, she must have been the passenger and the man had to have been the driver. Q. Isn't it possible that the man was thrown out of the car from the passenger's side and the woman was thrown across the front seat from the driver's side? A. Yes, that's possible. At this point, the cross-examiner is stymied. The crucial question which would give the witness a chance to change his story, Do you still say that the man had to have been driving? is meaningless. The witness has already testified that he is not still saying that the man had to have been driving. Instead of a plunge to the jugular, the examiner will have to be satisfied with applying a bandage. It would sound something like this: Q. And isn't this the reason why the story you are telling us today is different from the story you told the police officer? or, Q. And isn't it true that if you had thought of that possibility at the time, you never would have told the police officer that the man had to have been driving the car? By these hypothetical examples we have tried to show the windmill-fighting nature of stale cross-examination with respect to the prior statement. No matter how deadly the thrust of the cross-examiner, the ghost of the prior statement stands. His questions will always sound like attempts to permit the witness to explain why he changed his story before coming to court, with the jury being left to infer that he might have been induced to change his story in the intervening months or years, for some unrevealed and sinister reason. When a cross-examiner on timely cross-examination succeeds in getting the witness to change his story, the integrity of the recantation is apparent, and his original, recanted version no longer stands as substantive evidence. If the only evidence of an essential fact in a lawsuit were a statement made from the witness stand which the witness himself completely recanted and repudiated before he left the witness stand, no one would seriously urge that a jury question had been made out. Scholarly legal writings are useful and necessary. When they challenge the established rules, the courts have an obligation to re-examine those rules and measure the theoretical criticism against the hard facts of a living system of justice. This opinion has been longer than we would have liked, but there seemed to be a need. To summarize then:

The judgments of the trial court and the Court of Appeals are affirmed, with costs to the appellee.