Court Opinion

ID: 9698456
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:51:13.447765+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:41.138303
License: Public Domain

McDERMOTT, Justice,
concurring.
We cannot condone counsel offering a personal belief on to the credibility of any witness. Suffice it to say counsel is there to present evidence not to testify as to its credibility. There is a major difference, however, between offering one’s personal belief and arguing that evidence is unbelievable as offered by a witness. Indeed, it is counsel’s function to comment, criticize, expose the content of the evidence of a witness to its own inconsistency, improbability, interest, conflict with other evidence, physical, chemicals, the common sense of the occasion and any other epistemological defect. So long as he does not offer it as true because he personally believes it to be true, his argument has few limits in the search for truth. Absent such a valuation by counsel; that evidence or testimony is true because he believes it, he may argue from literature, history, analogy, examples of universal experience on questions of what is to be believed by ordinary sensible men and women in matters of importance in their own lives. All of which is the function of jurors and the purpose of argument. I join the majority.