• xkbx@startrek.website
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    4 days ago

    From the last time I saw this, what I understood was, the lawyer isn’t asking the witness if there’s a possibility the person in question was alive, the lawyer is trying to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person in question was not only undeniably dead, but also impossible for the person to be alive.

    Source: my memory from a random comment on the internet, pay it forward

    • Moops@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Yeah that makes sense. I used to work in a position where I had to testify in court regularly about the results of independent findings the court requested. There were often lines of questioning that were about establishing details. The questions seemed silly, but it wasn’t about the specific pieces of information it was about establishing that “Thing A” was absolutely true (or false) as of a specific point on a timeline. I never had any fun exchanges like this though lol.

  • ditty@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    Sarcasm and humor rarely work in your favor in a court setting, it’s true. That was a pretty inane line of questioning, however.

    • Etterra@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      He’s an expert who’s probably old and sick of answering questions like this because even if they’re (idiotically) technically necessary, they sound incredibly stupid.