Sample opening statement criminal trial

Instead, it has caused them to charge him with a crime that he did not commit. Most judges will let you argue a little a the beginning of your statement, as you set forth your theme. If the judge shuts you down, no problem. Just jump right into the story. No doubt, the prosecution will spend a lot of time proving up the robbery — which is no longer in contention. This may cause the jury to think that the prosecution is avoiding the real question in the case: how did the victim die?

You refer to another theme: shoddy police work. Philip woke up that morning, and he was drug sick. Philip was sick and penniless. He needed drugs, but he had nothing to buy them with, and he immediately thought of Mr. But the rule you are going to be asked to apply by the judge is a simple rule: Did Maryland Machine build a mechanical system that was defectively designed that lead to the death of Cindy Manning? This is an exhibit of what they built.

Now, if you have lived in Baltimore, you have almost certainly seen the Crawford Sugar sign at the Inner Harbor. The factory has been here since the '20s. But the system at issue was redesigned in and built by Maryland Machine. The system is in a place called the Wash House. In the Wash House, a hot, chemical slurry is used to begin to convert the sugar that comes out of the fields into the sugar that you put in your coffee. So Crawford Sugar says to Maryland Machine, we want to re-do this area of the Wash House, here are some drawings with our idea of how we think it should be built.

And Maryland Machine said okay, we will build you a system. This is the tank. It holds approximately 5, gallons of hot liquid slurry. As a part of the beginning of the refining process, raw sugar is pumped through pipes into this 5,gallon tank where it is combined with lime and carbon dioxide resulting in a hot liquid slurry that contains calcium carbonate. This solution is heated to to degrees. Now in this tank is raw sugar and these chemicals but also a lot of junk: rocks, wood, debris, you name it.

And it all comes down this pipe and into this strainer and then it gets sent up for more processing. This right here is a valve that you can turn on and off to stop the flow. So if you want to service the strainer, clean it out or whatever, you need to close this value. The strainer needs to be cleaned between three and six times a day.

So when they regularly cleaned the strainer, they had to:. Now, what if the system itself was blocked in here in the pipes as opposed to the strainer? The operator would not know the difference. This situation creates a risk for the unexpected release of stored energy that could cause injury to employees, which is what happens here. One night, Cindy Manning arrives at work and found that the system she was working on was clogged. Being a new employee, she calls her supervisor, a gentleman named Joe Rivera.

She asks for help. Rivera asks Henry Taylor to help who in turn asks Mike Foster to assist Cindy in unclogging the system. You are going to have the opportunity to meet Mr. Foster is an important witness because he is the only living eyewitness to the accident.

Foster goes and sees — as he was told to expect — that the Strainer is blocked. So he did what he was supposed to do, what he was trained to do. He shut off all of the valves that could bring about an unexpected release of the hot slurry, and he takes off the lid to the strainer.

So Mr. Foster tries to stick a rod up to clean out the blockage. Then he attempts to squirt some water. Nothing worked. So they stand there talking, trying to figure out what to do next. Suddenly, hot slurry heated to between and degrees comes down on Cindy Manning. She tries to escape, but she falls. When she gets up, she is covered in this hot chemical slurry. After the accident, Crawford did an investigation as to how the accident could have been avoided.

A week later, Crawford issued a report on the accident because they wanted to find out how the accident happened and how it could be avoided in the future. A lot of smart and qualified people with years of experience looked at this question and concluded that this accident could have been avoided. The report said that there should have been a valve right in front of the strainer.

That hot slurry would never have come out if Maryland Machine had put a valve in front of that strainer. The minor expense of setting that valve showing exhibit in a way that protects Cindy Manning from those hot chemicals. But at that point, it was too late. You are going to hear more on this from Dr. David Donahue. Donahue served for 15 years as the chairman of the Machine Engineering department at the University of Maryland.

Now, he spends his time working for the Navy in fighting against terrorism. While the engineering needed to fight terrorism is probably a lot more complicated than the issues, in this case,. Donahue will tell you that it is not at all complicated, the need for this valve was a simple thing that anyone should know.

Donahue is also going to talk to you about pressure gauges and how cheap they are to install and how they would have helped provide information that would have prevented her death. You are also going to hear from Lee Tompkins. He is going to tell you the same thing as Dr. Donahue — that putting a valve here before the accident was common sense that any reasonable plumber or installer should have known. You are also going to hear from Dr.

Henry from Johns Hopkins. He is also going to tell you that it does not take much of this slurry on your body to cause grave pain and, ultimately, death. When you see court cases on the TV news or on Law and Order think about the themes of those cases. Members of the jury, the State will call three different witnesses in this trial.

Lastly we will call a very experienced psychiatrist who will testify that he did a thorough mental health evaluation of the defendant in this matter. The psychiatrist will testify that the accused as sane at the time of the killing, and suffered from no medically recognized psychological defect.

Members of the jury, the State will call three witnesses to the stand. The first witness will be Mr. Hernandez who will testify that he was at his place of work at when the defendant attacked at the check-out counter and did so without provocation. We will call the emergency room doctor who will testify that Mr.

Hernandez sustained a broken nose and an orbital fracture. There a is certain amount of drama in every criminal case. So, how do you find the drama in your case, decipher it, and reveal it to the jury in your opening?

You must know the entire case. Know your case and know the opposition's. Where is the conflict. Where is the agreement? What are the facts that are beyond dispute, the one's that won't be seriously contested? The dramatic part is the part that isn't dull. It has action, and its about human relationships. You may want to build some suspense into your story. The goal with suspense is to engender a sort of pleasant excitement in the jurors as they put together the evidence and arrive at a decision, rather than having everything spelled out.

With suspense, you don't leave a trail of irrelevant bread crumbs. Instead, leave a path of bright colored stones that clearly guides the jurors to the desired conclusion. Look and sound good from the start. Put your best foot forward.

You won't get a chance to make another first impression. Dress to impress your message. Develop your speaking voice. Learn to use your body as a communicative tool. Learn to use the right words at the right time. The jurors have preconceived notions about how a lawyer is supposed to look and sound. They expect you to be their trusted guide, information provider, entertainer, and persuader. You have to garner their attention and hold it.

You have to tell the factual story of your case in a way the creates a response and memory that slants the case your way.

These are some of the same skills you utilize at jury argument, where you are less restricted in your analysis, inferences, and exhortations. To hone your storytelling skills, read some short stories out loud. When you have planned and prepared your opening, ask yourself, "Are there important background facts that I have erroneously left out? Be prepared that the trial judge may diminish the weight of your opening statement by issuing a prefatory instruction somewhat as follows: " What you will hear in the next few moments are the opening statements of the lawyers.

What the lawyers say is not evidence. The purpose of the opening statement is to foreshadow or predict for you what the evidence will actually be. It will be up to you after hearing all of the evidence whether either side has proved or correctly predicted what the evidence will be. I caution you that what you hear in opening statement is not evidence. The evidence will begin when the first witness begins to testify.

Opening statement is simultaneously a visual, auditory, and kinesthetic experience. Don't miss the opportunity to "tell and show. Be sure to obtain the court's advance approval by a motion to preadmit and, if necessary, a pretrial hearing. Premark the preadmitted visual before you begin your opening. If you are allowed freedom of movement, give advance thought to your positioning in the courtroom, i. Get rid of physical barriers between yourself and the jury.

Avoid the lectern if possible. If you have to use a lectern, don't hide behind it. Turn the lectern so it faces your left side if you are right-handed and vice versa and you face the jury without obstruction. If the court has a "wingspan" rule requiring you to stand within arms length of the lectern and won't allow you to turn it sideways, come out an arms length. If you are allowed to move freely about the courtroom during opening, stand directly in front of the jury, but don't get stuck in one spot.

Move as you speak to keep the juror's attention. Choreograph your movement from spot to spot to coincide with topic changes, as though each movement were a new chapter in your case story. Movement about the courtroom reflects your confidence, but it does more than that.

It allows your body to stay in rhythm with your story. Stay within an informal conversational distance, i. Use distance as a tool. Close the distance when the point is of key importance.

But never crowd the jury. Move in and out, not side to side. Don't pace, and don't turn your back on the jurors while speaking. Show 'em your eyes and your hands! When you show your hands, get them away from your sides, and let them move naturally. Remember the old joke that says that about the only time you see a male lawyer's hands in his own pockets is when he is addressing a jury. Maintaining proper eye contact may be easier if you visualize the jurors, their faces, hands, and clothes, when you rehearse.

Gestures, head nods, etc. Be enthusiastic about your message. In planning your opening statement, use the " cartoon method " of telling your story described on the jury argument web site. This method requires you to visualize the story of your case as though it were a four-panel cartoon. Think of the four most vivid visual images of your story with voice bubbles balloons above each of the actors.

Make sure your your verbal and visual story paints those mental pictures for your jurors. Start your opening with a strong attention-getting "hook" that grabs the jurors' attention and floats your case theme before the jurors. Remember the principle of primacy that tells us that, all other things being equal, jurors are more attentive and receptive to information at the beginning of the opening statement.

The principle of recency tells us that jurors remember best that which comes last. This means that the beginning and ending of your opening are crucial parts of the speech. Normally, the Eight Step Preparation Program teaches advocacy students to memorize thoughts not words.

But you your should know the words of the beginning and concluding portions of your opening statement cold, i. Recognize that your opening statement differs from your jury argument. In opening statement, you tell the jurors what the evidence is. In jury argument, you tell the jurors what the evidence means. In opening, stick to the facts or absence of facts.

Don't argue. Over the objection of opposing counsel, you will typically not be allowed in your opening statement to argue the merits of your case. This means that you won't be permitted to spend much time in opening telling the jurors what the evidence means. In opening, you won't be allowed to urge inferences or exhort the jurors to action the so-called "call to action or duty" or the prosecution's "plea for effective law enforcement" ; in many courts, you won't be permitted to focus on impugning motives, attacking credibility, justifying conduct, displaying inconsistencies of testimony, stressing matters of common knowledge, or drawing analogies These things come at the end of the case in argument.

Yet, the story you tell in opening statement, when properly crafted and delivered, can be a mini-argument in itself. You accomplish this when the structure of your opening invites the jurors to use their power of inductive reasoning to draw their own common sense conclusions and inferences from what you say, without any express urging or exhortation from you.

There is typically what one might call a "grace period" of less than a minute at the outset of opening statement when advocates are loathe to object to the opponent's words. It's not necessarily out of courtesy. I think it is more because lawyers don't want to appear to jurors as too aggressively trigger-happy in interrupting opposing counsel with an objection at the very start of the opening.

Here's a brief example of what seems to border on defense argument at the very outset of opening statement in a recent case where a criminal lawyer was charged with aiding terrorism: "Thank you very much, Your Honor. I do have something to say: Members of the jury, for forty years in this town Laura Norder the defendant , right here in this court house, has been building for justice and not terror.

And when the end of this case comes and I stand before you, I submit that the evidence will show that anybody who says different, claims different, argues different, either sees these things very differently, is relying on faulty intelligence, or is acting from outright desire to mislead you. As mentioned, you probably won't be allowed to spend much time in opening statement explaining what the evidence means; this is typically reserved for jury argument at the end of the case. However, in opening statement you may want to use the forensic technique of foreshadowing , that is, indicating your future argument beforehand by creating an expectation in the jurors' minds.

You do this in opening statement when you come to a key part of the story by making a parenthetical statement, an aside, to the effect that "This is an extremely important part of what happened, and later in the case we are going to talk about it and have you understand why it's so important.

Weave a common theme that begins in your opening, winds its way through your direct and cross and then cinches up your case in argument. You can begin in opening to embed your case theme by using key words and phrases that reflect the theme.

The first step, your opening, prefigures your last step, the jury argument. Be succinct and substantive in your opening. Your story of the case has to have legs. Standing alone and juxtaposed against the opposition's opening, your case story should support the verdict you seek. That said, pare it down to its lean and mean form. Cut out the foamy, frothy, fuzzy, fizzy, fluffy filler.

Strive for eloquence that fits your linguistic comfort zone. Catch phrases are great, as long as they are substantively relevant. You don't want to appear too rehearsed. The idea is to be authentic and spontaneous in manner while speaking extemporaneously, i. Prosecutors are at a storytelling disadvantage in opening that sometimes leaves them open to objection.

The rules require the prosecution to open first. In opening statement, due to the burden of proof and the presumption of innocence, prosecutors are typically not allowed to anticipate defense testimony. They can't talk about what the defense evidence will be. Defense lawyers should consider objecting to prosecutors telling the jury what evidence the defense is going to present.

The rules restrict the prosecutor to telling the jury what the prosecution expects to prove, not what the defense may or may not do. Defenders should utilize the advantage of going second and getting the last word. Unlike jury argument, prosecutors normally have no right to rebuttal at the opening statement phase of the criminal trial. Defenders have three advantages at opening, i.

Defenders should listen closely to the prosecutor's opening and incorporate, dispute, or spin useful facts from it into the defense opening. For example, the defense may want to discuss its iron-clad evidence that will prove the opposition's claims fallacious. Don't overstate your case. Don't make promises in opening that you won't be able to keep. Having the last word in opening may encourage you to gild the lily. Don't do it. An able prosecutor will make notes of your promises in opening statement and remind the jury in final argument of a litany of unkept promises the defender made in opening statement.

Be careful in opening statement not to expand the admissibility of otherwise excludable evidence, i. For example, in a recent wife-murder case the defense claimed in its opening that the deceased and defendant had an idyllic marriage and were "soul mates.

Be cautious in what you concede to the opposition. Your words are magic. They have the power to make mental images appear and disappear.