The Witness Stand

The Witness Stand
Author: Carlton Munson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1135187347

Learn reliable techniques to prepare and present effective testimony! “Soon after leaving graduate school I was thrown to the courtroom wolves with no preparation. No social worker should have to go through that,” says Janet Vogelsang, author of The Witness Stand. Few colleges of social work prepare their students for the inevitable involvement with the courts entailed by their profession. This timely book provides you with a blueprint for presenting yourself as a competent and credible professional in court cases. This indispensable guide tells exactly what happens in court, how to counter common strategies for discrediting your profession, and what to do when your client's attorney is obnoxious. The Witness Stand emphasizes the biopsychosocial assessment as the essential tool for a social worker called on to testify in court. Its helpful features include sample forms and affidavits and actual court testimony. The end-of-chapter summaries can be used for rapid review and as a ”to do” checklist for preparing a court case. The Witness Stand offers practical, detailed advice on such matters as: how the legal system works how to handle contacts with attorneys and investigators what to do with documents and files how to prepare your testimony how to handle direct testimony and cross-examination how to define your social work expertise on the stand what to wear when you go to court The Witness Stand can help you deal with the anxiety-provoking complexities of the legal system. Instead of being confused or intimidated by legal arcana, you will be well-prepared, well-organized, and ready to present yourself as the confident, reliable professional you are.

Wicked Takes the Witness Stand

Wicked Takes the Witness Stand
Author: Mardi Link
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2014-11-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0472051695

A twisted account of unsolved murder, vindictive prosecution, and a psychotic key witness whose testimony led to the wrongful imprisonment of five innocent men

Crossing Hitler

Crossing Hitler
Author: Benjamin Carter Hett
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2008-09-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199708592

During a 1931 trial of four Nazi stormtroopers, known as the Eden Dance Palace trial, Hans Litten grilled Hitler in a brilliant and merciless three-hour cross-examination, forcing him into multiple contradictions and evasions and finally reducing him to helpless and humiliating rage (the transcription of Hitler's full testimony is included.) At the time, Hitler was still trying to prove his embrace of legal methods, and distancing himself from his stormtroopers. The courageous Litten revealed his true intentions, and in the process, posed a real threat to Nazi ambition. When the Nazis seized power two years after the trial, friends and family urged Litten to flee the country. He stayed and was sent to the concentration camps, where he worked on translations of medieval German poetry, shared the money and food he was sent by his wealthy family, and taught working-class inmates about art and literature. When Jewish prisoners at Dachau were locked in their barracks for weeks at a time, Litten kept them sane by reciting great works from memory. After five years of torture and hard labor-and a daring escape that failed-Litten gave up hope of survival. His story was ultimately tragic but, as Benjamin Hett writes in this gripping narrative, it is also redemptive. "It is a story of human nobility in the face of barbarism." The first full-length biography of Litten, the book also explores the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic and the terror of Nazi rule in Germany after 1933. [in sidebar] Winner of the 2007 Fraenkel Prize for outstanding work of contemporary history, in manuscript. To be published throughout the world.

Forensic Forestry

Forensic Forestry
Author: Robert P. Latham
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2021-08-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781003182559

Forensic Forestry: A Guidebook for Foresters on the Witness Stand is a one-of-a-kind, hands-on resource for those forestry and land use professionals called upon to work on legal cases and testify in court. Land use and forestry issues in the United States, in particular--and likewise around the world--have become increasingly contentious, scrutinized, and debated. There is little to suggest that conflicts over forestlands will cease in the near future, in fact, quite the opposite. There are already a number of informative books available on land use and forestry, and related issues under the broader heading of environmental science. As such, while this book will not go into these concepts in detail, if someone is already an expert in land use and forestry, this book will tell them the ins and outs of the legal system and how they can best serve to make a case, using evidence, in a court of law. Coverage addresses the necessary background, and legwork involved, in providing technical expertise for such cases to be adjudicated. Since professionals' expertise is often focused on ecological issues, chapters look at the economic factors and how money, policy, and corporate interests come into play--the crux of where the professional forester's ability to present evidence and expertise becomes critical. The author provides an overall understanding of the courts, and the legal process. Coverage includes recommendations to professionals working on cases--and in the courtroom--in how to present evidence and testify in cases over land use and forestland rights, forestry management and safety, criminal and civil cases in liability in forest fires--among myriad others. Key Features: A book by a professional for professionals in the field of forestry and those called to testify in cases of forest and wildfires, eminent domain, land disputes, tort, and liability cases Written in easy-to-read, non-technical jargon to provide tools to best serve as an expert witness and consultant to support attorneys in civil and criminal cases Details unique, real-world cases study examples, detailing how they were adjudicated based on evidence and testimony provided Presents a legal background into the court system, courtroom procedure, the types of legal cases as they relate to forensic forestry As such, Forensic Forestry is a welcome addition to those professionals called upon to consult on, and testify in, such cases including land use professionals, foresters and forestry managers, ecologists, environmentalists, environmental policy advocates, and those in related fields.

The Fifth Witness

The Fifth Witness
Author: Michael Connelly
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 467
Release: 2011-04-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316069388

In this #1 New York Times bestselling thriller, after taking on a foreclosure case, defense attorney Mickey Haller fights to prove his client’s innocence—but first he must follow a trail of black market evidence to its sinister end. Mickey Haller has fallen on tough times. He expands his business into foreclosure defense, only to see one of his clients accused of killing the banker she blames for trying to take away her home. Mickey puts his team into high gear to exonerate Lisa Trammel, even though the evidence and his own suspicions tell him his client is guilty. Soon after he learns that the victim had black market dealings of his own, Haller is assaulted, too -- and he's certain he's on the right trail. Despite the danger and uncertainty, Haller mounts the best defense of his career in a trial where the last surprise comes after the verdict is in. Connelly proves again why he "may very well be the best novelist working in the United States today" (San Francisco Chronicle).

The Art and Science of Expert Witness Testimony

The Art and Science of Expert Witness Testimony
Author: Karen Postal
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2021-09-14
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000430715

• Solid research basis, drawing on findings from a 4-year research project with in-depth interviews with judges, attorneys, and seasoned forensic neuropsychologists and psychologists as well as further interviews with professionals in other fields such as engineering, physics and economics. • Provides focused attention on how experts interact with judges, attorneys, and juries • Challenges experts to avoid the traps of professional jargon and traditional manners of presenting information/knowledge/opinions. • Provides a step-by-step approach to orienting the new academic to expert witnessing

The Last Trial

The Last Trial
Author: Scott Turow
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2020-05-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1538748088

Two formidable men collide in this "first-class legal thriller" and New York Times bestseller about a celebrated criminal defense lawyer and the prosecution of his lifelong friend -- a doctor accused of murder (David Baldacci). At eighty-five years old, Alejandro "Sandy" Stern, a brilliant defense lawyer with his health failing but spirit intact, is on the brink of retirement. But when his old friend Dr. Kiril Pafko, a former Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, is faced with charges of insider trading, fraud, and murder, his entire life's work is put in jeopardy, and Stern decides to take on one last trial. In a case that will be the defining coda to both men's accomplished lives, Stern probes beneath the surface of his friend's dazzling veneer as a distinguished cancer researcher. As the trial progresses, he will question everything he thought he knew about his friend. Despite Pafko's many failings, is he innocent of the terrible charges laid against him? How far will Stern go to save his friend, and -- no matter the trial's outcome -- will he ever know the truth? Stern's duty to defend his client and his belief in the power of the judicial system both face a final, terrible test in the courtroom, where the evidence and reality are sometimes worlds apart. Full of the deep insights into the spaces where the fragility of human nature and the justice system collide, Scott Turow's The Last Trial is a masterful legal thriller that unfolds in page-turning suspense -- and questions how we measure a life.