OldMarksman
Staff
?????If a DA threatens to convict me in the present by entering my past into evidence, perhaps my attorney should look into abuse of process.
Almost everything introduced as evidence in a court of law stems from the past, the only variation being from how far back in the past it comes.
Your attorney will have the opportunity to question the relevance of something and/or whether or not it is prejudicial (and if there is any question of its verifiability, that too), but the judge will decide whether it is to be admitted. If what you said is at all indicative of what your state of mind may have been when the incident at the center of the trial occurred, expect it to be admitted. Do your past statements indicate a bias against the people of the same ethnicity, class, or profession as the person you are alleged to have harmed, or a belief that thieves, for example, should be shot? If so, expect them to be deemed relevant by the judge. At that point, a jury will consider that evidence in the light of all of the other evidence.
As do most of the defendants I have seen...Besides, I cut quite a dashing figure dressed in a pin-striped Dior suit, all ready for court.
Put yourself in the position of a juror. If you have been empaneled to try someone for a crime, it is either because there is some clear evidence against him, or in the case of an affirmative defense, say, for a self defense shooting, because he has been unable to present evidence sufficient to persuade the charging authority that his action was justified. You and the others are going to weigh the evidence. You cannot replay a tape of the incident--it doesn't work that way. You are going to have to listen to the testimony of investigating detectives, of crime lab experts, of the defendant (including his yes-or-no-only answers to very pointed questions during cross examination, intended to cast doubt upon his credibility and upon his account of the incident). You are going to consider things he has said or written in the past that may shed some light upon his credibility today or upon relevant thought processes. If he says he thought his life was in danger when he saw a man stealing the radio from his truck, if there is no evidence that the person stealing had a weapon, and if the defendant has repeatedly made the statement that he would shoot anyone trying to take his property, wouldn't that influence your judgment, and properly so?
Yes, most of them clean up well, and many of them will claim that they fired in self defense.....
Someone who used to post on this or anther forum recommended that people sit through some real criminal trials to get an idea of how things work. I think a lot of people could benefit from doing so.