Category: Testimony

Leslie and I tweaked our session, Words Matter: The Art and Science of Trial Testimony at the 11th hour, so the handout on the conference app is not as robust as the session ended up being. An improved handout can be found here for those who would like the additional FRE702 and research content. It still doesn’t have all the case law and testimony examples we use, but the remaining content is there. Thanks to everyone who came and participated. I love a standing-room-only crowd 🙂

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

I’ll be talking quite a bit this week about expert consulting and testimony, so the topic of what it means to be an ethical defense expert is on my mind. But the truth is that lately, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to work for the defense, particularly when you may be interviewing and/or testifying opposite a treating medical-forensic examiner. The reality is that no one really teaches a clinician how to be good defense expert and the ways in which that role differs from being a good prosecution expert. However, there are differences, even as the goal (regardless of who has hired you) continues to be objectivity.

There seems to be a common misperception that in order to be helpful to the defense you must destroy the treating clinician, and this is an unfortunate approach. With very few exceptions, I take the good camper approach to all treating clinicians, even as the defense expert: leave people a little better than when you found them. People are naturally wary of talking with the defense team; it costs you nothing to be collegial even while identifying issues on the part of the exam, the clinician or the documentation. There are a million ways to determine what success looks like in this work, but one sure-fire way to know that you have failed is when the clinicians you come in contact with want to quit the profession after talking with you. And yet, that’s exactly what I have heard on more than one occasion after clinicians have finished interviewing with defense experts. Can you imagine being so caustic that you literally drive someone from the profession?

By the way, the flip side also holds true: in order to be helpful to the prosecution, it is not your job to save the treating clinician. Sometimes exams are done badly; sometimes the documentation is so poor as to be utterly unhelpful. Sometimes people embellish their credentials (true story) and they have to face the music on cross-exam. Experts don’t make these cases. Experts are simply one part of a larger strategy. We educate, we advise. We don’t win or lose trials.

Every interaction with other clinicians is an opportunity for mentoring, even in the courtroom. Anyone who has been doing this work for the years it takes to be a good expert at trial should commit to growing the profession, not tearing it down. It is the very least our patients deserve.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Court testimony is the most popular subject on FHO, and not surprisingly, also the most popular clinical guide. It has now been updated with the latest research and guidance from the peer-reviewed journals, so there’s a good deal of new stuff to review.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

In our course last week we naturally discussed social media use (as we do), and it made me realize that it is high time I went through the clinical guides and gave them all a facelift. So one by one, as I have the time, I will be tackling them in the quiet(er) moments of what’s left of the summer. First up is social media use for forensic clinicians. Plenty of new research articles and other resources for you to peruse in this one. Hope you find it helpful.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

I have to tell you, I am overwhelmed at the response to the new research compilation, Applying the Strangulation Research to Expert Testimony. The response has been–unexpected. But a very smart attorney to whom I am married casually mentioned it would be nice for people to see a preview of what they would be getting for their money, and it occurred to me the Table of Contents is the easiest way to provide that. So it is now part of the product description on the store page (I also added preview pages for the other two compilations), but I am providing it here for those of you who might be interested:

Thanks for all of the kind comments and messages. You are really the very best readers.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

It’s here, folks: Applying the Strangulation Research to Expert Testimony is now available for purchase in the store. A couple of things I’d like to mention–first of all it’s more expensive than the previous ones ($9.99) because it’s almost three times the length. So for all of you who will want to know why the big jump in price from the other two, there you go. The other thing I’d like to mention is this–these compilations don’t make me rich. Yes, you technically can share these compilations amongst yourselves once one person purchases it, but I ask you to buy individual copies where possible. An unbelievable amount of time went into this, as is this case with everything I publish here.

In putting this together, my hope is to improve the quality of expert testimony in cases of adult non-fatal strangulation. Patients shouldn’t luck into competent trial testimony by their forensic clinician. I truly believe this, which is what drives every single one of these compilations.  I hear a lot of weakly informed opinions on the stand and a lot of strangulation testimony not grounded in much more than information people have picked up from a lecture they’ve heard or course they’ve taken. Often clinicians have never read the primary sources from which they are pulling supporting statistics or conclusions, making their statements vulnerable on cross. I am trying to make it simpler for people to identify and access the evidence base, so that testimony can be presented from a scientifically sound foundation where possible. And so that we can acknowledge the left and right limits of the research when asked, and develop a program of research to close the gaps.

Because we are at the point where we have the ability to do so, I am also now offering all three of the FHO research compilations (Consensual Sex Injury, Aging Bruises and Strangulation Injury) as a single downloadable zip file. That one is $16.99, so it basically saves you three bucks when you buy them as a set.

The Store page looks wonky for reasons beyond my technical abilities, so I am trying to get that worked out–but everything seems to be working. Contact me if you have any issues. As always I look forward to your feedback (and I am taking ideas for the next research compilation, although it’ll be a few months before I start it).

One week from today I will release the 3rd FHO research compilation: Applying the Strangulation Research to Expert Testimony in Cases with Adult Victims. It’s the biggest one to date, but it’s also the most needed. So I am spending the week traveling (hello, MSU), editing, and enjoying the girl-child’s high school graduation (hello, CLE). I’m also taking the week off the site. I will see everyone back here next Tuesday for the launch of the new compilation. Until then, friends…

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find our newest research brief, Aging Bruises Based On Color, plus our original guide, Injury Following Consensual Sex. Both available now for electronic download. Plus, coming soon: the newest research compilation, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims.