How To Answer Your Lawyer In Court And How To Answer The Crown’s Cross-Examination

Your lawyer asks open-ended questions so that you have the opportunity to fill in the details. In cross-examination, a good cross-examiner will do quite the opposite. They will make suggestions to you, many of which will simply not be true. They’re trying to get you to agree with them so that they can put forth their version of the case to the judge. In this situation, you need the tenacity and the good sense to maintain calm when those questions are posed.
When your lawyer is asking an open-ended question, it’s perfectly fine to give a fairly lengthy, detailed and open-ended response because that’s what you’re being asked to do. A very common question is, “What happened next?” This gives you the opportunity to go through the story and give as much detail and as much information as possible to the judge or jury.

On the other hand, when the crown attorney is asking you a question, it is really vital to listen very carefully to what the question asks and answer only that. You should not be volunteering information in cross-examination. You want to give only the answers to the questions that you’re asked. You always want to give as definitive an answer as possible and in as few words as possible and that’s because you don’t want to let the cross-examiner control your version of the story. You want to be the one who paints the picture for the trial, not the crown.
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If you, or someone you care about, is dealing with criminal law issues in the Toronto,Ontario Region, contact Adler Bytensky Prutschi for a consultation.