Friday, 1/13: Submitting Evidence and Peer Critiques

Starter #6

• Consult your team's calendar and set goals as a team for what you need to accomplish by Tuesday.  Write down your goals in your starter doc.
• By Tuesday, I need a list of which order you want to direct examine your witnesses AND what evidence you plan on using with EACH witness in the trial!

AGENDA
1. Let's read through the following "Rules for Submitting Evidence":
RULES FOR SUBMITTING EVIDENCE For each exhibit that you want to present to the judges, I would recommend taking the following steps:
1)      Make copies of the exhibit for you, the other lawyer, the witness and the judges (just one for all the judges is fine). TOTAL OF 4 COPIES.   
2)      Pre-mark the exhibits in the order in which you will present them in the trial. Mark them as Defense or Prosecution Exhibit A, B, C, and so on....
3)     Lay a foundation to get the evidence admitted:

• When you get ready to talk about the exhibit (i.e.: you have put your witness on the stand, taken them through the introductory questions, and you are at the point where you are ready for the witness to read from their report) – Say: “Your honors, may I approach the witness?”  You have to ask the Court’s permission before you walk up to where they are sitting or walk up to the witness.  The judges should say something to the effect of “go ahead” or “you may”.
• Walk up to the witness and say: “I am handing you what has been marked as Defense (or Prosecution) Exhibit A; Without telling the Court what that is, do you recognize the exhibit?”
• The witness says “Yes”
• Lawyers says: “What is it?”   
• The witness says: “It is a report that I wrote about the loyalties of the Japanese people living in America.” – Or whatever it is, the witness just needs to briefly describe what the document is.
• Lawyers says: “Does the report appear to be complete and accurate?”
• The witness should briefly flip through the pages and then say “Yes”
• Turn to the judges and say: “Your honors, I move for admission of Defense Exhibit A.”
• The judges should ask the Prosecution if they have any objections.  Valid objections are that the witness lacks personal knowledge sufficient to authenticate the exhibit; or that the exhibit is inadmissible based on hearsay, relevancy or something like that. – You can argue to the judge that the Prosecution’s objection is invalid and that the exhibit should be admitted over their objections.
• The judges then decide if it should be admitted.

If you get the report admitted: just proceed with your case and ask the witness about the exhibit.  
If you are unsuccessful in getting the report admitted: you cannot use the exhibit anymore, so just put it aside.  If that happens, you are ok – just ask the witness questions about what they did rather than have the witness read from the report.  For example:  Instead of saying, “read the first paragraph on page 3 talking about what you found while interviewing the Japanese-American citizens;” say “What did you find when you interviewed the Japanese-American citizens.”  You witness will just need to be ready to give an answer that basically follows the report.  Same thing for the Cross-Examination witness – they will not help you out like your witness, so be ready to say things like – “Isn’t it true that your report said X, even though the report you received from your expert said Y?”    

Here are some other thoughts about exhibits:
To be admissible, an exhibit must be relevant to the case and be authentic.  To do this, you need to introduce the exhibit through a witness who can testify as to its authenticity.  Also, even after the exhibit meets this first test, it can still be excluded if it is otherwise inadmissible because of hearsay.  Let’s say you want to submit two military reports, a letter and a poster.  The reports and letters should be admitted to the witness who wrote those reports.  The poster. The poster is a bit harder – you need to get someone who can testify to the existence of the poster and where it came from.  Do you have a soldier who was handed the poster to assist in weeding out which people to put in the camps?  How about a top official who would have given the order to print out these posters?  Maybe someone who was interned in the camps who saw the soldiers using the poster to decide whether or not to put people in the camps?  If you cannot find anyone on your list that can talk personally about the poster, you may not be able to get it in.  If you get desperate, I would pick one of the guys that spent time in the camps to say that this poster was plastered on the wall at the camp and he saw people consulting the poster to decide whether to put someone in the camp.
End of Rules for Submitting Evidence
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Agenda Continued
2. Let's practice submitting evidence!

3. PEER CRITIQUE
A. Read the rubric that relates to the preparation requirements for your assigned role.  Summarize the requirements to your team and what aspects of your written components or research you need to improve or need help on the most for today's critique.

B. Decide which written component you most need help with and exchange that with a classmate.  Using the rubric, evaluate each other's written pieces and provide specific feedback on:

• Spelling/grammar
• Rhetorical impact (does the writing have good ethos/pathos/logos?)
• To what extent is the piece of writing true to the character/role?
• How can the writing contain more detail, evidence, or emotional impact?

4. Work Time! 
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