Immunizations and Demonstrative Aids: Making Your Exhibits in Trial Bulletproof
The key to a good demonstrative aid is making it memorable for the jury–especially since the jury will be unlikely to take the exhibit into the deliberation room at the end of trial.
Try to involve as many senses as possible: seeing, hearing, even touch.
Example: In a case involving a plaintiff crushed by a beam, have the expert drop the beam so that jurors will get an understanding of the beam’s size, weight, and danger.
For written exhibits, use pictures as well as words. Pictures are easier to remember than words.
Pictures alone without written words–supplemented only by the spoken words of direct testimony–are even better.
Having done this, you don’t want to slow down a trial by being met with objections to your demonstrative exhibits. Here is how to “immunize” your demonstrative exhibits before using them in direct examination:
Disclose your demonstratives to opposing counsel before trial;
If you are met with objections, file a motion in limine seeking the introduction of the exhibit you want to use;
If you do not want to give your opponent advance notice or do not have your exhibit ready before trial, maintain the goal of disclosing the exhibit at some point before its use during direct examination, outside the hearing of the jury.
Such “immunization” of demonstrative exhibits will insure that you can keep the trial moving without sidebars or breaks requiring the jury to leave the courtroom.
[thanks to maveric2003 and evan schaeffer via cc]
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