ABSTRACT
In the adversarial Anglo-American criminal judicial system, crossexamination is essentially hostile. Attorneys test the veracity or credibility of the evidence being given by witnesses, with questions which are designed to discredit the other side's version of events, and instead to support his or her own side's case. When being cross-examined, witnesses are, of course, conscious of this purposefulness behind the questions they are asked. They are alive to the possibility that a question or series of questions may be intended to expose errors or inconsistencies in their evidence, and hence to challenge and undermine it. This awareness on the part of witnesses is manifest in the guarded and defensive ways in which they answer certain questions. For instance, in this extract from a rape trial from which the data for this paper are principally taken,2 the alleged rape victim gives an answer which is designed to manage what she perceives to be the damaging implications - for her version of events - of the defence attorney's questions. (In all the data extracts in this chapter, the attorney is designated as A, the witness as W, and the judge as J.)
(1) [Ou:45/3A:270]
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
A:
W:
An during that enti:re: (0.3) ~ve:ning. (0.8) Miss «name», (0.5) its your testimQny: (2.0) that there was: (0.9) no indication (.) as far as you could te:ll, (0.3) that the defendant had been drinking. (0.2) No:,
8 9 A: 10 11 12 13 14 15 W: 16 A: 17 W: 18 19 A: 20 21 J:
(2.2) Now: Miss: «name)) (1.2) when ~ou were interviewed by (.) the poli:ce (.) some times later (.) that evening (1.0) .didn't ~ou tell the police that the defendant had been drinking? (0.2) No[:: [Didn' you tell 'em thnt= =1 told then there was a £ooler in the cn:r an I never Qpened it. The nnswer: uh: (.) may the balance be: uh stricken y'r honour:, an the answer is !lo:? The answer is !l0:
The attorney's questions in this extract are plainly designed to imply an inconsistency in the witness's story - an inconsistency, that is, between her present testimony that the defendant had not been drinking, and what the attorney alleges she told the police shortly after the incident. The witness first denies that she told the police that the defendant had been drinking (line 15). However, she adds to that denial an explanation about what she actually told the police at the time (ie. that there was a drinks cooler in the defendant's car; lines 17-18). In providing this supplementary explanation, which the attorney asks to be stricken from the record (lines 19-20), the witness constructs her answer in such a way that her versions then and now are consistent, whilst also implying an account for the attorney's 'mistaken' interpretation of what she told the police, a matter which would not be resolved by her denial alone. Thus the defensiveness of the witness's answer orients to the potential inconsistency in her story which the questions are attempting to imply; it is designed also to rebut the damaging inferences which might otherwise be drawn about the apparent discrepancy between the attorney's version of what she told the police, and her own.
