Dynamics of Trial Practice

This trial practice book devotes an entire chapter to the concept of strategic case evaluation and integrates that concept into the discussion of every stage of the case. The text contains a large number of casefiles. In addition to the workplace sexual harassment, elder abuse, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, and civil rights/jail suicide contained in the fifth edition, the sixth edition includes casefiles for a Second Amendment civil rights case, a burglary prosecution, a dispute over the ownership of a dating website, and a homicide resulting from an encounter between a private citizen and a police officer. Each chapter now includes a PREVIEW and a REMINDER as pedagogic aids. At the beginning of each chapter, the PREVIEW alerts the students to the most important and challenging material in the chapter. Near the end of the chapter, the REMINDER poses questions to the students to enable them to determine whether they have grasped the key material in the chapter. The voir dire chapter has been reorganized to make it easier for students to use, and the chapters on direct and cross-examination on expert witnesses have been updated to reflect the most recent developments in expert testimony law, notably the growing importance of the PCAST concept of Validity as Applied.