Witness, Interrupted
[Original version posted on my blog on 9 February 2014 as "Your Honor, The Witness Forgot What He Was Supposed To Say"]In the movie "Liar, Liar," there's a scene in a courtroom where a lawyer objects to the opposing counsel's badgering of a witness. To which the judge can only respond, "It's his witness." The documents posted below reveal a somewhat similar phenomenon; unfortunately, it didn't happen in a comedy film.
The documents are transcripts from the trial of Sirhan Sirhan. The witness was Larry Arnot, a cashier at the Lock, Stock 'n' Barrel who had sold .22-caliber ammunition to Sirhan. Arnot's testimony was only needed to establish that a sales slip for the bullets (People's Exhibit #22) was made out by him, as evidence of the transaction that implicated Sirhan. When first asked to tell the court about it, Arnot noticeably requested clarification: "You wish me to relate the whole transaction? The whole transaction?" Upon receiving an affirmative reply, he then began to relate what he recalled of the whole transaction.
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So it seems that Lt. Enrique Hernandez, LAPD polygraph operator, had already squared Arnot away on the subject: Sirhan and Sirhan alone was involved in buying ammunition; no one else was ever with him at any time. In fact, Mr. Arnot, you're so confused that even though you're able to recollect that there are "several different variations of Mini-mags -- short, long, long rifle, standard, hollow point" -- isn't it true that you ultimately told Mr. Hernandez that you didn't remember Sirhan, and didn't remember anything other than that you had filled out a sales slip? And doesn't that raise the question why the hell we had you come up here to testify in the first place -- isn't that so???
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