South Carolina Criminal Defense Blog

The standard method of impeachment by prior inconsistent statement is to have documents organized and tabbed, ready to impeach if the witness does not admit to the statement you are confronting him or her with. This could be an incident report, a preliminary hearing transcript, a written statement, or a transcript made from a recorded statement.

In our last two trials, we had discovery which included extensive audio-recorded interviews by potential witnesses, including the state's jailhouse snitches. Rather than attempt to transcribe every interview, which would have been ridiculously time consuming and expensive, I bought an IPod-touch to put the statements on.

I have seen impeachment by an audio-recorded statement using the original cd-roms - to do it this way you would mark the location of the statement that you anticipate would be needed for impeachment (i.e. 7:39 - 8:05 snitch says to cop yes I was lying to you, it was because I wanted you to give me a sweet deal), then if the witness denies having made the statement you simply pull the microphone down to the computer, set whatever media player you are using to that location, and play that portion of recording. The problem with this method is that it is somewhat cumbersome, you have to return to counsel table and mess with the computer every time you want to use it, and if there are inadmissible portions of the recording you have to be very careful not to over or undershoot your mark on the audio.

What works even better is to create audio-clips of each potential impeachment, and then move it to the IPod-touch. You can label categorize it as "genre" = the name of that particular trial; "artist" = the witness' name; and "song" = your label for that particular clip. It is easy enough to organize all of the clips, once they are separated from the original recording, on I-Tunes which will work on a Mac or on Windows.

You can use free editing software like audacity to locate and cut audio clips that you will be using on the IPod. Even if what you have is video, you can convert it to an mp3 or wave file and then cut the clips that you need. Make sure that the clips you are using contain enough material just before and after the desired statement that it doesn't seem like you are taking the statement out of context - the exception being where there is material that is inadmissible that must be edited out.

You can then use a small speaker (I spent about 80$ on a small portable speaker that still has good volume) connected to the IPod to play the clips when they are needed. You can carry the whole set-up in one hand to where-ever you will be cross-examining the witness, and when the witness denies making the statement, pick up the IPod, tap it a few times, and out comes the witness' voice saying exactly what he just denied. It works wonders to keep witnesses honest - once you impeach them once or twice most witnesses catch on, and just looking at the IPod sideways will make them agree wholeheartedly with whatever question you are asking.

(H/T to Jonathan Hiller who helped to figure this out and to set it up for us)