The most time consuming part of a trial is usually Evidence Submission, and that's primarily due to the difficulty of gathering witness testimony. This guide is meant to help prosecutors and defense attorneys to conduct depositions as efficiently as possible, by elaborating on the deposition procedures and providing best practices.
Deposition procedure is contained in a single clause of the Court Rules and Procedures, with several subclauses. We will examine each in turn:
a. Witness depositions must be conducted in a forum thread separate from the trial thread.
This is primarily to avoid cluttering the trial thread, and to avoid non-admissible answers or questions from appearing in the official record of the trial. Note that the Justice who moderates the deposition does not necessarily have to start the thread. Don't wait on a Justice if you are ready to begin deposing your witness.
b. Any Justice may moderate a deposition.
This clause is self-explanatory.
c. Before answering any questions, the witness must swear the following oath: "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
Note that there is no restriction on ASKING questions before the oath is sworn, only on ANSWERING them. You do not have to wait for the witness to swear the oath before asking your questions.
d. Both parties will have the opportunity to ask questions of the witness, in turn.
Typically, the party who called the witness will ask questions first. It is highly recommended that you ask your questions all in one post, because the other party will have the opportunity to object, you will respond to objections, and the Justice will rule on objections one way or the other, all before the witness answers. It would be very tedious to go through that process for each question individually. If you have follow-up questions after seeing the witness' answers to your first round of questions, you might choose to ask more, but the idea is to ask as many questions as you can in your initial post.
e. Each party will have the opportunity to object to questions posed to the witness by the other party before the questions are answered.
If you believe that the opposing party's question is inappropriate you may object to the question. Examples of questions that are inappropriate could include questions that ask for real-life information, seem to instruct the witness to give a certain answer, force the witness to speculate on something they have no knowledge of, or otherwise have no place in the court record.
f. If an objection is made, the questioning party will have the opportunity to withdraw the question or defend against the objection.
If your question is objected to, you have the option to withdraw it, in which case the objection will not be ruled on, and the question will not be answered. Alternatively, you may defend your question, arguing either that the objection does not apply to your question, or the grounds for the objection are invalid.
g. The Justice present will rule on objections to questions that are not withdrawn.
The Justice gets the final say on which questions will be answered.
h. The witness will answer all remaining questions.
At this point, if you are the questioning party, you can either continue to ask more questions, or indicate that you have no more questions to ask.
i. At the completion of a deposition, the Moderating Justice will publish an official record version of the deposition in the trial thread, with appropriate edits in accordance with any sustained objections.
Typically, this means that they Moderating Justice will copy the text of the questions that were asked (excluding those that were successfully objected to or withdrawn) and the answers the witness gave, and publish it in the trial thread in a single post.
j. Depositions which deviate from the above procedures may be admitted at the discretion of the Moderating Justice.
The possibilities are endless, but most depositions will follow these procedures.
Under these procedures, a deposition thread could consist of as few as eight posts:
- Prosecution asks their questions.
- Defense indicates no objections.
- Witness posts their oath and answers all questions.
- Prosecution indicates no further questions.
- Defense asks their questions.
- Prosecution indicates no objections.
- Witness answers all questions.
- Defense indicates no further questions.
If there were objections, the thread could get longer:
- Prosecution asks their questions.
- Defense objects to some or all of the questions.
- Prosecution defends or withdraws their questions.
- Justice rules on objections.
- Witness posts their oath and answers remaining questions.
- Prosecution indicates no further questions.
- Defense asks their questions.
- Prosecution objects to some or all of the questions.
- Defense defends or withdraws their questions.
- Justice rules on objections.
- Witness answers remaining questions.
- Defense indicates no further questions.
If either side has multiple rounds of questioning, it could get significantly longer. For this reason, you are encouraged to prepare you entire list of questions and post them all at once. Further rounds of questions should only be necessary if the witness gives answers that require follow-up.
