Objections in the courts; Concept and Context
The attendance in a hearing session or trial meeting is a brilliant experience provoking law students to imagine lawyering as a serious target in their lives. One of a barrister’s professional codes of conducts in the courts is the technic of “Objection” announced by all lawyers and prosecutors. Objection is applied verbally whenever any party wants to stop another one assaulting approving evidences.
Lawyers are legally authorized to object to the relevance of evidence if they think a piece of evidence or something said by a witness contains nothing about the case or essentially it is not important in determining who should win in the court. For example, in a protection order case, asking about how many sexual partners someone has wouldn’t be relevant. Consequently, a standing up counterpart will object by relevancy. Generally, the four most common objections have been recognized in the courts nominated hearsay, relevance, speculation, and argumentation. What is of great value to know about which objections are precisely used and when to apply them is to protect both sides of the story.
Lawyers are eligible to object while they are standing up politely and stating why they are objecting a questionable statement or question put in a hearing session assessed by the judge or jury. For example, they say: “Excuse me, your honor, objection on the grounds of irrelevance.” It is reasonable that the judge then either asks for more reason for the objection or addresses opposing party: “Which part of the statement was irrelevant?” Consequently, there is a rule decided positively by the judge with a famous word:” Sustained”.
- Relevance
Relevance is the first kind of objection referring to a position of a party who is thinking that the evidence is irrelevant. Irrelevant evidence should be left out of the trial because it doesn’t bring anything new or important to the case and is distracting us from the necessary information. An irrelevant evidence is likely not to assist the judge with reaching justice. It wastes precious time too. For example, when it is said: “the victim’s favorite color was yellow, wasn’t it?”, in a case of murder.
- Speculation
Speculation objection is objecting to witness testimony because a witness was asked a question about which the witness would not have personal knowledge. A witness side of the story is limited to their direct involvement with events with hearing, sight, touch, speech, or smell. Everything that is not a witness’s involvement through one of the senses is a guess or an opinion and not factual evidence. A common reason for speculation objections in a court is when a party asks a witness to state someone else’s feelings or thoughts as fact.
- Argumentation
An argumentative objection is when someone argues, badgers, or becomes too aggressive with a witness during cross examination. However, a judge will allow persistent questioning if they are cross examining the defendant. Argumentative objections are often made when the question for the witness tries to change their answer by inserting the attorney’s personal understanding of the evidence into the question.
- Hearsay
Hearsay is the last kind of objection. It will be applied when a witness testifies about something said by someone else to prove evidence is true or false. These statements are hearsay because the actual declaration of the statement in question is neither under oath, on the stand, or going to be cross examined. This makes hearsay statements unreliable except in a few situations.