Can a self-represented defendant call oneself as a witness? You see this occassionally in comedy films and I have to wonder how legal it is. If I act as my own lawyer at a trial, can I call myself to the stand as a witness? Can I refuse to answer my own questions and be a hostile witness to myself? Am I supposed to ask a question, then run and sit on the stand and answer, then dash back in front to ask my next question? Can the opposing counsel accuse me of &quot;leading the witness&quot; or &quot;badgering the witness&quot; or whatever?
The old saying: Being your own lawyer means you have a fool as the lawyer and a fool as the client. If one fool calls the other fool as a witness, that's even more foolish. And the worst crime is annoying the judge with your antics. Opposing council will just take note of every question you ask and your replies, and then call you as witness themself. And assuming they are a proper lawyer, everything they ask will be hurting you. No need to accuse you as &quot;leading&quot; or &quot;badgering&quot; the witness.
If the question is: "Did she call you and talk about two business contracts? " then this is not hearsay. We have a witness, standing in court, saying that exactly these things happened - that she called, and that she talked about those deals. If the question is: "Did the company sign two business deals that day? " then it is hearsay. We know that she said two deals were signed, because we have a witness for that, but that doesn't mean she said the truth. She could have lied about that. We don't have a witness standing in court saying that the deals were signed. We have a witness in court saying that he heard someone say the deals were signed. In a libel case where Jim sues Joe for libel, a witness says "Joe told me that Jim is a lying thief". That's absolutely not hearsay in a libel case about Joe spreading false rumours. The exact same statement by the exact same witness would be hearsay if someone tried to convict Jim for theft.
Yes. This is very common. A persnickety lawyer or judge could insist on an actual &quot;yes,&quot; but generally speaking, everyone expects witnesses to talk like normal people.
Every state requires at least two witnesses to a will unless it is entirely written in your own handwriting. A lawyer as a witness is fine. A spouse as a witness is not ideal as she would be an interested party if there was a dispute over whether it was executed. It may not be prohibited, but I would never do that in my practice ever. I discontinued a will signing just last week because we only had a lawyer and a spouse and not other witnesses. I would be somewhat concerned.
First, while Law and Order should not be taken as an accurate depiction of a New York trial, it especially should not be taken as an accurate depiction of an Australian trial. Australian law, while it has some major similarities with US law (both ultimately derive from the law of England), is not US law. With procedural matters (such as "may jurors ask questions of witnesses"), it can potentially differ from court to court. In general, jurors may not simply ask a witness a question. The jury's job is not to investigate and figure out if the defendant was guilty or not; it's to evaluate the cases presented by each side. US (and Australian, as far as I know) courts use what's known as the adversarial model, where the prosecution and the defense both present the best cases they can and a neutral third party decides which case was stronger. In a US criminal trial, the state is expected to justify why someone should be in jail; the jury shouldn't be helping them justify it. This isn't how all jurisdictions around the world work, but it's how the US does. One concern with juror questions is that it has the risk that the juror will not be impartial. Jurors are not supposed to get into arguments with witnesses, or to go after them to try to prove a point. In your case, the juror might be introducing an entirely different line of reasoning from the one either side is presenting, and that's simply not their job. People have raised the concern that a juror thinking up questions might be deciding the case before they hear all the evidence, and might give too much weight to the answers to their own questions (or read a lot into it if a question is denied). There are also rules on what questions may be legally asked; lawyers know these and jurors generally don't, which is why jurors may almost never directly ask a question to a witness. Where they can ask questions, it's virtually always written questions, which the judge reviews, gives to both sides to see if anyone objects, and then reads to the witness in a neutral tone.
The citation could be written but it should be easy to beat. In the circumstance that you describe the accused could just say the he was not driving his car at the time. If the prosecution is a sham with all your friends saying you all saw this thing, then the defendant can bring all of his friends to say that he was at some other place. The benefit to having a cop on the scene is that the cop will get ID and positive identification. The other thing the cop has is expert judgment. If a cop sees unsafe lane movement and writes a ticket, his testimony in court carries more weight than the "it was not unsafe!" testimony of the accused. Keep in mind, getting all of your witnesses to court on the same day, after continuances and other delays, and getting them all to tell the same story to overcome the presumption of innocence is no small feat. All that to say, it's easier with police as witness. There are two mechanisms which could get you where you want to go. Private prosecution and citizen's arrest. Private prosecutions are a part of history but not strictly unavailable at the state level. You could write up some charging documents to see if you can get your target indicted. Citizen's arrest is interesting because the rules are fairly unclear unless governed by a specific statute. There are two necessary parts of citizens arrest and the first part gets the attention. The first part is the detention (arrest). The crimes for which a citizen can legally detain a suspect are likely defined by state statute. The second part is giving testimony about the witnessed crime. Let's assume that you see a felony happen and watch the perp walk into a gas station bathroom. You are prepared to arrest, do part number one, and then call the cops, to do part number two. But while you wait for the guy to come out of the bathroom a cop walks up. You explain the felony and the cop goes into the bathroom and arrests the guy. It's purely witness testimony that led to the arrest and the indictment (physical evidence - let's say there is none) and even the trial. You successfully get the guy indicted and when you show up to testify you tell the story as you witnessed it. Now the accused gets to take the stand. When he takes the stand he says, "it was the other guy." When asked, "what other guy?" He says, "I was in the bathroom and a guy ran in and went into the stall. Then a cop came in and arrested me." Reasonable doubt right there. How much more if it's a bunch of friends ratting on some lone driver? Police need evidence. Prosecutors need evidence. Judges need evidence.
Depositions must always be attended by a court reporter in every jurisdiction I have ever encountered (including Colorado, New York, California, Wyoming and Florida). Alaska may be an exception. Its state constitution creates a right to participate in many kinds of legal and legislative proceedings remotely because the distances involved are often so great. The court reporter administers an oath to the witness, keeps track of exhibits, impartially records what happens (usually stenographically and with an audiotape) and then reduces it to a transcript later, a process assisted by having been there when the testimony was given (and allowing for the court reporter, for example, to request spellings of words during breaks). A videotape can be used in addition to the court reporter and sometimes this is done when it would be helpful for understanding a highly visual topic (e.g. in a patent case where someone is explaining a 3D object) or when a witness is expected to behave badly or is known for problematic voice character or body language. Court proceedings in a courtroom are often audiotaped with a judge present but without a live court reporter present. Appellate court arguments are frequently live streamed over the Internet. There may be some jurisdictions where it is possible to have an oath administered by a notary and simply audiotape or videotape the deposition, but that would be very rare in every jurisdiction of which I am aware.
There is, of course, no way to tell how the Court would deal with such a case today. This is not a frequently litigated issue, with lots of case law. I note that in the case you link to, the court limited the statute to false claims made "with a fraudulent purpose". This normally means that the claimant is attempting to secure an improper financial or materiel advantage. In the United States v. Tandaric case, the person convicted had falsely claimed to be a US Citizen on an employment application for a company which did not hire non-citizens, and so gained a job through this false statement. He could have been convicted of ordinary Fraud. The court has not been as protective of Fraud under the First Amendment as it has been of speech generally, or even of false but non-fraudulent speech. I am not at all sure if the court would overturn this law in a similar case today. Edit: In the United States v. Achtner case, the court wrote: But we agree with the District Court that the representation of citizenship must still be made to a person having some right to inquire or adequate reason for ascertaining a defendant's citizenship; it is not to be assumed that so severe a penalty is intended for words spoken as a mere boast or jest or to stop the prying of some busybody, ... This seems to dispose of the example in the question of a neighbor who is merly inquiring as to the character of the area, or perhaps from simple curiosity, and a false speaker who seems to get no direct benefit or advantage from the falsehood. Both linked cases involved false statements made to employers or potential employees, during wartime at that, with the false speaker's employment apparently at stake.