San Francisco Criminal Attorney On Opening Statements

A criminal attorney's purpose in delivering an opening statement is to deliver a summary of the defense as a whole. Usually, this will involve a brief explanation of the admissible evidence and the testimonies that will be heard. Putting it frankly, the opening statement is almost always intended to be an incredibly compelling, well told story. Essentially, this is where your legal counsel introduces the jurors to the plot, fleshes out the characters in your case and gets them involved. Opening statements humanize the defendant, helping people to understand the various things that impact the case, and also to help pave the way to a more favorable verdict.

There are a few key ingredients to a really compelling opening statement that a criminal attorney may use. The opening statement will tell your story. It's mean to grab the juror's or the court's attention and hold it while a portrait of an arrest is painted, and why the fairness of the charges is in question. At this point, it can also be where counsel explores varying weaknesses in the prosecution's version of events, as well as the weaknesses in their case. There are a number of things that happen when these statements are made on both sides: you will note that these are usually second only to the closing statements in the passion in which they are delivered. There is good reason for that.

Often, the opening statement will in fact set the tone for the entire trial. This sets the stage and creates themes that will carry through the process. A criminal attorney might emphasize that the events leading up to whatever the charge is had bearing on why it happened, and this is a point that can continue to be brought up, reminding the court of the original statement. If the statement is compelling enough, even simple reminders throughout testimonies and other evidentiary explorations can remind them of that one powerful original opening statement.

Another purpose of the opening statement will be to make either the defendant or even the counsel themselves more relate-able to the jury. Conceding a few points to help foster understanding is a common tactic, and generally speaking, this will again, help the jury or the court to really get to know the person, not the act in question. This helps a great deal, because in telling the whole story, the court is getting a full picture of not just the events, but the person themselves.

Going back to the original analogy of the crime drama, consider the characters that caught your attention and held it. There have likely been episodes where you really felt for a character, because of the effective way the back-story and the circumstances surrounding the alleged crime were told in the storyline. This is very much the same way an opening statement will work to help flesh out a defendant and help the court to better know who they are as a person and other factors they might not consider otherwise.