A hostile witness is a witness in a trial who testifies for the opposing party or a witness who offers adverse testimony to the calling party during direct examination.
A witness called by the opposing party is presumed hostile. A witness called by the direct examiner can be declared hostile by a judge, at the request of the examiner, when the witness' testimony is openly antagonistic or clearly prejudiced to the opposing party.
A party examining a hostile witness may question the witness as if in cross-examination, thus permitting the use of leading questions. A hostile witness is sometimes known as an adverse witness or an unfavorable witness.
Famous quotes containing the words hostile and/or witness:
“The form of act or thought mattered nothing. The hymns of David, the plays of Shakespeare, the metaphysics of Descartes, the crimes of Borgia, the virtues of Antonine, the atheism of yesterday and the materialism of to-day, were all emanation of divine thought, doing their appointed work. It was the duty of the church to deal with them all, not as though they existed through a power hostile to the deity, but as instruments of the deity to work out his unrevealed ends.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“The yearning for an afterlife is the opposite of selfish: it is love and praise for the world that we are privileged, in this complex interval of light, to witness and experience.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)