Exceptions To The No-leading-questions Rule
- Where the witness is hostile to the examiner, or reluctant or unwilling to testify, in which situation the witness is unlikely to accept being "coached" by the questioner.
- To bring out preliminary matters (name, occupation, and other pedigree information).
- Where the memory of the witness has been exhausted and there is still information to be elicited.
- In a sensitive area, to avoid the witness from testifying to incompetent or prejudicial matter.
Read more about this topic: Leading Question
Famous quotes containing the words exceptions and/or rule:
“Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. A man does not see, that, as he eats, so he thinks: as he deals, so he is, and so he appears; he does not see that his son is the son of his thoughts and of his actions; that fortunes are not exceptions but fruits; that relation and connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but everywhere and always; no miscellany, no exemption, no anomaly,but method, and an even web; and what comes out, that was put in.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)