Occasionally humor works in court, but it must be used judiciously!

I had the honor and privilege of working with Rita Charlebois for many years at the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto. She was one of the top alcohol experts in Ontario at the time. She was a tall, gracious and elegant woman who had just a slight French Canadian accent. She was one of my mentors and taught me a lot about how criminal court actually works.

In one of her criminal impaired driving cases, the defense lawyer was going through her curriculum vitae on the stand and was lauding his defence alcohol expert instead. The defense went on and on about how his expert had published over a hundred studies on the effect of alcohol on rats and other laboratory animals.

"Why", he demanded, "did you not publish any similar studies?"

Rita looked at the lawyer firmly and said politely,

"Because sir, rats don't drive."

Effective and succinct and it stopped any further line of questioning. As a junior forensic scientist at the time I probably would have responded a bit pompously something like:

"The pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of alcohol in the rat are substantially different from humans and so would have little relevance in criminal court."

Which would have gone way above the heads of the jury and the judge and would have invited further questioning and clarification. Sometimes a little humor is the best way of answering a question in court.

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