If the witness is finally shown a paper which he or she signed when
the investigator of the railroad came to see her, and in which she
said she was sitting on the sixth seat, there is not such a great deal
to be proud of.

"Ha, Ha," thinks the lawyer "at last," "didn't you just now say you
were sitting on the fourth seat?" "I don't remember," says the
witness. "What," thunders the lawyer, "you don't remember; then your
memory is poor. I will read you what you said on your direct
examination," and he does. "Now which was it, the sixth or the fourth
seat."

The other object of cross-examination is to elicit new facts. This is
a dangerous risk for the lawyer, and unless he is sure of his ground,
he had better not take it. He will do better to let his own side tell
the facts than to bring them out through an unwilling witness who is
on his guard and thinking the opposing lawyer is trying to trap him.

The mistake that most lawyers make in cross-examination is to ask the
witness to repeat what he said in his direct testimony. Telling the
same story over again merely accents the facts in the minds of the
jury. The lawyer asks:

"You say that you saw the driver whip up his horses when the car was a
block away." The lawyer may doubt the truth of the statement but the
mere repetition of the words affects the memory of the jury. Unless
he has a distinct object in going over the testimony, either to show
the direct contrary strongly, or the fact that the witness has learned
the testimony by rote and that the repetition is in exactly the same
words, the lawyer would do better to desist.