Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Sunday, October 29, 2006
He Slices, He Dices
Scooter got a bit of a preview of what he's going to face in January. There were some pre-trial hearings about memory experts for Libby's upcoming trial:
Fitzgerald's target in the witness box was Elizabeth F. Loftus, a professor of criminology and psychology at the University of California at Irvine. For more than an hour of the pretrial hearing, Loftus calmly explained to Judge Reggie B. Walton her three decades of expertise in human memory and witness testimony. Loftus asserted that, after copious scientific research, she has found that many potential jurors do not understand the limits of memory and that Libby should be allowed to call an expert to make that clear to them.

But when Fitzgerald got his chance to cross-examine Loftus about her findings, he had her stuttering to explain her own writings and backpedaling from her earlier assertions. Citing several of her publications, footnotes and the work of her peers, Fitzgerald got Loftus to acknowledge that the methodology she had used at times in her long academic career was not that scientific, that her conclusions about memory were conflicting, and that she had exaggerated a figure and a statement from her survey of D.C. jurors that favored the defense.
Oh my. I will be following that trial with rapt attention. So will Joe Wilson and his wife .....
Written at 8:31 AM by Greyhair.
1 comments
1 Comments:
Blogger Deb said...
My favorite part was her forgetting that she had been cross-examined by Fitzgerald before. That probably made a big impression on the judge.
10:31 AM  
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