Courtroom Persuasion Tactics

Courtroom Persuasion Tactics: Trial lawyers win juries with far more than evidence, using opening stories, carefully ordered witnesses, loaded wording, damage anchors and staged demonstrations, techniques that social scientists have tested in mock jury studies for over half a century.

The American Jury: Harry Kalven and Hans Zeisel's 1966 landmark study of about 3,500 criminal trials found judges would have reached the same verdict as the jury roughly three times out of four.

Nancy Pennington: Her Story Model research with Reid Hastie found that when prosecution evidence was presented in story order and the defense's was not, mock jurors convicted 78 percent of the time, versus 31 percent when reversed.

Johnnie Cochran: His rhyming line 'If it doesn't fit, you must acquit' in the 1995 O.J. Simpson trial became one of the most famous closing arguments ever, proof that a memorable phrase can outlive the evidence.

Christopher Darden: The prosecutor had Simpson try on the bloody gloves in front of the jury, but the shrunken leather over latex gloves looked too small, handing the defense its defining image.

Clarence Darrow: Courtroom legend holds he slid a thin wire through his cigar so the ash grew impossibly long without falling, leaving jurors staring at it instead of listening to the prosecution.

Scopes Trial: In 1925 Darrow stunned the courtroom by calling prosecutor William Jennings Bryan himself to the stand as an expert on the Bible, turning cross examination into public theater.

Gerry Spence: The buckskin jacketed Wyoming lawyer won a $10.5 million verdict for Karen Silkwood's family in 1979 by speaking to jurors like neighbors rather than lecturing them like a lawyer.

Kipling Williams: His 1993 research on stealing thunder showed that revealing damaging information about your own side before opponents do makes jurors rate you as more credible and the damage as less serious.

Irving Younger: His 1975 lecture The Ten Commandments of Cross Examination made famous the rule never to ask a witness a question you don't already know the answer to.

Almanac Trial: In 1858 Abraham Lincoln used an almanac to show the moon was too low for a witness to have seen a killing by moonlight, collapsing the case against his client Duff Armstrong.

Francis Wellman: His 1903 book The Art of Cross Examination is still in print and taught to law students more than a century later.

Reptile Theory: David Ball and Don Keenan's 2009 book taught plaintiff lawyers to frame cases around community safety, triggering jurors' protective instincts and prompting defense lawyers to organize entire seminars against it.

Batson v. Kentucky: This 1986 Supreme Court ruling barred lawyers from striking potential jurors because of their race, putting limits on one of the oldest tools of jury selection.

Harrisburg Seven: At this 1972 trial, sociologist Jay Schulman used community surveys to help the defense pick jurors, a birth moment of scientific jury selection that ended in a hung jury on the main charges.

Donald Shelton: The Michigan judge's 2006 survey of over 1,000 jurors found high expectations for forensic evidence but little sign that the so called CSI Effect actually changed verdicts.

Chewbacca Defense: A 1998 South Park parody of a nonsensical closing argument gave lawyers and critics a name for any strategy designed to confuse a jury rather than persuade it.

Twinkie Defense: The phrase was coined by the press during Dan White's 1979 trial, though his lawyers actually argued diminished capacity and cited junk food only as a symptom of his condition.

Gretchen Chapman: Her 1996 mock jury study with Brian Bornstein found that the more money plaintiffs asked for, the more jurors awarded, a result summed up as 'the more you ask for, the more you get.'

Elizabeth Loftus: In her 1974 study, people who heard cars 'smashed' into each other estimated speeds about 7 mph faster than those who heard 'hit,' showing how a lawyer's word choice can reshape a witness's memory.

Zapruder Film: New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison showed the Kennedy assassination footage to jurors repeatedly during the 1969 Clay Shaw trial, its first public screening, yet Shaw was acquitted in under an hour.

Vincent Bugliosi: The Manson family prosecutor said he won 105 of his 106 felony jury trials, relying on closings built like a lawyer's version of a detective story.

Edward Marshall Hall: Britain's 'Great Defender' was famed for theatrical emotional appeals and won the 1920 Green Bicycle Case acquittal, one of the most celebrated defenses in English legal history.

Cicero: His prosecution of the corrupt governor Verres in 70 BC was so devastating that Verres fled into exile before Cicero could deliver most of his planned speeches.

Pennzoil v. Texaco: Lawyer Joe Jamail convinced a Houston jury that a handshake deal was binding and won a $10.53 billion verdict in 1985, then the largest civil award in US history.