Of course that was her goal. That's what she's supposed to do. The points she was making or trying to make weren't too far off base of where she probably needed to be going. The real problem was the way she went about it. It was a mess. She'd start questioning and dig a little too far. The testimony would end up hurting her more than helping her. When the evidence is that against you, best to keep it vague. To keep pressing the ME to say he has no medical evidence of damage to the brain is not what you want to do. In fact, don't even ask the question. Don't ever open up the door to allowing a witness, especially an expert to explain in detail their own position.
She should have started as she did, with the liquefied brain. "Yes it was liquefied." "Yet you say the bullet passed through the brain." "Yes it did." "But it was liquefied." "Yes." "So you couldn't actually SEE a bullet track, right?" "That's correct, I couldn't, it was too decomposed to see any damage." And THAT is when you back off. You've done your job. You've raised that doubt. When you've scored a point, and you keep digging and digging, and you get lost it makes you look incompetent and petty. And there goes the point.
I get what she was trying to do with the "you didn't have any medical evidence" questioning. But she kept going trying to get him to say something he was never going to say. She wanted an admission that he couldn't be sure the bullet passed through the brain. She should have known he couldn't say this because of how bullet trajectories and anatomy and his own experience would prevent him from doing so. Don't try and argue facts. It also probably would have helped for her to have done some research on the subject or consulted with someone. Hey, maybe she did. But it clearly wasn't enough. And if she had, she'd have caught that dura mater typo much sooner and scored a huge point herself. But a juror ended up scoring it for her.
When the evidence is in your favor, that's when you can dig a little more, as Juan did. Some might say too much, as well. But it worked a lot better for him because he knew where he was going, what he was doing, and what the person was going to say.
Wilmott was trying for that, "can't be 100% sure," but in the end she just ended up helping him solidify his points. That's disastrous. I never got the impression that she was in control of that cross examination. The only time I felt that was after the juror question re: the typo. And it it wasn't for that juror, she never would have caught it.
