When I was living with a larval proto-lawyer, I worked with her to prep for moot court, and played one of the witnesses (actually I was a couple of different people, shorthanded as they were... which just confused people.)
Anyhoo, I was the sheriff in a small town where someone either shot himself with some complicated arrangement involving a shotgun and his big toe, or was murdered. I don't remember our theory of the case, but I do remember the supposedly slick guy "we" were up against trying to just check off the box, ask me a couple of questions, and move on...
The guy is like "At the scene, when you found the rifle..." at which point, cuz, you know, witness speaks when asked a question, I just screwed up my face in a quizzical expression. So, he knows something's up but doesn't know what, and starts bumbling through the rest of his question, visibly getting flustered. When it's time to answer, I said, "there wasn't a rifle there," and that was that. So he's fishing around trying to figure out how I "manipulated" the text saying what was found at the scene, and asks whether the police report stated that he was in such-and-such a position, with "the rifle" in such-and-such a position on the floor, etc.
So again I kept the answer short. "No, it did not." He comes back with something along the lines of "well, what did it say?"
I say back, in my best sheriff Lobo accent, "It was a shotgun, counselor."
The guy turned bright red, and the rest of the facts didn't matter much. The ex pwned him from that point on.
