Judges, Repulsive Evidence and the Ability to Respond

This is a sequel to Bullets, Bad Florins and Old Boots, which reported the attitudes of Indiana trial judges toward the trial lawyer\u27s arsenal of gadgetry. The opportunity presented in 1963 was the Indiana Trial Judges Seminar and a series of sessions within it on demonstrative evidence. The opportunity this year was a series of sessions on The Court\u27s Control Over Demonstrative Evidence at the 1967 Indiana Judicial Conference. There were four of these sessions, all of them conducted by Judge Creighton R. Coleman of the 37th Judicial District of Michigan (Calhoun County). Each session was attended by a group of 25 to 35 Indiana trial and appellate judges. Both Bullets and this, its sequel, are empirical reports. Bullets was organized according to the sort of exhibits presented, and in the order in which they were presented. I have organized this report differently, in an attempt to cut through categories of demonstrative evidence and categorize instead the responses of the judges who saw it. This is justified, I think, because in this species of lawmaking the immediate response of a trial judge is almost always the last word on what the law is. Rulings on demonstrative evidence are more closely related to immediate response (I would say emotional response, but that adjective has a bad name in a legal system that still pretends to be Aristotelian) than to the intellectual rationalization that characterizes appellate law. This relationship is especially important because rulings on demonstrative evidence are probably as immune from appellate interference as any that a trial judge is likely to make