Lawyers (good ones) teach their clients to do this all the time. I am an attorney, and I coach my clients extensively on how to testify well before I ever allow them on a stand or to a deposition.

It is entirely possible to be on the stand telling the truth, but do it in an incoherent way, so that the jury/judge will not understand the facts you are stating, or miss key facts.

I for one, don’t see anything wrong with teaching people who testify regularly how to do it in an efficient manner, so long as it is done with the requirement for truthfulness in mind.

Cops who want to lie already know how to do that. There’s no reason this course would make them any more effective at it.

Claiming that this gives the state an unfair advantage is like saying it is not a fair trial because the prosecutor is an experienced trial lawyer and the defense attorney is fresh out of law school. It still doesn’t change the facts of the trial.

Defense attorneys often call “expert” witnesses who testify for a living. Do you honestly think they haven’t gone to some kind of class for speaking on the stand? If people want to go to such a class, I am sure they are available out there.

The other issue that Carlos has brought up both in the article and in the comments is that the special treatment of these deputies is an apparent violation of the constitutional concept of a fair trial. If prosecution wants to use a witness, the defense gets to cross examine. If the defense wants to use a piece of evidence, the prosecution gets time to examine it in detail, and vice versa.

When one side of a trial gets special treatment, the trial is no longer in balance. This is why both sides get a say in who makes up the jury. In this case, the prosecution is getting an advantage in that they are getting witnesses who have already graduated from witness 101, while the defense has witnesses that can be excluded if they’ve been given even a crash course on the subject.

Do you think prosecution witnesses should be the only ones who get these classes, or should they be available to all taxpayers willing to sign up? By being a deputy, it can be expected one will be testifying on a regular basis, while a normal citizen might only testify once or twice in their lives, if that. How would you propose making the trial balanced again? The only two ways I see are allowing the defense to train their witnesses, which is currently illegal, or bar these classes.

“So officer Bob, you work for the state as does the prosecuting attorney ? … And has the state ever paid for training, told you, or described to you, what to say or not say before the court ? … Judge, I move to dismiss this witness”