a witness i was cross-examining infuriated me. my explosion led to both the judge and court reporter yelling at me. i was told i was acting “hostile”. at the time, i was angry at the witness’ answer but could not explain why.
after much contemplation, i realized that it was the witness’ victim shaming that drew my ire. my eruption occurred when i had asked him about the data that he was supposed to collect from an independent party. embarrassed over the fact that he did not have any data, not in response to the question presented, he chose to lash out and remark that my client had not provided him data as well. this blatant attempt to to cover up his error violated my personal code of witness testimony.
now, we must jump to the matter of firearm safety. households containing individuals with impaired moral compasses should be wary of having loaded weapons. a home with an alzheimer’s patient would not want them to get ahold of a weapon. likewise, homes with mentally impaired children who are violent should also be wary of having firearms on premises.
given these facts, ms. deja taylor’s [ the mother of a six year old child who shot his teacher] interview on television was shocking. she is charged in relation to her six year old child’s activities for which he made national headlines; he took the family’s firearm to school and shot and seriously wounded his elementary school teacher.
while ms. taylor took responsibility what occurred, some of her comments were disturbing. for someone facing criminal charges, they were ill advised.
in the dailymail article, according to ms. taylor, days before the incident, her child “felt ignored” by his teacher. was this ms. taylor’s attempt to justify her child’s violence act towards his teacher? was her child’s feelings of being slighted justification for the violence? she, in the interview, said” ‘he would come home, and say “mom, i don’t think she was listening to me. i didn’t like that.”
if there was a criminal proceeding, under cross-examination, ms. taylor should be asked: if you felt that your child was disturbed over being slighted, and it concerned you so much, why didn’t you make sure that your family’s firearm was secure at that point? ms. taylor should be asked, “did you make any effort to explain to your child that teachers have lots of children they have to pay attention to and that he should be patient with her?” one might ask her “whether she tried to calmed down her child and advised him that she would talk to the teacher about it?”
in sum, outrageous victim shaming must be called out. while it is appreciated that there are many confounding facts concerning what transpired at the school on the eventful day, the taylor family are the sole individuals who enabled their mentally impaired and allegedly violent child to have access to a firearm. without the firearm, perhaps the day in question would have been one which only involved hurt feelings.
be well!!
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