"Avoid ambiguity" in courtroom cross-examination

by JLS
for the GC

Kramer in comment on "Controversial Grice"

"It is interesting to note that, under the
First Rule of X-exam, no decent lwayer would permit

---- "I went to the store 5 times"

to stand as an answer. The lawyer knows that
the witness went 25 times, and he is here to adduce
that he did so. So the "5" answer would not
be tolerated."

Quite. I was in fact surprised by the rather free use of 'know' as used by the Court in bringing this this strawman example.

Recall the court's wording:

"If it is material"

-- Legalese --

"to ascertain how many times a person has
entered a store on a given day and that person
responds to such a question by saying
"5 times," when in fact he knows that he
entered the store 50 times that day, that person may be guilty
of perjury even though it is technically true that
he entered the store 5 times."

----

I refer to the ascription, anti-sceptical:

"when in fact he knows that ["50" holds]."

I would submit that in most real-life cases it is never so clear:

--- "when in fact" -- versus, "when in non-fact"?
--- "he knows that" -- I think 'knows' begs the question slightly. For it already presupposes, entails even, that '50' holds. If we avoid the 'in fact' as a redundancy only meant for purposes of explicitation, and replace the 'knows' by 'believes', 'assumes,', 'thinks', ... -- and when you add a scenario that deals with slightly less numerically concrete instances ('the number of times the person dreamed of going to Honolulu') one starts to wonder about the 'material'!?