“She was carrying this bag when you struck her, wasn’t she?”
“Well... I guess...”
Larry Sampson interrupted positively, “Now that’s just the thing I want to warn you against, Mr. Diggers. I know that you’re an honest man, I know that you’re trying to be fair; I know that whenever you hesitate in answering a question, you’re trying to reconstruct in your mind the sequence of events but, a jury won’t understand that. The minute you start hesitating on the witness stand, the jury will say, ‘Here’s a man who doesn’t remember very clearly what happened.’ You see, Mr. Diggers, all witnesses that get on the stand know that they’re going to be subjected to cross-examination. Therefore, they think things out pretty carefully, so the attorney on the other side can’t make fools out of them. Jurors are accustomed to hearing witnesses speak right up. Now, you know whether she was carrying that bag. You don’t want Perry Mason to get you out in public and make you look ridiculous, do you?”
“No, I don’t, but I...”
“And you don’t want to appear in the position of being a careless driver?”
“I wasn’t careless,” Diggers said. “There was nothing any human being could do. She ran out right in front of the headlights and...”
“Yes, but you don’t want the public to think you didn’t see her when she ran out in front of the car, do you?”
“Why, of course not, I saw her. I saw her the minute she stepped off the curb, but it was too late to do anything about it.”
“And how far did she run from the curb before she got in front of your car?”
“I don’t know, four or five steps, probably.”