Identify Misleading Questions In Court

One of the objections which either the defense attorney or the prosecution attorney in a trial might be able to rise is that of a misleading, confusing, vague, unintelligible, or ambiguous question. These objections should be raised immediately after the provoking question. The point of calling a question ambiguous, misleading, confusing, vague, or unintelligible is to say that a witness might not be able to answer that question clearly or appropriately, or to say that the jury might not interpret that question correctly, either.

The objection thus is meant to avoid the introduction of any information into the trial which might be improper to introduce, as a result of asking a question which is ambiguous or misleading enough to have been misinterpreted. Similarly, the objection would ensure that the witness would provide the asked-for information, as opposed to providing any other kind of information

Each of the terms, ambiguous, misleading, confusing, vague, and unintelligible, has a slightly different meaning in context, but they all fall under the general purview that a question must be a clearly phrased and worded interrogative, which the witness will know how to answer clearly and precisely.

A misleading question might be a question which seems to be asking one thing, but which leads the witness to answer another question, for example, and as such, even though it ultimately was not unintelligible, it would still be an improper, unclear question. Thus, these objections of “ambiguous,” “misleading,” “confusing,” “vague,” and “unintelligible,” are designed to help keep questions clear, and to avoid deceptive, manipulative tactics.

NEXT: The Challenge of Being Wrongfully Accused