A Practical Guide to Evidence in New Hampshire

Tested tips for admitting and excluding evidence in New Hampshire trials. You will find this and more in A Practical Guide to Evidence in New Hampshire. Under the editorial direction of E. Tupper Kinder, Esq. and Kenneth E. Rubinstein, Esq., together with the Honorable Robert J. Lynn, Associate Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court, MCLE | NE has developed an authoritative and practical evidence manual for New Hampshire litigators. Fourteen of New Hampshire's most noted trial lawyers share their techniques, tips, strategies and best practices for dealing with evidentiary issues in the context of courtroom practice. The book's authors hail from Concord, Portsmouth, Manchester, Exeter and Nashua, and possess an impressive curriculum vitae of hundreds of cases won in New Hampshire's courts. Now, you can benefit from their collective expertise to get the very best result for your client.

This essential resource for litigators shows you how to:

- establish facts at both pretrial and trial other than through formal proof, including through use of evidentiary admissions, confessions, judicial admissions, judicial notice, stipulations, and interrogatories.

- limit or exclude evidence with the motion in limine, motion to strike, and the offer of proof, and apply evidentiary rules limiting the introduction of certain evidence on subsequent remedial measures and offers to compromise.

- probe a witness's competency or qualification to show that he or she lacks sufficient capacity to observe, remember, narrate, or understand the duty to tell the truth.

- handle witness corroboration, including habit and routine practice evidence, the use of depositions as trial evidence, and refreshment of recollection.

- prove a witness's or defendant's character with a witness's testimony as to reputation and particular character traits.

- learn the proper language to use when examining a police officer, an expert, a hostile witness, and other key players in your case.

- pick up tips on the motion in limine, motion to strike and other means of achieving evidentiary exclusions and limitations.

- handle delicate evidentiary issues, such as determining the competency of a child witness.

Featured are sample examinations based on realistic hypotheticals filled with the nuance, the persuasion, and the know-how that you can learn how to adopt in your own direct and cross-examinations.

A practice handbook in its most basic form, A Practical Guide to Evidence in New Hampshire is a must-have for Granite State litigators and trial lawyers who wish to master evidence to prevail in court.

• Update: July 2012

  Dear Subscriber:

  MCLE | New England is pleased to present you with this update to A Practical Guide to Evidence in New Hampshire. Please note the following highlights of this supplementary issue, which you will want to acquire in order to keep your copy of the manual up to date for your library and clients:

  • Preservation of Evidence for Appeal. See Chapter 3 for an expanded discussion of the New Hampshire Supreme Court's qualification of a rule regarding definitive pretrial ruling on a motion in limine.

  • Identification. See Chapter 6 for a discussion of the 2012 case of Perry v. New Hampshire, 565 U.S. ___, ___ (Jan. 11, 2012), in which the New Hampshire Supreme Court rules that an out-of-court identification will not be excluded from trial unless the unnecessarily suggestive identification was the result of circumstances orchestrated by law enforcement.

  • Reputation. See Chapter 7, where Rule 803(21) is discussed in the context of the use of hearsay evidence to prove character.

  • Impeachment. See Chapter 8 for information on when the "specific contradiction doctrine" should be applied.

  • Recorded Statements. See Chapter 11 for detailed coverage of recent case law illustrating an active debate over how close in time a recorded statement must be to the event it describes to qualify under the rule.

  We at MCLE trust that you will find this supplement to A Practical Guide to Evidence in New Hampshire to be a valuable addition to your collection. Thank you for your interest in MCLE | New England publications.

  Cordially,

  Maryanne G. Jensen, Esq., MCLE Director of Publications