Hostile witness
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A hostile witness is a witness in a trial who testifies for the opposing party or a witness who offers adverse testimony to the calling party during direct examination.
A witness called by the opposing party is presumed hostile. A witness called by the direct examiner can be declared hostile by a judge, at the request of the examiner, when the witness' testimony is openly antagonistic or clearly prejudiced to the opposing party.
A party examining a hostile witness may question the witness as if in cross-examination, thus permitting the use of leading questions. A hostile witness is sometimes known as an adverse witness or an unfavorable witness.
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Hostile witness" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
