In this case study I argue that experts, to gain relevance in a jury trial, need to fit into a manifold division of knowing. They do so by borrowing and sharing diverse knowledges. These exchanges place the modest expert testimony right into an authoritative and powerful decision-making apparatus. This argument derives from an ethnographic study of a ‘‘sleepwalking defense.’’ The division of knowing embraces the certified facts, the instructed case, the competing expertise, and the common sense. As a conclusion, I (...) identify the experts’ twofold relevance. Experts perform the case as undecided and decidable. They provide exclusive knowledge and affirm a set of other knowledges. By ‘‘knowing’’ and ‘‘not knowing,’’ the experts perform individual modesty and systemic immodesty by the same token. (shrink)

This article examines a questioning strategy in trial crossexamination designed to control an evasive witness, and how that control functions through the interactive contours of verbal and visual conduct to index identity, construct multidimensional forms of participation and project intertextual relations. In the process of nailing down an answer, attorney and witness manipulate linguistic ideologies and project participations of power to calibrate the epistemological criteria for determining the legitimacy of legal realities. I demonstrate how indexical iconicities of trial dialogic form (...) emerge as a contested ritual of truth in the situated details of multimodal discursive practices. (shrink)