CA: Prop 8 Trial Final Day Recap

Today was the final day of testimony in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Like every day before it, today was remarkable. The majority of the day was spent on finishing up the cross-examination of David Blankenhorn, an expert witness for the defendants. As he did yesterday, renowned attorney David Boies absolutely nailed the examination. Blankenhorn did nothing to help himself, fighting Boies's yes-or-no questions at every turn even when Boies was simply laying a basic foundation with uncontroversial points. Blankenhorn's defensive behavior verged on the histrionic, contrasting sharply with Boies's calm, matter-of-fact approach. At one point, Judge Walker stepped in and instructed Blankenhorn to keep in mind that a fact-finder, meaning a judge or jury, can consider a witness's demeanor when deciding how credible that witness is and how seriously to take his or her testimony. Although Judge Walker delivered it with great diplomacy and tact, this was a fairly sharp rebuke.

On cross, Boies established a couple of key points that gravely undermined Blankenhorn's authority as an expert on marriage. First, Boies elicited testimony that Blankenhorn had not read many leading scholarly articles addressing the question of how society would be affected by allowing same-sex couples to marry. For example, of the dozens of articles cited in policy statements supporting marriage equality for same-sex couples by leading professional organizations, Blankenhorn admitted that he had read scarcely more than a handful. In contrast, all of the plaintiffs' expert witnesses were demonstrably well-versed in the entire range of scholarly literature on the topics about which they testified.

Second, Boies elicited extensive testimony from Blankenhorn acknowledging that permitting same-sex couples to marry would "almost certainly" benefit those couples and their children. Blankenhorn also testified that the most important dimensions of marriage (as defined by Blankenhorn in one of his publications) are the same for same-sex and opposite-sex couples. In short, by the end of Blankenhorn's cross, his own testimony had provided multiple powerful reasons to permit same-sex couples to marry, and his opposition to marriage equality seemed virtually inexplicable.

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