Why don’t those darned jurors hear what I am telling them? Or, asked differently, what did that lawyer mean by giving such an incoherent opening statement—didn’t they realize that details were missing? The answer is that the opening statement may been “internally coherent but externally incoherent.” And how this can occur is best understood by learning about the “tappers” research.

That phrase—internally coherent but externally incoherent—is one this author generated after reading an opening statement from a Pennsylvania criminal trial. There was a hint of a story, but new names and seemingly disconnected events were thrust at the jury in a way that no one who had yet to read the discovery could grasp.

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