ot going to enjoy it.

She is the important witness who was riding in the car at the time it
crashed into the grocery wagon. She is honest, of average
intelligence, and wants to tell the truth. She is asked:

"At the time of the accident, where were you?" She says that she was
in the car going up-town to see her married daughter whose children
were sick with the measles and she was in a hurry. The lawyer moves to
strike out the latter part of the answer. The fact that she was going
to see her daughter, that the children had the measles, and that she
was in a hurry are not relevant and have nothing to do with the case.
The only relevant fact is that she was in the up-town car.

She was sitting four seats from the front and thinking the car was
going very slowly and the children would be asleep before she got
there. It is immaterial that she was thinking about her grandchildren
or the measles, or that she was thinking about the car going slowly.
The real question is how fast the car was going.

The reason for the rule of evidence is that the court always wants to
know not what she thought, but what she actually saw. She will not be
allowed to tell what she thought or what she told her daughter after
the accident. The daughter can not be called to the stand to testify
what her mother told her, when she reached her house, about what had
happened. Newspaper accounts of the accident may not be allowed in
evidence, nor what the policemen reported on the accident, because he
arrived afterward. Anglo-Saxon law holds the proof down to what was
actually perceived by the five senses. The court makes up its own mind
from these perceptions and the facts themselves. It does not want to
hear what someone thinks, or what the witness believes or concludes,
but only what he perceived.

There is much to be said for and against this rule on both sides. A
broader method to the lawyer seems shockingly loose and slipshod. The
rules of evidence to the bystander seem an inhuman farce. The first
allows an atmosphere to be created from which the whole truth may be
reached. Would not an ordinary person, if he wanted to find out about
the accident, read the newspapers, find out the police reports, ask
what a witness thought, what that witness told someone else about the
accident afterward? Is she not now giving someone an account of the
accident?

Psychologists agree that no one can accurately narrate their
perceptions and what happens before