GARY S. GILDIN PRESENTS AT PUBLIC DEFENDERS ASSOCIATION OF PENNSYLVANIA’S ADVANCED CROSS-EXAMINATION TRAINING
February 2025 — Professor Gary S. Gildin delivered the lecture on “Finding the Trial Story” at the Public Defenders Association of Pennsylvania’s Advanced Cross-Examination Training. Gildin advocated that determining the defense factual story of innocence or reduced culpability in advance of trial is the first step in preparing every cross-examination. For each prosecution witness, the public defender then must 1) identify every fact that can be elicited from the witness that is consistent with the trial story; 2) organize the facts into chapters, and then decide on the order of facts within each chapter and the order of chapters; and 3) conduct the cross examination using techniques that will control the witness, requiring them to admit each fact presented. Gildin then offered a protocol for finding the best story based on the neuroscience of how the brain makes decisions, using the elements of character, motive, single plot, and stakes.
Professor Gary S. Gildin teaches Civil Liberties Litigation as well as Protection of Individual Rights Under State Constitutions. He is the author of Religious Freedom Under Article I Sections 3 and 4 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, published in THE PENNSYLVANIA CONSTITUTION: A TREATISE ON INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES, Ken Gormley and Joy G. McNally eds. (Second Edition 2020) and contributed to the Brief of Amici Curiae Law Professors David S. Cohen, Gary S. Gildin, Seth F. Kreimer, Jules Lobel, Robert Reinstein in William Penn School District et al. v. Pennsylvania Department of Education et al., No. 587 M.D. 2014 (Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania), in which Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer ruled that the system of funding public education violated the fundamental right to meaningful education under Pennsylvania Constitution.