Young lawyers aspiring to the profession of trial lawyer are taught the "rule of primacy and recency" which holds that you should call your two best witnesses first and last, the theory being the jury will remember those two witnesses because of the order they were called.
🥱 If you like 1970's trial tactics then go right ahead and be predictable.
In a certain business records case winding its way through week three in the Big Apple, the prosecution appears to be closing with the vixen who lured a married man with her batting eyelashes and curvy figure into her (actually his) bed. How she actually got through dinner without throwing up as he ate with her in his silk pajamas, is not something we want to imagine in our mind's eye.
But after the Storm passes, what is left? Choppy waters? A rainbow? Because there is one more shoe to fall in the personage of the defendant's former lawyer- a bag man who tried to calm the Storm of the unseemly assignation with cold, hard, and potentially illegal cash. The bag man comes with a bag of issues, including a lying to Congress rap (and really, who hasn't done that? Lying to Congress is as American as cheating on your taxes or being a Republican nominee for the Supreme Court and assuring the Senate of your respect for precedent), being a turncoat- someone who said he would take a bullet for the defendant, before actually becoming the bullet that may take him down.
So it appears the prosecution may end with a Stormy Bag - a one two punch of sex and slime.
The great pastime for us trial lawyers is Monday-Morning Quarterbacking our colleagues decisions in trial.
Thoughts on this strategy?
BTW- the defense strategy of using a female lawyer to cross Stormy is also so 1970s - a time when a female trial lawyer was a rarity. We say bring your best guns to bear, not just a gun wearing a blouse or skirt.
Not sure if you can get past the firewall but here is a NYTimes video discussing the defendant's unhappiness with his current lead lawyer.