A lesson in preparation.

Most lawyers have experienced it. Every lawyer has tried to avoid it. That painfully long moment in court when beads of sweat glisten on the forehead and knots form in the stomach. In during a critical time like that when a lawyer wishes he or she could begin anew. Here, seven lawyers share their stories of triumph despite obstacles. The lesson learned in each of these tales is a simple one: Expect the unexpected.

A lesson in preparation

Almost 30 years ago, I was a young captain in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the U.S. Army, newly arrived in the Republic of South Vietnam. I had entered the JAG Corps right out of law school and had spent my first year of military duty in Louisiana trying general courts martial, mostly involving allegations of absence without leave or desertion.

Upon my arrival in Vietnam, I was assigned to prosecute general courts martial, but with the prospect of a greater variety of factual situations involving more serious offenses. I was somewhat apprehensive, but, with the confidence of youth, I was eager to commence my new undertaking and determined to be as effective as possible. After about six months in my new assignment, I was beginning to feel more at ease with complex prosecutions, including money laundering, rape, and robbery. It was in this context that I was assigned my first death case.

The case involved some off-duty soldiers in a downtown Saigon bar who had become loud and boisterous and had made overtures to several Vietnamese prostitutes. When one of the women angrily flung a soldier's hand from her arm, he allegedly pulled out a pistol, fatally shot her, and fled the scene. He was subsequently apprehended by the military police, and, although his drinking buddies denied he had been the shooter, two American civilians identified him in a lineup as the man who had pulled the trigger. The pistol was never found.

In preparing the case, I looked for witnesses who were service connected and had been present during various portions of the soldier's drunken odyssey leading up to the shooting. Of the two American citizens who had picked the soldier out of a lineup, one had since returned to the United States and was unavailable. The other was a civilian employed by the Army in Bangkok, Thailand, who agreed to return to Vietnam for the trial.

Realizing that this witness was going to be crucial to my case, I spent considerable time thinking about how best to present his evidence. I explained to him that at trial, I was going to walk him carefully through the events of the evening. After he had finished telling the court everything he had seen, I would ask, "And now, Sir, if you see that man in this courtroom who shot that woman that night, would you please point him out?" I explained that the defendant would be sitting to his left, and that my witness should simply look directly at the defendant and point his finger and say, "Yes, Sir, he is sitting right there."

There had been a lot to do to get ready for this trial. I had to arrange for my civilian witness to be flown from Bangkok to Saigon and for my ballistics evidence and my other witnesses to be prepared. Accordingly, I paid scant attention when advised that the trial would not be held in the courtroom to which I was usually assigned but was being moved to a larger courtroom to accommodate the expected crowd of spectators.

The case had received considerable publicity and was being covered not only by the local military outlets but by the Overseas Weekly and the Associated Press. Therefore, I was not surprised on the first day of trial to see that the courtroom, normally sparsely populated, was completely filled.

Pre-trial motions, selection of the court, and opening statements consumed most of the first day. It was not until late in the second day that my crucial American witness made his appearance. I was pleased as I took him through his trial testimony. He appeared to be an observant person, and he was extremely articulate when describing the events of the fatal evening. At the conclusion of his testimony, I fixed the court martial members with a steely stare and asked my witness in a louder tone than I had been previously employing, "And now, Sir, if you see that man in this courtroom who shot that woman, would you please point him out?"

My witness turned to the left but saw a man with a gavel sitting behind a plaque that read "Military Judge." The witness looked puzzled, and I suddenly recalled with horror the words I had used in my witness preparation: "After I ask you to point him out, turn to your left and point directly at him." In the courtroom to which I was usually assigned, the defendant would have been sitting to the left of the witness. However, this courtroom was the reverse, and everyone was sitting in exactly the opposite position.

My witness began to eye each row of the courtroom carefully, and, with a sinking heart, I understood that he thought he was being asked to take part in some sort of a "test" of his recollection. Obviously, I could not point the defendant out to him, so I tried to keep my face expressionless while one of life's longest moments ensued. Although in retrospect I realize no more than three or four minutes passed, it seemed an eternity.

It was ultimately a relief when the witness said, "I think it's the third man from the left in the second row, or it could be this man here," pointing to the defendant. "No," he then said, "I believe it is that man," indicating again to the man in the second row. Striving to appear calm and expressionless, I requested that the man in the second row stand up and identify himself. He said, "My name is John Smith. I'm on assignment for the Associated Press."

Although I felt that the ground had swallowed me up, I thought it important not to show my distress, so I immediately asked, "Well, what was the man who fled the bar that evening wearing?" I continued in that vein for a few minutes more and then tendered the witness to the defense.

When the witness was finally excused, the judge requested that I call my next witness, and, under the guise that I had to check to see whether he had arrived in court, I sought a brief recess. I was seething with fury and, once outside the court, confronted the witness in an empty room, asking, "Do you think I brought you all the way back from Bangkok so you could identify a spectator?"

The witness said, "Captain, you told me the defendant would be sitting to my left, and that was the judge. I thought I was being tricked and did the best I could."

In the three decades that have passed since my tour of duty in Vietnam, I have been involved in hundreds of jury trials, but no memory has remained with me longer or clearer than the moment I stood in the middle of that military courtroom when the sky seemed to fall on my head.

The defense counsel were understandably reluctant to press their advantage with the witness because once they stood up from the table and began to cross-examine him, it would become apparent where the real defendant was sitting. Their comments were reserved for summation, when they repeated over and over again that the eyewitness had been unable to identify their man. Because I had wanted to save the witness's dramatic gesture of identifying the defendant until the witness's appearance, I had not alluded to it in my opening statement, and, apparently, some members of the court had not understood that the witness was supposed to point out the defendant. Thanks to a plethora of circumstantial and consistent evidence, I obtained a conviction.

Recounting this episode will explain why, for years, my colleagues have heard me advise that near the end of trial preparation the lawyer should always survey the courtroom with a view toward planning the presentation. I warn my colleagues they should locate the electric wall sockets; find out what equipment the courtroom has; locate the telephones and restrooms; and determine the positioning of the counsel table, the witness box, and the jurors. I have often explained that these commonsense observations can save a case, but I have seldom divulged the well from which they sprung.

William C. Lanham is a partner with Johnson & Ward in Atlanta.