Law Lessons from Fisher v. Libro, App. Div. (A-1441-07T2; Decided April 28, 2009):

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In State v. Medina, 349 N.J. Super. 198, 130-31 (App. Div), certif. denied, 174 N.J. 193 (2002), the court defined and clarified the judge’s role with respect to the interrogation of witnesses:
The parameters of judicial intervention in the conduct of a trial are well settled. Our courts have long rejected the “arbitrary and artificial methods of the pure adversary system of litigation which regards the lawyers as players and the judge as a mere umpire whose only duty is to determine whether infractions of the rules of the game have been committed.” State v. Riley, 28 N.J. 188, 200 (1958), cert. denied, 359 U.S. 313, 79 S. Ct. 891, 3 L. Ed.2d 832 (1959). The intervention of a trial judge in the questioning of a witness is both a power and a duty, and forms part of the judiciary’s general obligation to ensure a fair trial “conducted in [an] orderly and expeditious manner.” State v. Laws, 50 N.J. 159, 181 (1967). Trial judges are vested with the authority to propound questions to qualify a witness’s testimony and to elicit material facts on their own initiative and within their sound discretion. State v. Ross, 80 N.J. 239, 248-49 (1979). The discretionary power of a judge to participate in the development of proof is of “high value,” because a fair trial is his responsibility. State v. Guido, 40 N.J. 191, 207 (1963); see also N.J.R.E. 611(a) (judge “shall exercise reasonable control over the mode and order of interrogating witnesses and presenting evidence so as to . . . make the interrogation and presentation effective for the ascertainment of the truth”) N.J.R.E. 614 (“judge . . . may call a witness and may interrogate any witness”); Kristine Cordier Karnezis, Annotation, Manner or Extent of Trial Judge’s Examination of Witnesses in Civil Cases, 6 A.L.R.4th 951 (1981) (“trial court has the right to act as more than a moderator and to ask questions to clarify counsel’s questions and witnesses’ testimony in order to fully develop the truth”).

The Supreme Court has long recognized that judges sitting in the Family Part have special expertise in the field of domestic relations. Cesare v. Cesare, 154 N.J. 394, 412 (1998). The manner in which a judge examines and cross-examines a witnesses may exemplify this special expertise.

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