From text to talk in criminal court: Prosecuting, defending, and examining the evidence

• Judge, lawyer, and prosecutor quote from the case file with different aims.
• The judge quotes from the case file in a dialogical context.
• The lawyer and prosecutor quote from the case file in monological context.
• The case file serves the judge to check the version of events put forth in the indictment.
• The case file serves persuasive purposes for the lawyer and prosecutor.

In this article we analyze how prosecutors, lawyers and judges refer to the case file. Because witnesses are rarely heard again in Dutch criminal court, understanding how their written voices are re-animated in court is of importance. Lawyers and prosecutors select quotations and introduce these in a written (to be spoken) statement and control the sequential embedding. Judges introduce quotations while examining the evidence; the introduction of quotations is hence contingent on the developing interaction with the suspect. We examine one trial and show how referrals to the case file by the different professionals are selected to construct versions of the events and how their sequential embedding contributes to achieving these different versions in pursuit of their respective institutional aims.