Learn Who Can Take The Stand And What They’re Allowed To Say

If you have any questions about this or if you're being charged with a crime, feel free to call us at 210-405-6410 or click here to schedule a free consultation.

Click the link below to receive 4 Things You Should Do If You've Been Arrested:
https://bit.ly/3tDOVbt

Courtroom testimony isn’t a free-for-all; it’s a tightly defined system that decides which voices the jury hears and how much weight they carry. We break down the three types of witnesses—those with personal knowledge, expert witnesses, and character witnesses—and show exactly how each one shapes a criminal case from the first question to the final verdict.

We start with eyewitnesses, including police officers, and clarify what they can and cannot say under the hearsay rules. You’ll hear how a defendant’s own statements can come in as an exception, why an officer can describe injuries but not speculate on their cause, and how a 911 call gets authenticated through a records custodian before it reaches the jury. Then we shift to experts, the people who translate lab data into plain English. In DWI cases, that means breath-test operators and blood analysts who explain calibration, chain of custody, and uncertainty ranges—details that can make or break a number-driven case.

Finally, we talk strategy with character witnesses and the defendant’s choice to testify. Character testimony can help establish credibility or peacefulness, but it also opens the door to rebuttal. We walk through two common scenarios—family violence and DWI—to show the usual witness lineup, the flow of evidence, and the key pressure points where a defense can challenge reliability and raise reasonable doubt. Along the way, we share practical guidance on preparing for testimony, spotting hearsay pitfalls, and focusing the jury on what’s admissible and persuasive.

If you or someone you love faces charges in San Antonio, we’ve linked a free guide with five steps to take right now, plus a way to schedule a no-cost consultation. If this breakdown helped, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review so more people can find clear, actionable legal insights.

Advertisement

Sean Henricksen Law Firm

sean@seanhenricksen.com

210-405-6410

106 S. St. Mary's St., Ste 445

San Antonio, Texas 78205

www.seanhenricksen.com

Transcript

Welcome And Free Resources

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, and welcome back to another episode of What to Expect When You're Arrested. This is your host, Sean Hendrickson, here from the Sean Hendrickson Law Firm, where we help good people like you avoid the devastating consequences of criminal charges. Today we're going to be talking about witnesses in a trial and who can be called as a witness. I've actually been getting a lot of phone calls about who can be a witness and who can't be. Before we get to that, I do have a free download for you. It's five things you can be doing right now if you've been arrested. If you click down in the show notes, there's a link where you can give us your email address and we'll send that right out to you. Or there's also a link down there. If you're charged with a crime here in San Antonio, you can schedule a consultation with us and we can answer any questions you have. And I encourage you to do that if you do have a charge here. Now, getting to today's topic of who can be a witness, there are actually three types of people who can be a witness in a case. And so if your case does go to trial, then there are going to be witnesses who are called by the state and sometimes by the defense, depending on the case. The first type of witness is going to be a witness with personal knowledge of something that happened in the case. So basically, it's going to be an eyewitness or somebody who's saw something or heard something or something like that. The second type of witness is going to be an expert witness. So if there is an issue on a case, so let's say that this is a DWI case, and there are lab results about how much alcohol they had in their blood or in their breath. So you can have a witness come in who's an expert in the field of blood or breath alcohol and explain some things and testify about their knowledge in that field. Third, in a criminal case, you can actually have a character witness come in and you know essentially talk about the character of the defendant who's being charged. So normally that would be a defense witness, somebody that we would call to say that this is the type of person who wouldn't do this type of thing, or this is a truthful and honest person, so you can believe their testimony. Now, how that actually looks in a trial, the typical types of witnesses we see, for example, in a family violence case, the first person they're normally going to call is going to be the custodian records for the 911 call to say that the 911 call hasn't been changed or edited or anything like that. And that's how they're going to get the 911 call in. After that, they're normally going to have the police officer come in and testify. And again, so the police officer is going to be one of those witnesses who can testify about what they have personal knowledge of. In a lot of family violence cases, when the police officer gets there, there's not, you know, an assault going on, and they can't testify as to what the specific people said because that would be hearsay. So they can't testify as to what the victim said, although what the person who's being charged said actually can be used against them. And that is an exception to the hearsay rule. But generally, what an officer is going to be testifying to is that they got called out on a case, they showed up, and this is what they saw, or this is what they heard. And so they can say that they saw injuries on the person. They can say that, you know, if there was something broken because of, you know, that there was a fight that happened or something like that, then they can testify as to that. But they can't say how those injuries happened because they weren't there when those injuries happened. And lastly, they're going to generally try and have the victim come in and testify as to what happened to say that they were assaulted. And those are going to be the typical types of witnesses that the state is going to call on a family violence case. We, on the other hand, we will obviously have the opportunity to call our witness if they choose to. That's going to be the defendant's choice as to whether or not they testify. And we can also call character witnesses, basically to say that this is not the type of activity that the defendant would have done. And that if you know, or they're a truthful person, so that when they denied having assaulted them, that you know they are more believable. Another common type of case that we handle a lot of are DWIs. And in those cases, it's a different type of witnesses. So there's not going to be a 911 call. Generally, the witnesses that they're going to call, first off, is going to be the police officer who pulled the person over to say that, you know, talk about how they were driving, talking about, you know, how they were acting and everything else. Then the next type of witness that they're going to call is usually going to be the person who runs the breath test machine. Or if there were blood results, then it's going to be the lab technician who tested the blood and came up with those lab results so that they can get those lab results in. I hope that this has been helpful for you. If you've got any questions about witnesses that could be called or who couldn't be called, or if you're being charged with a crime here in San Antonio, again, we've got that link down in the show notes. You can schedule a free consultation with us. We'd be happy to discuss your case with you, answer any questions that you have, and let you know how we may be able to help. Or you could always give us a call at 210 405 6410, and again, we'd be happy to help you. I hope that y'all have a great day.