a refreshing recollection

Today at BarBri, Professor Michael Simon covered Evidence II: Witnesses. And he actually taught something interesting that I don't remember hearing before: witnesses on the stand can have their past recollections refreshed by anything at all. Thus, it would be perfectly appropriate for counsel to hand the witness a bottle of Rheingold (My beer, the dry beer) to help them recall past items or events. He then demonstrated the technique with a can of Bud.

In any event, the lecture draws up from the mind this other memory, and mixes it with doctrine: middle-aged Marcel on the stand, having long abandoned thoughts of times lost, handed a madeleine and a cup of linden tea, holds the damp dipped morsel beneath his moustache as the scents waft up and release from his childhood the relevant testimony.