BillR offers:
Came across this guy, Cameron Spires, who calls his strip Goat to Self. Most of his are borderline NSFW, or over the line, somewhat surrealistic, or just vague. Can’t figure this one out at all.
This editor posits that the key is that the dolphin (porpoise? beluga?) in the last panel is the defense lawyer, and the objection is to forcing self-incrimination. Mind you, I’m not sure that’s up to the defense lawyer — I think the witness has to invoke that themselves.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Yes, I suppose normally a second barrister (or similar) objects to the question posed by a first barrister, not to the answer the defendant is about to give to the first barrister’s own question; the answer being that the whale is a killer.
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Orcas are, of course, not actually whales; they’re more closely related to dolphins.
I assume the defense lawyer is objecting to a line of questioning that leads to self-incrimination. Not on those grounds specifically, of course, but perhaps on the grounds of relevancy. (Of course, a scenario like this is why American courts allow a defendant the right not to testify.)
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Aha, I didn’t spot the whiskers, mainly, that indicated they were indeed different lawyers… and even that there were two lawyers in the first panel! So that accounts for my confused and confusing response. Hmm. I am not normally quite so unobservant.
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And the whiskers (plus general appearance) suggest that the prosecutor in the first panel may be a walrus?
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I would say that the issue is not self-incrimination, but prejudice. That is, knowing that the defendant is a killer whale might incline the jury to think him or her to be more likely to be guilty, but being a killer whale is not itself the crime for which the defendant is on trial. Thus, it is appropriate for counsel to object to the question.
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I think the first speaker is a seal.
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We had a discussion of the rules of evidence in a previous thread:
https://cidu.info/2023/07/09/omnibus-lols-and-oys-for-the-weekend-july-09th-2023/
See comments 5 through 9 and 18. (I would like to correct a seeming error in my comment 18, where I seem to confuse the prosecution and defense in the middle there: it’s if the defense brings up an argument about the character of the defendant that the prosecution is allowed to rebut it, which is why no good defense lawyer would do such a thing; maybe I was thinking about any given witness, where if the witness has something biasable against him — they are, say, a convicted axe murder, but this is not directly relevant to their testimony — if whoever brought in this witness brings up the axe murder thing, then the defense can now refer to it to rebut it or whatever — since the side who’s witness it is brought it up it is now fair game, which is why a good lawyer wouldn’t open this up for their own witness…)
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With regard to Phil’s comment (under the comic): I am 99.44% certain that as the defendant’s legal representative, the lawyer is not only entitled, but expected to raise objections on behalf of his client. I don’t think I have ever seen a courtroom scene (in movies or TV) in which any witness in the chair raised an objection, they are almost always shouted at the judge from halfway across the room.
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It’s an Orca. Also known as “Killer Whale”…
“Killer”…
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Kilby @8: The conflating issue here is about the defendant’s 5th amendment right not to incriminate himself — the defendant has to invoke this. It may seem like an innocuous question to which there can be no objection, but if in answering it the defendant might incriminate himself, he has to state that he is not answering for that reason. You might have noticed the usual formulation on the stand is, “On the advice of council, I decline to answer” or “on the advice of council, I invoke my 5th amendment right”. Also note, just because a client answers in this way, you cannot presume he’s guilty, or even that the question asked would have been answered in a certain way. “Did you kill gramma?” “I decline to answer because in doing so I might incriminate myself.” “Aha! So obviously you killed gramma! You basically just admitted it! I rest my case!” But in fact it turns out that he was out robbing a bank at the time gramma was killed, but if he were to say so he would be incriminating himself of the bank robbery, which is why he is declining to answer, not because he killed gramma! Sometimes you can get around this by offering immunity to the crime confessed if it helps convict the much more important matter on trial .
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r/client/witness
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The lawyer does not want their client to state that they are a killer.
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I think the first speaker is a seal.
That was my thought. Seals are frequent targets of killer whales.
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I’m 100% with Usual John (5) on this one. I also agree that the first guy is a seal. He’s the prosecutor.
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@Powers, #2: Dolphins and orcas are members of the taxonomic group known as the “toothed whales”. There is no coherent way (in biology) to have a group called whales that includes both the blue and sperm whales, but not the dolphins. Dolphins are closer to sperm whales than either one is to the blue whale.
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One thing I found confusing – the “objector” seems to be who is being questioned in the first panel – not the sea creature (that resolves whether whale or dolphin or shark or whatever).
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@ Meryl (16) – I fully agree. The first panel would have been much easier to understand if all three participants had been shown, but the artist probably wanted to save the “reveal” of the defendent’s identity for the third panel, in order not to give away the gag too early.
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