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Join us each Tuesday as Bob Ingersoll analyzes how the law
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THE LAW IS A ASS for 02/27/2001
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 84
Originally written as installment # 73 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 648, April 18, 1986 issue
First things, first. Old business: Father Delgado wasn't one of the drug smugglers. Cloak and Dagger were just so stupid they didn't think to warn the priest that there were drugs hidden in the religious icons he was passing out until after he had passed them out..
******
Second things, second. It was about this time th at I added something new to my columns Jokes. Okay, extra jokes. Specifically, short--and hopefully humorous--biographical notes started to appear at the end of my columns about this time and have been a regular feature of "The Law Is a Ass" ever since.
Why?
I'll give you the long and the short answer. Long one first.
About a year after I started the column, Don and Maggie asked me for a recent photograph of myself. I sent them a copy of my law school graduation picture. They, in turn, ran the picture along with biographical information at the end of my columns.
There were two problems. The first was the picture did not reproduce well. I am a very light complexioned individual with very blond hair. Thus, when the photograph was reduced to a size of approximately one inch by one and one-half inches and printed in black and white on newsprint, I tended to disappear. The only features that could really be seen were my eyes and the dark circles which nature has ungraciously deposited under my eyes. I looked like one of the ring-eyed albino zombies from George Romero's cult horror movie, Night of the Living Dead. (Unless, of course, you've been watching that horribly colorized version, Night of the Pastel Dead.) Thankfully, CBG has stopped using that photograph.
The other problem was the copy being used. It read, "Robert M. Ingersoll is an attorney with the Public Defender's Office in Cleveland, Ohio. He is also a comics fan and collector. In "The Law Is a Ass," he combines his career and his hobby to look at how legal matters are handled in comic books." See? It was serviceable but just no fun.
I didn't know if anyone even read the biographical information--it was the exact same issue after issue, so it certainly could have been avoided without loss. I decided to change that. I followed the example of some of the other columns in CBG and wrote my own copy--combining the biographical information with a lighter touch. I still don't know if anyone reads it, but at least if they do, it should be more fun.
That's the long reason. The short reason? I am paid by the word and this way I get to write, and get paid for, more of them.
It's the American way--greed.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 84
by
Bob Ingersoll
And then, as if from on high, nostalgia hurled through my window, and my prayers were answered.
A while back I decided that I would occasionally branch out and write about how the law is portrayed in some TV show or movie. Why should I want to write about movies or TV in a paper about comics, you ask? It seemed like a good idea at the time. The time, of course, being right after my editor, Don, said, "Bob, you should write about how they portray the law in the movies or TV."
My first reaction was a cold sweat. Would I have to start watching all of those legal shows, the ones where the main character is a judge like The People's Court or The New Divorce Court or
>SHUDDER!< Hardcastle and McCormick?
The first possible topic I had was a TV movie called Silent Witness, where Valerie Bertinelli played a lady who saw her brother-in-law rape a woman and had to decide whether or not she should testify against him. The movie was loosely based on the recent rape incident in New Bedford, Massachusetts in which people watched a rape being committed in a bar and either cheered the rapists on or did nothing. That's the same rape incident which inspired the Jodie Foster movie The Accused for which Ms. Foster won the first of her Academy Awards. But back to Silent Witness, I had two problems using that movie. First, my only real complaint about it was, that they set up the movie so that the credibility ov Bertinelli's character as a witness became the central issue of the piece. The audience was made to care whether or not her testimony would convict the rapists. Then they ended the movie before the audience ever found out what the verdict was. It was kind of like ending a murder mystery with, "The murderer was you," Hercule Poirot said and pointed his finger at...
My other problem was the movie was about rape. How could I write my customary, light hearted column about rape? I couldn't, I decided, so was looking around for another topic, when, as I said earlier, nostalgia intervened and...
Perry Mason Returns.
I mean how could I not do my first TV/movie column about Perry Mason? This was the show which in my youth convinced me a defense attorney's job wasn't to get his client off by showing the evidence didn't prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt but by proving that the murderer was really Colonel Mustard in the study with the lead pipe.
Besides, I figured that most of my readers saw the movie. It finished number 1 with a 27.2 rating and a 39 share. (That's show biz for lots of people watched it.) It even beat out Cosby.
Perry was up to his usual tricks. Defending an innocent party, this time his faithful secretary, Della Street, on murder and finding the real murderer. Which brings up my first question about Perry Mason. Why does the murderer always sit in the court room, watch the proceedings, and wait for Perry to prove he or she did it?
Let's look at this logically. You've just murdered Mr. Dithers, and your neighbor, Herb, is on trial for the murder. Would you go watch, thereby giving your feelings of guilt the opportunity to well up to the point that they could no longer withstand Perry Mason's known theatrics? Or would you go fishing off the coast of Mexico for a month, so you could come back later and read in the paper that poor Herb was convicted of murdering Mr. Dithers, and isn't that just too bad, you'll have to send him a fruitcake for his birthday? (Anyone who answers the former, please proceed to "Comics In Your Future." I don't want the brain dead reading my column.)
I guess my single biggest complaint about Perry Mason Returns is that the Perry, himself obviously lives with Dr. Pangloss in the best of all possible worlds. Perry has a private investigator, who has no clients other than Perry, so can devote all his attention to Perry's cases. Anything Perry wants he gets, within the day. I'm lucky if I can get one of the overworked staff of investigators for the PD office to stop working on one of the other twenty-odd attorneys' cases long enough to interview a single witness for one of my cases.
Perry's investigator--Paul Drake, Jr., son of the investigator Perry used to use when he was a black-and-white weekly TV star--has a friend on the police force who shares the entire police investigation file with Paul, including confidential police reports despite knowing that Paul was working for the defense. I'm doing good if the prosecutors and police in my cases supply me with the information the rules of discovery say I'm entitled to have like what crime my client is supposed to have committed. Confidential police reports? Forget it!
Perry talks about routine depositions of state witnesses before the trial. A deposition is a proceeding wherein witnesses are actually examined--both direct and cross-examination--under oath, before a trial starts so that both sides have full knowledge of what the other sides witnesses will say. They're used all the time in civil cases. They practically not used at all in criminal cases. Ohio provides for a criminal defendant's deposing a state witness, but only if it appears likely that a material witness will be unable to attend the trial. Freely depose the state's witnesses in a criminal case? Not in any state I know of.
But the most unbelievable of all was that in Perry Mason's best of all possible worlds, the judges actually sustain defense objections and overrule prosecution objections. "Your honor, my client is on trial for murder. I ask for the widest possible latitude on cross-examination." If I tried that line, the judges would probably hold me in contempt of court; if they could stop laughing long enough to get the words out.
Actually, that wasn't the most unbelievable of all. The fact that no matter what time of day Perry or Paul arrived at court, they could always find an empty parking space right in front, that was the most unbelievable thing of all. Talk about your high fantasy.
And what about Perry's trial tactics? The man needlessly gave away his best defense trick in the preliminary hearing. A preliminary hearing is a hearing in which the judge decides if there is probable cause to bind the case over to the grand jury for an indictment. If there is probable cause, that is if the evidence shows that it is more probable than not that the defendant committed the crime, the judge binds over. The state does not have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, only probable cause.
In Perry's preliminary hearing the state proved that the victim was shot to death and that right after the victim's maid heard the gunshot, she saw a woman who was wearing a dress later found in Della's apartment running away. That's probable cause.
Perry, who believed that the real murderer was a man dressed in Della's dress to frame her, attacked the maid's testimony. He arranged to have a woman fake hysteria and run out of the court room. Then he challenged the maid to give as accurate a description of the woman's attire, as she gave of Della's. After the maid successfully described the woman's clothes, Perry pointed out that the maid missed the fact the woman was really a man in disguise. Very neat. Very theatrical. Very wrong.
No lawyer wouldn't waste that demonstration in a preliminary hearing. All it proved was that it was possible that a man in a dress committed the murder. It didn't refute the probable cause which already existed, it just proved that there was a possible question of identity, that a jury at the trial should decide.
Perry's demonstration wouldn't have kept Della from being bound over. It did, however, tip his hand. If the case had gone to trial, do you think the maid would have fallen for the same trick again? Nope and that would mean the jury would never see the little ploy. Perry should have waited for the trial in front of the jury to pull his stunt. That's when it would have had the most impact.
I also liked the part when Perry forced the real murderer to confess on the stand by picking up a piece of paper and asking him, "Would you like me to read to the judge an affidavit from your co-conspirators implicating you in the crime?" The best thing about it was that Perry's paper was an electricity shut-off notice. Perry was bluffing. I wondered what Perry would have done if the murderer had said, "Sure go ahead and read it, fatso!"
I can see it now: Perry Mason hems and haws and says, "Oh. In that case, I guess you didn't do it. My client must be guilty, after all. Too bad." Then he hops into his wheel chair and hopes his next revival will work out a little better.
******
BOB INGERSOLL, CBG columnist and attorney would like to go on the record as stating he actually liked Perry Mason Returns, and is looking forward to the next movie in the series.
My wife, on the other hand, vows never to watch another trial movie with me again. Something to do with her not being able to hear the movie over my shouting, "Objection!" all the time.
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