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THE LAW IS A ASS for 03/06/2001
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 85
Originally written as installment # 74 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 651, May 9, 1986 issue
You don't have to go scrounging around the back issue bins to look for the fill-in issue of The Vigilante discussed in this column. Unfortunately. It was never printed.
The story was set in that period of time in which Adrian (Vigilante) Chase was just Adrian () Chase. He was a trial-court judge and wasn't going out as The Vigilante anymore. Instead, Adrian's bailiff, unbeknownst to Adrian, was going out as The Vigilante, usually tracking the bag guys that Adrian reluctantly, and usually incorrectly, released on technicalities.
Marv Wolfman, the former editor of the Vigilante scheduled it to run as the last issue in his editorial reign. Then the new editor, Mike Gold, came in one issue earlier. What was supposed to be Marv's last issue was Mike's first. Unfortunately for me, Mike wanted to take The Vigilante into a new-old direction--he wanted to put Adrian back in the Vigilante costume. Toward that end, he had the bailiff killed and Adrian quitting the bench and putting the costume back on to avenge the bailiff's death. So Mike took my issue off the schedule and put it back into inventory. Unfortunately, it was never published, before the comic was cancelled.
I can't complain. I was paid for the script. Still I wish it had run. I once got a copy of the original Gene Colan pencils and, using my computer, lettered my script into the art, so I have a mock-up of the comic. But that's as close as it ever came to being published.
Well, I did run the plot for the story in the November 9, 1999 edition of this column. You can find it in the Past Columns link. I suppose that's as close as the story came to being published. All I know is: it was never published.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 85
by
Bob Ingersoll
Yes, it is so fun writing this column. So I'd like to explain why I haven't written it as faithfully as I should have these last few weeks.
I've been busy.
Really, what with moving to a new house, switching over to the Appellate Division of the Public Defender Office, selling the old house, the birth of my new son, writing a fill-in Vigilante story for DC, the holidays, my recent bout with ptomaine poisoning (It didn't work, Ingersoll Revenge Squad! I'm still alive and all your stories are next!), I've been away from the typewriter.
But I'm back now.
Yes, I did say writing a fill-in Vigilante story for DC. I recently finished the script and Gene Colan is drawing it. I don't know when it will appear yet, but if you care, I'll keep you posted in this column.
(Or maybe I won't. Marv Wolfman keeps threatening to send the finished book to his lawyer, who's supposed to write a letter to "Oh So," if he finds any legal mistakes in the story. Rather than live with that embarrassment, I think I'll keep the story's release date a secret.)
Anyway, just to prove that I have no shame and I will bite the hand that feeds me, I now propose to do a column on the two most recent Vigilante stories.
Actually, the first of these is really from DC Comics Presents # 92. You remember the set-up, don't you? Clark Kent is covering Times Square on New Year's, when he sees Mark Griffen aiming a pistol at the descending Allied Chemical ball. (Do they still call it the Allied Chemical Ball?) Clark dives on Griffen and stops him, then the police arrest Griffen.
The next day Clark appears before Adrian Chase for Griffen's arraignment, where Judge Chase will determine if there's enough evidence to create probable cause to bind the case over to the grand jury for indictment on charges of carrying a concealed weapon and reckless endangerment. And that's my first problem with the story. Once and for all we've got to get straight, what kind of a judge is Adrian Chase?
It's my belief that Adrian's a Trial Division judge in New York Supreme Court, which is the superior trial court in New York, the one above a Mayor's court or municipal court. This would make Adrian the judge before whom criminal felony charges are tried. That's what I made him in my story, because that's what Marv Wolfman once told me he was. After all, Adrian presided over the trial of the Terminator.
But if Adrian is a Trial Division judge, he shouldn't be presiding over a probable cause arraignment. Such proceedings are, according to the New York laws I read, in the jurisdiction of the inferior trial court, not the superior trial court. I think that's the New York City Criminal Court, which is the inferior court responsible for trying misdemeanors and other petty crimes. (But no felonies, felonies are tried in the Trial Division of the Supreme Court.) Harry Stone on TV's Night Court is a New York City Criminal Court judge. The New York City Criminal Court may also be responsible for holding probable cause hearings and binding felony matters over to a superior court grand jury. If it's not the City Criminal Court, then it's some other inferior court. But it's not the Trial Division. Listen, if there are any criminal defense attorneys from New York City reading this column, please let me know if I've got this right. Do NYC Criminal Court judges preside over probable cause arraignments, or is that the province of some other inferior court?
I think I may have mentioned this a time or three, right down to the Night Court reference. I mention it again, because people writing Vigilante stories keep screwing this up had having Adrian Chase preside over probable cause hearings. Anyway, can we get together on what type of judge Adrian is and make sure that from now on he only appears in the type of proceedings that are within his preview? Thank you.
My second problem with the story was that everyone so easily accepted Griffen's statement that he had a license to carry his gun. I had problems believing he had a license.
New York's licensing law specifically limits the type of person that can get a firearm license. Prison guards, police, bank messengers, and judges; those are the types of classes named in the statute. Moreover, no one can get a license unless he is of good moral character, has never been convicted of a felony, has never been mentally ill, and the state can't show good cause why the person in question shouldn't get a license. I can't believe that Mark Griffin could meet all these licensing requirements, because until two years ago, Mark Griffen didn't exist.
Mark Griffen is the new identity of former criminal scientist, Arthur Bryan, an identity which Bryan created after he was arrested two years ago. Now unless Bryan/Griffen's organization is real good, and it sure didn't seem that way in the story, I don't see how he could have covered up the fact that up until two years ago Mark Griffen never filed a tax return, didn't have a social security number, and wasn't on the mailing list of even one junk mail company. Is the New York firearm licensing board so lax, that it would classify someone who didn't exist until two years ago as having good moral character?
The third problem is that Adrian Chase dismissed the charges against Griffen. Adrian determined that Clark was kissing Lana Lang, when he saw Griffen pointing the gun, so was too distracted to see what was going on. And as the police couldn't find another witness to corroborate Clark's testimony, there wasn't enough probable cause to bind the case over to the grand jury.
Dingo pellets!
Griffen was seen pointing a gun by a reporter, a trained observer. Even if Clark was distracted at first, he wasn't distracted, when he ran over and tackled Griffen. Then Clark was giving Griffen his undivided attention. I know that evidence would be enough for a bind over in Cleveland, I don't see how it wasn't enough for Adrian. You know, at the rate Adrian's been throwing out evidence and dismissing charges, he'll never get that federal judgeship from Reagan.
My biggest problem with the story, however, was Superman. After Adrian Chase dismisses the charges, Superman starts wondering what Griffen was up to. (Now he starts wondering? Now? Up until then, Superman has about as much curiosity as day-old roadkill.) So Superman starts thinking about the incident and realizes Griffen was aiming his gun at the Allied Chemical ball and checks the ball out with his X-ray vision only to learn it was full of a deadly nerve gas. If Superman had only done the logical thing, what he finally did do on page nine, right away--i.e. look inside the ball with X-ray vision to find out why Griffen was going to shoot the ball--he could have prevented the whole probable cause fiasco. After Superman testified in the arraignment, that Griffen was trying to release the nerve gas stored in the ball with a bullet, who could have denied probable cause on concealed weapons and reckless endangerment charges? Or even intentional endangerment? In fact, there would have been enough extra probable cause to charge Griffen with several hundred thousand or even several million counts of attempted murder, depending on how far the nerve gas would spread. I doubt even Adrian Chase, bleeding heart that he's become, could have dismissed all those charges.
******
Now in Vigilante # 28, (Notice the smooth transition there, gang? Who says my time away from the column has dulled my skills?) we have an appeals court judge ruling that certain evidence was admissible. That judge was obviously scared of me. She didn't once say what the evidence was or why it was inadmissible. So how could I say she was incorrect?
I couldn't, right?
Wrong!
This judge is all alone on the bench and delivers her ruling in a packed court room as if she were presiding over a trial at the time. But, you see, an appeal isn't a trial. An appeal is a boring procedure much like a debate in which one side--the appellant--aruges why it didn't have a fair trial and that it should have a new trial, then the other side--the appellee--argues why the trial was perfectly fair and so a new trial shouldn't be ordered. It is very unusual that the public is present during an appellate argument, as the public was in this story. The appeal simply doesn't have the high profile that the trial did. And, truth be told, they're boring. No one from the public would really want to be there in the first place.
It is even more unlikely that the appeals judges would announce a decision from the bench. Appellate judges read written briefs and listen to oral arguments, then months later release a written opinion. They don't read their decisions from the bench. I know this, because appeal law is what I do in the Public Defender Office. I know how the Court of Appeals operates and what procedures it follows. Announcing their decisions from the bench ain't one of them.
And it was downright silly that there was only one judge on the appeal. New York Law requires that a quorum of at least four of the seven appellate judges for New York City preside over an appeal. So, there shouldn't have been one judge on the appeal, there should have been four.
But other than these points, I didn't have any problems with the scene.
Oh, maybe the part where the judge rules the evidence inadmissible and excludes it. Like I said, I know appellate judges and the procedures. Actually doing what the defense attorneys want them to do, like excluding evidence, ain't one of them either.
******
BOB INGERSOLL, public defender, CBG columnist and future Vigilante scribe (Yes, Don and Maggie, I know, if I plug the story one more time I don't get paid for the column), gets the occasional strange request for consultation from comic writers. But none has been stranger than the one last week from the writer who called long distance and wanted to what sound an eyeball being squashed makes. The writer figured anyone demented enough to have his Super Powers figure of the Flash lying in state in a clear plastic butter dish would know.
I couldn't help him.
Oh, I knew what the sound was. But I couldn't spell it.
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