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THE LAW IS A ASS for 04/30/2002
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 142
Originally written as installment # 126 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 736, December 25, 1987 issue
Yes, Perry Mason again.
And why not? After all, Perry's one of the reasons I became a lawyer in the first place. I used to watch his TV series and see him grow fat, demolish hostile witnesses with devastating cross-examinations, and demonstrate his deductive brilliance by figuring out who really committed the murder, then get that murderer to confess in open court, thereby saving his own client. I thought there wasn't a more-glamorous job in the world and there was nothing I wanted to do more.
So I became a lawyer, in fact a criminal defense attorney just like Perry. Eight years later, I've never had one witness fall apart under cross-examination and never had one real murderer confess in open court and exonerate my client. I have, however, grown fat.
One out of three is bad.
I figure I owe Perry a few shots.
******
THE LAW IS A ASS
Installment # 142
by
BOB INGERSOLL
On occasion, usually when comics haven't dealt with the law for several weeks--am I really that intimidating?--I branch out from the normal parameters of this column to discuss--although some prefer to call it dissect--the portrayal of the law not in comics but in the cinema.
I have to be careful when I discuss movies. I can't chose a topic that is too topical. Last summer, I did a column about The Untouchables, while the movie was still playing. In said column, I revealed aspects about the movie's end. (We call this a SPOILER in the trade.) I didn't feel too bad about this. I placed a SPOILER WARNING in the column so that anyone who didn't want to have the ending spoiled could stop reading. I figured this would protect everyone.
I was wrong.
I had forgotten about the people who had to read the column, even though they hadn't seen the movie yet. I got complaints from Don, Maggie, and the Krause typesetters who had to edit and typeset the column, but hadn't seen The Untouchables yet. No thanks that my column might have kept them from seeing the movie, thereby sparing them losing both a few bucks and a few hours they'll never get back. No, they wanted columns that wouldn't impinge on movies they might see in the future.
All of which brings us to The Case of the Scandalous Scoundrel, the Perry Mason movie which was on last night. That should be safe. Anyone who wanted to see it should have seen it by now. Even people videotaped it, so they could time shift it to later in the week should have seen it by the time this column gets in. (Watch, I'll probably get complaints from Canadian viewers, because the movie hasn't run on CBC yet.)
What can I say about Perry Mason movies? That they seem to be written by people whose only exposure to litigation is when they try to lower their alimony payments? That the collective courtroom experience of all of the movies' writers is probably less than Baby Bob's? That they suffer from the usual problem of trying to punch up the boring litigation stuff with dramatic little scenes that are invariably more melodramatic than dramatic and even more invariably wrong?
Yes, I can say all of that. And more.
Here's the more.
The movie starts with scenes of the sleazy publisher of a sleazy supermarket tabloid. I can't remember its name, but inquiring minds want to know from where it stole its logo type face. Anyway, this publisher does enough dirt to enough people and makes enough enemies in the first fifteen minutes that there isn't any question who is going to be killed in this movie. We also know this publisher is sleeze, because he's running scandalous and libelous articles about Perry and Della. In the books, where there was no question about Perry's and Della's attraction and sexuality, maybe these articles wouldn't have been libelous. But the TV Perry and Della are more chaste than a dog track rabbit.
However, despite his personal problems with the publisher, Perry Mason gets involved, because he's representing a senator who's suing the publisher for libel. That's certainly straight forward enough. Public figures do sue such papers for libel. Lawyers do represent them. But would you believe, the movie made a mistake in the simple act of informing us about this suit? Not the part about the publisher being sued. His type has more suits than Brooks Brothers. The way Perry started the suit was wrong.
Perry's investigator, Paul Drake, personally served the publisher with the complaint papers. The law hasn't required personal service for years. Service by ordinary mail is sufficient under the law now, and is substantially cheaper than personal service. The client doesn't have to pay for all the man hours spent tracking down the defendant and personally handing him the papers. Perry is already a very successful lawyer; and as successful lawyer is a synonym for rich, it's doubtful that Perry would need to inflate his fee bill by using personal service.
Perry might have used personal service so he could see the sleazy publisher's face, when he served the complaint. But Perry didn't do the serving himself, so that explanation fails. What explanation does work? The writers thought having Paul Drake hand the publisher the papers was more dramatic than having the publisher open a letter, even if it was less accurate.
Anyway, the publisher gets himself murdered. The reporter he fired that morning is arrested and tried. Perry Mason defends her. Michael Reston prosecutes her.
Who, you ask, is Michael Reston? He's the character played by David Ogden Stiers who's been the prosecutor in all these Perry Mason movies, because the actor who played Hamilton Burger in the old TV series died.
Michael Reston is a character gives me real problems.
As I recall, the first time we met Reston, he prosecuted one of Perry's clients in New York City. Next we saw him prosecute a client in Denver. Then in Los Angeles. Then in Nevada. Then back to Denver. I may have the actual cities wrong. Maybe even the states. But I do know that the movies have been in different cities and different states, and Michael Reston prosecuted all of Perry's different clients in all the different states.
How, I wondered, did the same man serve as the prosecutor in all these trials? A prosecutor is an elected city or county officer. He doesn't serve in an at-large capacity. Prosecutors don't roam all over the country, just so they can be repeatedly beaten by Perry Mason. Not only is it inaccurate to have Reston be the prosecutor in all these trials, it shows stupidity on his part. If I could travel all over the country prosecuting at-large, I'd follow Perry Mason, too. But I wouldn't prosecute Perry's clients, I'd wait and prosecute whichever jerk Perry made confesses at the end of the trial. Imagine my conviction rate!
Some of you may be wondering how Perry was able to act as an attorney in all of these states? That's easy. Private attorneys, who are not elected officials, can practice in as many state in which they are a member of the state bar. They are not limited to one state. If Perry passed the bar exam of the other state, Perry could practice there. And sometimes, if the states have reciprocity or if the attorney is in the new state on a one-time matter and is acting pro hoc vice, he can practice in a sister state without taking a new bar exam. (So why didn't Perry go from state to state in the old TV series, like he is in the movies? At first he had some trouble with those other state's bar exams. When he was the multi-state exam, which consists of several multiple choice questions, he keeps looking for the response, E: Wait for the real murderer to confess in open court.)
Perry prepares his defense by, among other things, reading the police report of the publisher's murder. Again this makes for good drama. Armed with the report Mason is able to whirl on the witnesses and catch them in lies or force them to admit telling information. Unfortunately, it makes for even worse reality than Temptation Island.
While criminal defense attorneys are entitled to some discovery, they are not entitled to the prosecutor's work product, that is the contents of the prosecutor's file, which he has prepared for the trial. The police act as the prosecutor's agents when they investigate a crime. They make their reports for his use at the trial. The police reports are part of the prosecutor's work product. They are not discoverable.
Reston didn't have to show the police reports to Mason. Why did he? I don't know. Maybe he likes being beaten by Mason. That would explain why he follows the guy all over the country.
In much the same way, Mason repeatedly gets free access to the scene of the murder, a sealed crime site under police investigation. He does this so that he can look for evidence that the police missed. I've asked for the same thing in my trials. Without any success. Unless you call having your face laughed in success
During the trial, Mason gets the judge to admonish a witness that she must answer the questions he puts to her and that she cannot volunteer information. I've asked for such an instruction in my trials. With even less success.
Wish I could remember what state this movie took place in, so I could move. I'm, obviously, practicing in the wrong state.
During the trial scenes there was a sign marked Defendant in front of the defendant. What a considerate court! They know the defendant has enough to worry about already without wondering where to sit. Or were they afraid that when the prosecutor asked, "And who committed these heinous acts?" the witness would look around the court room real confused, then pick out the foreman of the jury?
At one point in the trial, Mason forces a witness to admit that she never really divorced her first husband, so her second marriage wasn't legal because she was a bigamist. Again? I've seen all of the Perry Mason movies. And, thanks to WTBS, I've seen reruns of most of the old TV shows at an age when I was old enough to remember them. I think they used bigamy as a plot device every third episode. I've come to the conclusion that in Earth Mason, bigamy is the second most common crime. Murder is the first, of course.
My biggest complaint about the movie, however, has nothing to do with the law. It had to do with the identity of the murderer.
The movie did not play fair. Not only was the murderer such a minor character he wasn't worth suspecting in the first place, the most vital piece of information needed to identify the murderer was withheld until it was so late in the movie that you knew this witness had to be the murderer, because there wasn't enough time to call another witness.
Then, even after they revealed the identity of the murderer, we discovered that the movie still hadn't given us enough information to figure out who he really was.
SPOILER WARNING
If you're watching the Perry Mason reruns on Court TV, be warned, I'm reveal the identity of the murder in this movie, and it wasn't the butler.
The murderer was a retired army officer who was helping a former general train mercenary troops to fight in Central America. When he confessed, the murderer gave this stirring speech that the publisher lacked real American values, that the general was a true hero and patriot, and that he had to kill the publisher, before the publisher could libel the general.
Until that moment, I didn't know that the killer was really Ollie North.
Bob Ingersoll
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