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THE LAW IS A ASS for 05/21/2002
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 145
Originally written as installment # 129 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 741, January 29, 1988 issue
Now a history lesson about history. When I wrote the column, Christmas Eve of 1987, I was rushing to try and finish it. My children were then six and three. The last thing they wanted me doing before dinner and hanging the stockings with care was banging out a column for some paper they couldn't even read yet. When it came time to give the background of The Chicago Seven Trial, I had no reference books on The Chicago Seven Trial handy. No self-respecting library was still open. (Hell, even the ones that hated themselves had shut down hours earlier.) And I had no way to check out my facts. So, I did it from memory, as best I could.
Which was none too good.
At least one Chicago-based column reader wrote me to tell me that my facts were about as well-checked as a National Enquirer expose.
That's where the column reprinting that this page offers me comes in so handy, I get to fix my past errors. Understand, when it came time to revise this column for today's page, I still didn't have any reference material on The Chicago Seven Trial. But I did have one thing that I lacked in 1987: The Internet.
A simple Google search led me to many Web pages about the trial from which a simple cut-and-paste job could correct a multitude of past mistakes. So now, unless the Web page got them wrong, my Chicago Seven Trial facts are correct and I look so much wiser.
Or would, if I hadn't told you all about how stupid I had been in the past and spoiled the whole thing.
I've got to remember to stop doing that.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 145
by
Bob Ingersoll
T'was the night before Christmas and all through the asylum.
Not a creature was stirring, save one writing his column.
Okay, so it's not a great poem. As I write these words it's Christmas Eve; if I don't finish this installment and get out to my family pronto, they're going to have me for Christmas dinner. Who's got time for good rhymes?
Having gotten that out of the way, it's over the river and through the woods to column # 129 we go.
******
I lied.
Remember when I said I had answered all of the mail that Don and Maggie gave me at the 1987 Chicago Convention? I hadn't. There was one letter I haven't answered yet. It was from Kim Metzger of Iola, Wisconsin. It contained copies of The Incredible Hulk #s 152 and 153 (June and July, 1972).
I couldn't bring myself to answer this letter before. It meant rereading the story in question --a task I relished even less than licking every Christmas card envelope in the entire city of Cleveland. But I can handle it now. I just saw the closing scene of It's a Wonderful Life for the twenty-third colorized time this week. I figure I can handle anything about now!
You have to understand the times to appreciate this Hulk story. So, Sherman, set the Waybak Machine, and let's go. 1972. Richard Nixon was president. The United States was embroiled in the Viet Nam war. Campus unrest and protests were common. Violence was not uncommon. The fad footware of the times was the Earth Shoe. Billy Jack was actually considered to be a good movie. (Yes, it was. Honest. Hey, you had to be there, okay?)
It was a time for being "right on" and "relevant." In our songs. In our musicals such as Hair and Jesus Christ, Superstar. In our movies. In our literature. Even in our comics. Some of those relevant comics, like the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series, were good. Most were not. Some were gawdawful. They handled relevance with the delicate touch of a defensive tackle. Their stories had the subtlety of an Uzi in a library. They were... Well, see my earlier comments re: Billy Jack.
Two guesses where Hulk #'s 152 and 153 fell in the spectrum.
Hulk # 152 and 153 was a send up of the Chicago Seven trial. What's a Chicago Seven trial? We need more background.
There were several militant student underground groups in the sixties which protested against the Viet Nam war and espoused violent opposition to the war. Organizations such as the S.D.S. and the Weathermen. From late 1969 until early 1970, seventies several of the underground leaders were tried in federal court for their part in inciting the riots that disrupted the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
These were the Chicago Seven: Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, Happy, Sleepy, Grumpy, and the Shining Knight. Actually, there were really eight defendants at the beginning. It was called the Chicago Seven because during the trial Bobby Seale, who could not get a continuance so that his attorney of choice--who was in the hospital following surgery--could represent him, shouted insults and engaged in other disruptive behavior. The trial judge found what he thought was an elegant solution to the problem: he had Seale bound and gagged in open court, during the trial, in front of the jury. Ultimately, Seale was separated from the rest of the defendants and tried alone. And the Chicago Eight became the more-famous Chicago Seven. But it was the act of having Seale bound and gagged in court for which the trial gained its biggest notoriety.
In all honesty, the trial judge was faced with a difficult problem. But, there were better solutions available. What the trial judge did do was not only inelegant, it was also sure to spawn numerous protests. One was the classic song "Chicago" by Graham Nash. Others were more on an par with Billy Jack.
Which leads us out of the background material, as one of "The More On a Par with Billy Jack Group" was defiantly The Incredible Hulk #'s 152 and 153.
In issue 152, Hulk was captured in a net whose electric charge prevented him from ripping it. (I believe that! I also believe Checkmate # 1, a book about a clandestine government organization which is so security conscious it requires all field agents above a certain rank to wear full body suits and masks which conceal their identities and refrain from talking, but lets said field agents be ferried about Chicago by unmasked agents driving fire engine red Lamborghini convertibles!) Anyway, Hulk is sent to New York, so he can be put on trial for conspiracy against the United States. Matt Murdock agrees to represent the Hulk. And that's all I have to say about Hulk # 152.
In issue 153, Hulk was tried. So was my patience. For most of the trial Hulk is manacled to a chair and gagged, so he can't disrupt the orderly proceedings of the trial. They should have let him interrupt. Even, "Hulk smash puny humans!" would have made for better reading than what we got.
Issue # 153 starts with an ominous splash panel of the judge telling the Hulk that he faces the death penalty, if convicted, and that the jury has reached its verdict. The story then moves into a flashback which details the Hulk's trial up to said splash panel. There was this one slight problem with the flashback, however. The trial ended when Hulk escaped from the court room, before the jury ever began its deliberations. In other words, that oh-so-ominous splash panel from which we back flashed never happened. There is a technical term for this type of story structure: Oops!
Throughout the trial, Matt objects that the jury will be prejudiced by the sight of the defendant bound and gagged. The judge overrules the objections, because the jury would be even more prejudiced, if the Hulk were to tear apart the courtroom. (There went Matt's first line of defense. If the Hulk did tear apart the court room, and maybe a few jurors in the process, Matt would have been able to get a quick mistrial. Boy, what a smart judge to have seen through this ploy!)
The sequences of Matt objecting to a bound and gagged Hulk reached it zenith when the Hulk growls an outburst in open court and the judge warns him, "Keep quiet... or I'll have you gagged!" Why is this the zenith? Because the Hulk was already gagged in this panel. Of course, if the judge had followed through with his threat, it would have put Hulk one up on Yakov Smirnoff, he would have had two gags.
After the prosecution's case-in-chief--which we never got to see, thankfully--the defense case begins. Matt says his "only possible defense" against the charge that Hulk is a, "murderous menace," is to show another side to Hulk's nature. He calls the Avengers as character witnesses, because Hulk was once an Avenger.
The prosecutor objects--and successfully I might add--that Hulk is on trial now, so his character of several years ago is irrelevant. That's not quite true. Character witness usually testify about years-old good character. Then the jury is asked to infer that the defendant has kept his good character through the years, so couldn't be guilty of the crimes with which he is presently charged. But we'll let it slide.
I wasn't concerned with the prosecution's objection. I was still wondering why Matt, a supposedly competent lawyer, tried to defend a seven foot mass of muscle, who tears apart cities and must be restrained during his trial, by arguing that he used to be a good boy. That defense had about as much chance of success as Freddy Kreuger in a sleep deprivation study.
When the judge doesn't let the first defense witness, Iron Man, testify about Hulk's past character, Matt questions Iron Man about Hulk's present character. "Iron Man, in your opinion... is the Hulk a menace to the public safety?" Iron Man answers, "Yes." (What else could he do? He was under oath.)
When this brilliant tactic fails, Matt calls the Hulk as a witness to prove that Hulk is "mentally incompetent" and asks that the trial stop. The trial court overrules this defense motion.
Frankly, I was getting worried. Matt Murdock, like Perry Mason before him, had been one of my idols. He and Perry were the reason I got into the law in the first place, so that I could be just like them. (Well, almost like them. I'm overweight like Perry Mason, but I draw the line at dousing myself with radioactive Visine.) I wondered why Matt was being so inept in his defense.
At that point in the story, Matt rests the defense case and hopes for, "more understanding at a later date from a higher court of appeal."
Suddenly, the light flashed in my mind. I knew what Matt was doing.
Even back in 1972, when I was a callow college student whose biggest concern was would I be able to digest what passed for food at the college cafeteria, I could recognize a good insanity defense. I knew that if a person's mental illness or deficiency prevented him from knowing the wrongfulness of his act, he was insane and not criminally liable for his acts. I also knew that, because of a mental deficiency the Hulk had the intelligence of a small child. Finally, I knew that every jurisdiction in the United States exempts small children from criminal liability, because their immature thought processes prevent them from knowing the wrongfulness of their acts. I may not have gotten A's in math, but I could still add those facts together and realize that Hulk had a perfect insanity defense available to him.
This realization was strengthened in later years, when I learned that in federal court, the defense doesn't have to prove the defendant was insane, the prosecution has to prove the defendant was sane.
Moreover, Matt's argument about mental incompetence proved that he also understood the insanity defense. I always wondered why Matt didn't go with it.
Years later--many of which were spent as an attorney who has worked exclusively in the appellate courts--when I reread that line about the court of appeals, I finally understood what Matt was doing. Matt didn't really want to defend the Hulk. He figured the case might damage his won/loss ratio.
The trouble was Matt couldn't think of any way to drop the case without losing face in the defense bar for ducking a tough case. So Matt intentionally used the worst defense possible and ignored the best defense possible. The court of appeals would have no choice but to reverse Hulk's conviction, on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel. In his retrial, Hulk would have to have a new attorney. And Matt could blame the whole thing on bad bio-rhythms.
It was a perfect plan. I'm so relieved. And here I thought Matt didn't know what he was doing.
Bob Ingersoll
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