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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 11/26/2002
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 172
Originally written as installment # 154 and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 787, December 16, 1988 issue
In the decades since their respective inceptions both TV and movies have created numerous memorable characters. Few have been more distasteful than Freddy Krueger, the scar-faced, claw-wielding, dream-stalking, special-effects-dependent homicidal maniac of A Nightmare on Elm Street
Naturally, he became an overnight success--a regular cult-figure phenomenon.
When Freddy finally did something involving a legal inaccuracy, I struck. Hey, what did I have to worry about? I've never had a nightmare in my life.
Why would I need them, with things like Freddy Krueger thriving in the real world?
******
THE LAW IS A ASS
Installment # 172
by
BOB INGERSOLL
If you had a chance to spare millions of people untold hours of suffering and agony, you'd do it wouldn't you?
So would I. That being the case, I intend to prove the impossibility of Freddy Krueger's origin, as revealed in the first episode of Freddy' s Nightmares A Nightmare on Elm Street: the Series. Or is it A Nightmare on Elm Street the Series: Freddy' s Nightmares? Or The Daring New Adventures of Freddy?
Freddy's origin was legally impossible. Couldn't have happened. And if Freddy's origin didn't happen, then neither did the A Nightmare on Elm Street movie, or its incestuous Roman numeral movie progeny, or the A Nightmare on Elm Street TV series, or its incestuous fill-in-the- blank plots, or the A Nightmare on Elm Street call it and waste your parents' money 900 number phone line, or the A Nightmare on Elm Street bet I look more disgusting than you face masks and claw gloves, or the A Nightmare on Elm Street 10 minute oil change centers, or the A Nightmare on Elm Street bath products. (Alright, I made the last two up; but time will tell if I was merely cracking wise or ahead of my time.)
See? I prove the A Nightmare on Elm Street mythos never happened, and I can prevent the suffering of untold millions. No, not the teenage kids who Freddy killed, but Freddy's real victims, the audience which has suffered through it all. And all. And all. And all. And all.
Let's start ghost busting!
All is not well in the peaceful small midwestern town of Springdale or Homewood or Forrestglen or--Heck! I can never tell these Norman Rockwell towns apart; make up your own name, it'll be fine as long as it pastoral and boring. Freddy Krueger, the local homicidal maniac--I swear with the frequency that these sylvan settings have blade-wielding psycho killers, the towns must advertise for them along with the well meaning but inept policemen, the impossibly naive and ignorant about what their children are doing parents, and the sex starved teenage nymphos--has been let off in his murder trial on a technicality.
You see, the local well meaning but inept policeman, whose name I forget--I should have taken notes--arrested Freddy, just as Freddy was going to kill the policeman's daughters. In the process of making the arrest, the policeman found evidence which proved that Freddy was killing the local teens. Freddy was placed on trial for enough murders to give the court reporters job security through the next decade. At trial, however, the court ruled Freddy's arrest was illegal and suppressed all of the evidence.
The local gentry is up in arms. They form a mob, unlike anything seen in the cinema since Boris Karloff stopped wearing elevator shoes. The mob, which is led by the district attorney whose case against Freddy had evaporated as quickly as my patience with this idiot plot, wants to track Freddy down and kill him. This DA wasn't even subtle with his contempt for the law. He may not have put on a black bodysuit and goggles like Adrian Chase did, but he went out barefaced and blatantly to murder. I don't think he's going to make it in George Bush's newer, gentler America.
To make an interminable story merely long, the mob catches up with Freddy down in his boiler room HQ. At the same time, the police officer finds the mob. The policeman tries to talk the mob out of murdering Freddy, because that would be against the law. True to his established character: inept, he's as successful as a gold panner on Fifth Avenue. Not only does the mob douse Freddy with gasoline, they talk the cop into lighting the match.
Freddy burns. Which explains why his face looks like a relief map of the Sierra Madres. Freddy doesn't die. In fact, not only doesn't Freddy die; he gains the power to enter into a person's dreams so that he can kill them in special effects laden fantasy sequences--let's have a guy's nose turn into a forty foot long anaconda which crushes him to death and swallows him whole; because we only have to type it up, the F/X guys have to figure out how to do it--while tossing off one-liners even worse than the ones the Crypt Keeper swiped from Henny Youngman.
The writers didn't explain how Freddy survived or how he gained the power to enter the Dream Stream. I guess when you're playing Can You Top This? with demented demises, you don't have time to think up such minutia as explanations for the ambiguities in your stories.
Anyway, Freddy wreaks his vengeance on the mob and has haunted Elm Street--not to mention people with taste and intelligence--ever since. There seems to be no stopping him short of people tiring of him after all his pervasive appearances produce, if you'll pardon the expression, overkill. But I'll give it a try.
Freddy never got the power to enter dreams in the fourth place, because he was never burned to death in the third place, because he was convicted of murder in the second place, because the judge didn't suppress the evidence in the first place.
The whole origin revolved around the judge suppressing the evidence against Freddy, because his arrest was illegal. But did the judge rule the arrest was illegal and the evidence suppressible? What technicality freed Freddy?
Maybe, because the policeman didn't have a search warrant? After all, anyone knows a search without a warrant is illegal.
Except that sometimes it is legal. When, for example, a person is being lawfully arrested, the police may search both the suspect and his immediate surroundings--no search warrant required. This is so that the suspect can't grab some hidden weapon and use it or some concealed evidence and destroy it. It doesn't seem to matter that the suspect has his hands cuffed behind his back and is surrounded by fifteen armed policemen and the rest of the force is searching in the toilet tanks in an entirely different room; if the search is incident to a lawful arrest, it is also valid even without a warrant.
The search of Freddy's boiler room was incident to a lawful arrest. It was lawful, search warrant--or lack thereof--notwithstanding.
Was it, perhaps, that arrest itself was made without a warrant, so the arrest itself was illegal and could not justify a search incident to arrest?
No. Some arrests can be made without warrants. If the police see a crime being committed, they are permitted to arrest the perp without first securing a warrant. Not an unreasonable rule, even to an "L-word person" like me. After all, if the police see someone in a hockey mask macheting someone else, it's better that they be allowed to arrest the attacker before he dispatches and decapitates his victim, rather than force them to go and get an arrest warrant first. By the time they get back the victim's going to be deader than Gary Hart's presidential aspirations.
In the story, it is stated that the policeman saw Freddy about to murder the policeman's own daughters. As the policeman saw Freddy committing the crime of attempted murder, he could make a lawful, warrantless arrest.
I was stumped. I certainly couldn't figure out why Freddy's arrest was illegal and the evidence against him suppressible. Then the writers--the same writers who didn't explain something as fundamental as how Freddy didn't die and acquired his powers--did attempt to explain why the arrest was unlawful.
According to the judge, the policeman didn't read Freddy his Miranda rights--you know, "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you at no cost to you"--when he arrested Freddy. That' s why the arrest was illegal and the evidence suppressible.
Back up two paragraphs and underline the word attempt, as in the writers attempted to explain why Freddy's arrest was illegal. That explanation is shakier than a papier maché life raft.
Miranda warnings have nothing--I repeat absolutely nothing!--to do with neck strain caused by wearing oversized fruit baskets on one's head or with the legality of an arrest or a search. Miranda warnings are given so that the suspect knows of his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, before he answers any questions put to him by the police. Miranda rights deal only with the Fifth Amendment.
Searches and seizures, on the other hand, are concerns of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Miranda warnings do not apply to the Fourth Amendment.
Have I made this clear enough? If the police fail to give Miranda warnings when they arrest a man, they may not be able to introduce his confession into evidence, but the arrest remains completely valid. And any physical evidence seen and seized during the arrest will be fully admissible, as will a description of anything the police saw the man doing when they arrested him. Why? Because physical evidence the police seized and describing what the police saw don't involve anything the suspect said in a confession.
In other words, the failure to give Freddy his Miranda warnings would not have rendered the evidence against him inadmissible. Instead the scene would have gone something like this:
"Your Honor, I move to suppress the evidence and dismiss the charges against my client. The police didn't read him his Miranda rights."
"Did he make a confession, counselor?"
"Well no. but..."
"Then why are you wasting my time? Let's go to trial."
So, the evidence wasn't really suppressed, Freddy wasn't really released, he was really convicted of murder, and none of The A Nightmare on Elm Street stories ever happened. Now, if I open my eyes, will it all be gone?
You know, maybe the writers knew what they were doing, when they didn't explain how Freddy survived the burning and acquired supernatural powers. Their explanations are even worse than their ambiguities.
Bob Ingersoll
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