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Irony, Storytelling, Truth, and Justice in the Modern Courtroom Drama

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Irony, Storytelling, Truth, and Justice in the Modern Courtroom Drama University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review Volume 25 Issue 3 Article 5 2003 Legal Fictions: Irony, Storytelling, Truth, and Justice in the Modern Courtroom Drama Christine Alice Corcos Follow this and additional works at: https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/lawreview Part of the Law and Society Commons Recommended Citation Christine Alice Corcos, Legal Fictions: Irony, Storytelling, Truth, and Justice in the Modern Courtroom Drama, 25 U. ARK. LITTLE ROCK L. REV. 503 (2003). Available at: https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/lawreview/vol25/iss3/5 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by Bowen Law Repository: Scholarship & Archives. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review by an authorized editor of Bowen Law Repository: Scholarship & Archives. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LEGAL FICTIONS: IRONY, STORYTELLING, TRUTH, AND JUSTICE IN THE MODERN COURTROOM DRAMA ChristineAlice Corcos* If the parties will at my hands callforjustice, then, all were it my father stood on the one side, and the Devil on the other, his cause being good, the Devil should have right.1 I've covered a lot of trials, and the one thing I would say is... never 2 confuse an acquittalwith innocence. 4 In the film Witness for the Prosecution,3 title character Christine Vole suggests to the well-respected barrister Sir Wilfred Robards that the truth will not save her husband from the gallows. A miffed Robards responds that, on the contrary, "My dear Mrs. Vole, in our courts we will accept the evidence of witnesses who speak only Bulgarian and who must have an interpreter. We will accept the evidence of 5 deaf-mutes, who cannot speak at all, so long as they tell the truth.", * Associate Professor of Law, Louisiana State University Law Center and Associate Professor, Women's and Gender Studies Program, Louisiana State University A&M. Cheryl Cheatham, Jonathan Entin, and Annemarie Corcos kindly read early drafts of this manuscript and shared their thoughtful comments and suggestions. Daniel Beck, Mary Wilkins, and Sandra Garlock, all students at Case Western Reserve University, gave thorough and cheerful research assistance. Many thanks also to Randall Thompson and the staff of the Louisiana State University Law Library for their research assistance, and to Staci Carson, Meg Johns- ton, and the UALR Law Review staff for their thorough editorial comments and suggestions. 1. Sir Thomas More, quoted in WILLIAM ROPER, LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE 21 (Everyman ed., 1963). 2. Dominic Dunne, interviewed in Mugshots: The Murder of Martha Moxley (Court TV television broadcast, Nov. 5, 2001). 3. WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (Theme Pictures 1957); see also BILLY WILDER, WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION: SCREENPLAY (final script June 10, 1957) (adapting the film from AGATHA CHRISTIE, THE WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION AND OTHER STORIES (Dodd Mead 1948)). 4. Originally the pivotal character had the name of Rochelle Vole. Her first name was changed to Christine for the play and film, possibly because the name "Christine" sounded more foreign or possibly because "Christine" is traditionally viewed as a "sexy" name. See generally D'Arcy Fallon, The Name Game: Molly, Megan, Matthew, Jason: When Baby Boomers Have Babies, These Are Names To Be Reckoned with, CHI. TRIB., May 4, 1988, at 29. It is unclear how much, if any, involvement author Christie herself had with the screen- play. She is noted for her frequent disapproval of Hollywood's adaptation of her works, but seems to have never commented unfavorably on Witness for the Prosecution. JON TUSKA, THE DETECTIVE IN HOLLYWOOD 380 (1978). 5. WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, supra note 3. Unless otherwise specified, all refer- ences are to the 1957 version. UALR LAW REVIEW [Vol. 25 While Robards clearly intends 6 to reassure Christine that the "golden thread that runs through British jurisprudence ' 7 ensures that the "truth," once spoken in an English court, results in a just verdict, Christine remains unconvinced. The final scene of the film demonstrates to what extent she, rather than Robards, understands that the legal system and justice may be diametrically opposed.8 Operating within the lawyer's traditional view that nonlawyers do not fully understand the procedural and philosophical safe- guards of the common law legal system, Robards assumes that Christine believes that the system is fundamentally flawed and will condemn an inno- cent man. Not until the last moments of the film does he understand the irony of her remark about her husband-Leonard Vole is guilty, and he and Christine have used Robards's naYvet6 to weigh the system unfairly because the full truth would have condemned Vole, while their "truth" is also the instrument of his salvation. In many modem courtroom dramas, authors and filmmakers express the tension between fairness and unfairness, justice and injustice, in ironic terms through sophisticated storytelling. They force people to confront and question assumptions about the legal system. Through remarks like Chris- tine Vole's and outcomes like Leonard Vole's acquittal, people analyze expectations about law, justice, and human behavior. Combined with the unfolding drama, observers can appreciate the ironic observations about the legal system that these films provide: that it promotes clever lawyers' tricks to exclude useful evidence; that procedural safeguards tend to protect the guilty rather than exonerate the innocent; and, that in legal outcomes like those in Witness for the Prosecution,9 the desire for finality about guilt or innocence takes precedence over the ideal of justice. Professional partici- pants in the legal dance act either as willing accomplices or naive dupes of the accused who manipulate them to "get away with murder." Courts garb 6. His use of the example of "Bulgarians" and "deaf-mutes" reminds both Christine and the audience that she is a "foreigner." The image of Balkan nationals and the physically handicapped as outr6-as witnesses requiring special benefit of the doubt or special assis- tance in pleading their cause-is a common one for the period and particularly in detective and mystery stories of the time. At one stroke, Robards emphasizes the idea that the British system is just to everyone, not simply its traditional English-speaking citizens, and that it still notices the differences between those whose native language is the Queen's English and those for whom the English language-in general and in legal terminology-is a foreign tongue. 7. While John Mortimer's character, Horace Rumpole, is noted for this phrase, it is a fairly common one in English legal usage. "Throughout the web of the English criminal law one golden thread is always to be seen, that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner's guilt subject to what I have already said as to the defence of insanity and subject also to any statutory exception." Woolmington v. Dir. of Pub. Prosecutions, [1935] A.C. 462, 481-82 (H.L.). 8. See discussion infra Part II.B. for a definition of "irony." 9. WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, supra note 3. 20031 LEGAL FICTIONS their proceedings with elaborate rules of evidence that, to the uninitiated, seem to substitute legal fictions for obvious fact and abandon the search for truth in favor of imperfect finality. Yet, viewers continue to enjoy such films,' ° perhaps because they reaffirm cynical beliefs about human nature and skepticism about society's ability to create a legal system that will do justice. Observers advocate the jury system, but secretly believe that only they as individuals truly understand whether and how a defendant should be punished." Many authors and filmmakers share this cynicism. 12 Through verbal and dramatic irony, contrasting truth and appearance, authors convey conflicting ideas about the relationship between law and justice. By weav- ing various types of irony into their stories, authors and filmmakers examine this relationship and engage observers in a dialogue about the extent to which they are willing to abandon certainty about guilt and come to terms with uncertainty about innocence. By breaching "the fourth wall,"' 3 authors make the audience willing participants in both the "crime" of injustice and the "punishment" of the perpetrator. Even characters who "get away with murder" do not commit the perfect crime because the audience knows their identities. While many films and television shows depict the triumph of the legal system over initial unfairness, 14 others hint at or emphasize the under- 10. Note the release during 2000-02 of several "blockbuster" legal films, which demon- strates that lawyers as major characters never lose their charm. See, e.g., ERIN BROCKOVICH (Jersey Films 2000) (featuring Julia Roberts as a feisty paralegal); HIGH CRIMES (Epsilon Motion Pictures 2002) (featuring lawyer Ashley Judd defending her husband on a murder charge); LEGALLY BLONDE (MGM 2001) (portraying a valley girl going to Harvard Law School); Two WEEKS NOTICE (Castle Rock Entm't 2002) (featuring Sandra Bullock as in house counsel for Hugh Grant's company). 11. On the popularity and influence of crime shows and the portrayal of criminal and law enforcement archetypes on television, see LINDA S. LICHTER & S. ROBERT LICHTER, PRIME TIME CRIME (1983) (tabulating and analyzing various crimes and criminals on all types of television shows including situation comedies such as Mork and Mindy and The Jeffersons); RICHARD SPARKS, TELEVISION AND THE DRAMA OF CRIME: MORAL TALES AND THE PLACE OF CRIME IN PUBLIC LIFE (1992) (suggesting that television may reflect rather than cause any increase in the public's fear of crime). 12. See discussion infra Part lI.D for a definition of "author." I use author to refer to the intellectual creator of a play or novel and filmmaker for the intellectual creator of the film or television episode.
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