It’s somewhat of a cliche that a defense lawyer says, “The guilty person will now walk in through that door”, or in a bodyless murder case “The alleged victim will now walk though that door”. Everyone turns and looks, and either the defense points out this is reasonable doubt and the jury acquits, or the jury notices that everyone but the defendent looks, so thus they convict.
Did this ever actually happen, and if not what’s the earliest fictional use?
Snopes has a page about this legend, and although the write-up doesn’t seem conclusive to me, they find it unlikely to have happened. They also cite a 1987 movie as an example; although I suspect that’s not the earliest fictional use (and Snopes doesn’t say that it is), it at least establishes a baseline.
And here’s a 1975 book that contains this anecdote, in the form of a joke (I think - it’s a snippet view).
I also read it as a “true” story in one of those Reader’s Digest blurbs. I was watching a trial on TruTV the other day and a lawyer brought it up (as an example of reasonable doubt in an argument to a judge, he didn’t pull the stunt or cite a specific case)
Matlock did it once.
I’m guessing it never really happened. I saw the Matlock version a long time ago and it didn’t make sense to me at the time. I understand that if the defendant was guilty he would know there is no way victim could walk through the door. But first of all humans natural curiosity will cause them to look. In addition to the natural tendency to look where a crowd of people are looking. And finally, if he is proclaiming his innocence he will look just to keep up the charade.
Also, if everyone looks but the defendant, who is looking at him to see his reaction?
ETA: ninja’d by snopes
No cite, of course, but, I read somewhere, in the mid-90s, that some judge had had it happen in his courtroom more than once, and then let all attorneys know that if it happened again, contempt of court charges would follow.
IANAL, but it sounds to me like a good way to get a mistrial declared and yourself held in contempt, if not disbarred.
Didn’t MASH** do this? There were thefts going on, and Hawkeye said to a small group of people that some stolen item had a chemical on it that would turn the thief’s hands blue. Everyone looked at their hands except one guy. That guy turned out to be the thief because he was trying too hard not to look guilty by not looking at his hands. (There wasn’t any blue chemical either. Hawkeye just made that up.)