In reality, this rarely ever happens. The real scene is much less dramatic - the DA tells the defense attorney (me) the evidence and the plea offer, and I go out to the jail and tell the defendant what the DA said. If they’re clearly guilty and they really should take a deal, I’m the one arguing with them, not the DA. If they have some “information” that they think could help their case, they tell me, I go tell the DA, and DA sends a detective or investigator to come out and take a statement. The whole “Big Sit Down” myth causes me problems sometimes because defendants want to tell the DA their side of the story, just certain that if they could explain this whole big misunderstanding in person that the DA would drop all charges. I have to explain to them it’s not like television and the DA has no interest in talking to them.
[/QUOTE]
Hold on. Do prosecutors ever meet with the defendants? In “the practice” Helen Gamble is frequently threating defendants with more jail time so that they would confess quicker. Does this not happen?
This is not the only reason I want to be a prosecutor, but I must confess I was kind of looking forward to doing this.
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner]
I recall reading that only half of all policemen fire a gun (other than in practice) during their careers. I also recall reading that on the average a policeman fires a gun once every 27 years (other than in practice). I can’t find any cite for this though.
[/QUOTE]
On The Wire, 60 episodes over five seasons, we never saw a cop fire a gun except by accident.
bump, that’s a lawyer show I’d watch. One of the firms I worked for in Seattle should have had a documentary crew, like The Office. Some of the stuff that went on there would make great TV, in the staff’s personal lives as well as some of the cases they handled.
It was a joke. There’s a scene where JD is trying to pick his favorite intern, and he walks by the guy that’s the worst* (but JD won’t admit it), takes the X-ray out of his hands and turns it around.
*Cabbage? Was that JD’s nickname for him?
[/QUOTE]
Yeah that was his nickname for intern Jason Cabbagio. I read somewhere that the film was hung upside-down to symbolize the inexperience of the new doctors.
[/QUOTE]
Sorry guys, but in the Season One DVDs, the producer/creator admits that it was just something they got wrong (and they constantly hear about it), and they never bothered reshooting the opening sequence to fix it.
So yes, while it turned *into *a joke, in the beginning it was just a mistake. Nothing symbolic about it, I’m afraid.
Sorry, thought of one more: Haiku Tunnel is a kind of Office Space that takes place among a group of secretaries in a San Francisco law firm. It is, purportedly, based on its writer/director/star’s turn as a temp at a (wait for it) San Francisco law firm.
I think it does a decent job of describing what the lawyers at that firm do and how they see the world. It’s an uneven movie, but for all that, it’s one of my favorites.
As for The Practice making Rebecca a partner, I don’t recall Bobby being aware of the illegality, but I suppose it’s like him to thumb his nose at ethical rules.
[QUOTE=Lakai]
Hold on. Do prosecutors ever meet with the defendants? In “the practice” Helen Gamble is frequently threating defendants with more jail time so that they would confess quicker. Does this not happen?
This is not the only reason I want to be a prosecutor, but I must confess I was kind of looking forward to doing this.
[/QUOTE]
I’m just a lowly paralegal at a criminal defense firm, but prosecutors do meet with defendants during proffer sessions. I’ve attended several in my time, and none of them have ever been confrontational. Everyone is extremely polite, the defendant is usually very well prepared in terms of what will be asked of him/her, and if there is some kind of dispute, the defendant and his/her attorney(s) will usually stop and step out to discuss it before continuing.
I believe that if the two sides are far apart in what they hope to accomplish, the proffer session isn’t going to happen in the first place. I’ve never seen either side try to pull anything funny at one of these meetings.
[QUOTE=Sampiro]
They also love the ending, in which the law firm of Travolta, Macy, and Shalhoub
lose not just the trial but their practice/houses/marriages/shirts
as they say it’s a very important lesson that’s rarely addressed in movies.
[/QUOTE]
I liked the episode of The Practice where Jimmy wins the cancer cluster case for a bazillion dollars and they celebrate for half a minute until the judge throws out the verdict. It was great how it turned the feel-good moment back into reality.
Night Court is a pretty good recreation of the atmosphere of a traffic court or small claims court, or so I’ve heard.
Perry Mason is probably the least accurate portrayal of criminal defense ever. The real criminal always confesses in a pre-trial hearing?
One big problem in My Cousin Vinnie was the whole license to practice thing. There’s no way that would have slid through in real life. Also, the criminal prosecution would have taken at least a year.
In general, rich lawyers in movies and television have way too much time on their hands. In real life, if they’re that rich, it means they do nothing but work.
[QUOTE=Lakai]
Hold on. Do prosecutors ever meet with the defendants? In “the practice” Helen Gamble is frequently threating defendants with more jail time so that they would confess quicker. Does this not happen?
This is not the only reason I want to be a prosecutor, but I must confess I was kind of looking forward to doing this.
[/QUOTE]
I wouldn’t go as far as to say never, but in my jurisdiction, almost never, and never like it goes down on television. By far, the preferred method is to communicate through me.
For misdemeanor docket call, the DA is in the courtroom with whatever sixty or so cases are set that day, and if a defendant wants to talk to them they may have a brief conversation. Mostly it’s me acting as the go between. Felony plea dockets are less crowded, but occassionally the same will happen if a DA overhears a conversation and wants to ask the defendant a question. It’s not a formal setting, though, and for the most part they don’t deal with defendants directly and don’t want to. If an unrepresented defendant calls the DA to talk about the case, the receptionist will tell them they can’t and to go get a lawyer.
What usually happens is I go to the DA’s office and they read me the facts out of the file, let me look at the pictures, occassionally they photocopy the police report for me (although they have no obligation to do so), and they make a plea offer. Then I go meet with my client back at my office or the county jail and relay the information. If they have mitigating circumstances or just plain want me to beg for less time, I relay that back to the DA, and so on. Usually the first time the defendant and DA lay eyes on one another is at plea, trial, or the first pretrial hearing.
[QUOTE=pravnik]
Harvey Birdman does a pretty good job, though.
[/QUOTE]
My favorite is the one where the case is tossed for discovery violations.
A) Yes, this can happen though not really the way it is shown
B) Its the case they actually won on the question “did you get that thing I sent you?”
C) The Mind-off between Mentok the Mind-Taker and Shado the Brain-Thief is HI-larious.
[QUOTE=Pochacco]
I don’t know … Apollo 13 managed to be pretty gripping … .
[/QUOTE]
Heh. Don’t know if you were joking or not about that being a gripping engineering tale, but I know it was for my brother, who was getting his masters in engineering at the time. I remember how his face lit up in the scene where they scatter the parts on the table and say, “We need to make -this-… Out of -this-.” I could see his brain working overtime.
Also, as another slight threadjack into My Cousin Vinnie… I first saw that movie with my dad, and he actually came to the same conclusion Lisa did about 2 minutes before she blurted it out; his best friend owned that same car when they were younger, and he put two and two together when it came to the tire tracks. (My mom, who -hates- psychological horror, also pegged what Buffallo Bill was doing with the bodies before it was shown in Silence of the Lambs just due to her time as a seamstress. I love my family sometimes!)
[QUOTE=ArrMatey!]
Heh. Don’t know if you were joking or not about that being a gripping engineering tale, but I know it was for my brother, who was getting his masters in engineering at the time. I remember how his face lit up in the scene where they scatter the parts on the table and say, “We need to make -this-… Out of -this-.” I could see his brain working overtime.
[/QUOTE]
No, I was totally serious. That particular scene is the best example of practical engineering I’ve ever seen on film. Here’s a box of arbitrary constraints – figure out how they can be used to deliver the desired functionality.
[QUOTE=Pochacco]
No, I was totally serious. That particular scene is the best example of practical engineering I’ve ever seen on film.
[/QUOTE]
Yup. I went to college for engineering, and that scene was well known and liked among students and profs (perhaps mostly because Gary Sinise makes solving engineering problems look so exciting and manly).
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
The least accurate lawyer show of all time has got to be Perry Mason. Because he always won.
[/QUOTE]
What about Matlock? I seem to remember Andy Griffith up there in court, basically testifying before a witness he was supposed to be cross-examining…and the prosecutor never called Objection!
