Wife and I’ve been watching ‘The Fall’ on Netflix. We’re most of the way through season 2, I think. Still weird getting used to Gillian Anderson with a Brit accent, though I believe she spent her childhood in London, so she comes by it naturally.
My question: is the standard for proof of a crime **much **more strict in Great Britain than in the U.S.? Gillian & the Belfast police have a freakin’ recovered murder weapon with Paul Spector’s fingerprint found on it, plus a lot of other circumstantial evidence. Yet they’re still ever so carefully continuing their clandestine surveillance, going to great lengths to make sure he doesn’t figure out they’re watching him. Even to the point of faking a water tank leak to cover a hole one cop accidentally put in their ceiling.
Seems like here in the states they would have put together a SWAT team to take him down the minute they IDed the fingerprint.
My wife says maybe they’re still hoping Spector wil lead them to Rose, the woman he kidnapped. But at one point they’re looking through his house (when they caused the hole in the ceiling), and Gillian reminds them they’re just “fact-finding” because whatever evidence they find can’t be used since they don’t have probable cause yet(??).
I did criminal law to degree level and as far as I know it’s the same - ultimately you still have to convince a jury beyond all reasonable doubt.
I can’t remember how this show was at this point so can’t comment on the stength of the fingerprint evidence. What I would say, generally, is there is no need to pull him in - gather all the evidence you can, the only issue is what harm he might do and if he’s under surveillance … you hope everyone does their job.
The point about Rose seems valid. Iirc, there’s nothing to link Spector to her disappearance.
Fwiw, whenever I’ve heard her speak in interview she speaks English. I always assumed her American accent was good …
IIRC, the fingerprint was not enough to charge him. He could just claim the weapon had been stolen or lost. Without something more, there’s plenty of reasonable doubt.
US cops IRL would probably act the same. It’s just TV cops that can get a conviction on a single fingerprint.
Given Northern Ireland’s history the police and the justice system in general are probably particularly careful during investigations and trials, I wouldn’t be surprised if the same case would be held to a higher standard of proof in Northern Ireland than the rest of the UK for this reason.
btw I’m from Northern Ireland, although I haven’t watched The Fall I’m curious what people in America think of it?
I can’t compare the two systems in terms of level of proof, but I believe that improperly seized evidence (for example, evidence gained during an illegal search) is still admissable in UK courts.
Yeah RealityChuck, maybe I’ve just watched too many cop shows, and what seems like their excessive caution is normal police procedure in the real world. Anyway, (spoiler) we watched the next-to-last episode of season 2 and they finally did arrest him, even though they still have no idea where Rose is.
My wife and I have been enjoying it. A bit slower-paced than an American cop show perhaps, but that’s fine- it builds up mood and suspense better that way.
The accent is interesting. Vowels get stretched until an extra syllable is added to certain words- like “home” becomes “hay-ome”. I’m guessing the stereotypical “they’re always after me Lucky Charms” accent we Americans are used to is more southern Irish…?
Thank you, there really are a huge number of different accents and dialects for such a small island and they can sound almost nothing alike. As the show is set in Belfast I assume its mostly an accent from that area (though of course different parts of Belfast have different accents…), which is very distinctive and in my opinion not very musical to the ear (I’m being diplomatic).
I haven’t heard the Lucky Charms ad but I assume its either that or a generic ‘Irish’ accent. On a sidenote while American actors doing Irish accents are usually poor I thought Brad Pitts attempt at a Northern Irish accent in ‘The Devil’s Own’ was actually pretty good, you could tell he was thinking about what he was saying and talking slowly as a result but he wasn’t bad at all, I don’t think he deserved the hate he got for that, and it was more a bandwagon pile-on than an objective consideration of his acting.
(yes, that’s a lot of assumptions, I need to watch ‘The Fall’ and find out for myself what the accents sound like)
It’s a good watch overall. Because most of the show focuses on catching a single guy, it is a little bit slow paced, especially if you go into it expecting CSI:Ireland. The OP’s question about evidence is a great example of that.
The characters are extremely well done in my opinion. I was afraid that this would be another Sherlock-and-Moriarty clone like the disappointing Luther turned out to be, but it isn’t.
I was on a jury a while back and the police procedure was painstaking. It was an arson case and they spent an entire morning showing us photos of the fire and explaining what the burn pattern meant. They had a ton of evidence to prove the fire had to be arson (even with the person who set the fire testifying that he did it).
So I’m sure in real life the police need to gather overwhelming evidence if they want a conviction. One small piece of evidence may not be enough.
In England and Wales the Crown Prosecution Service has to be satisfied there is a better than 50% chance of a conviction on the evidence that the police bring to them. I’d imagine that’s so in Northern Ireland as well.
I haven’t watched The Fall but I think maybe your ideas about prosecution may be clouded by Law and Order. L&O did some things very well including using accurate New York specific laws but when it came to probable cause for arrest they often went forward with paper thin cases. Evidence that in the real world would not even be close to enough for an arrest let alone a prosecution.
And that’s an inevitable result of the format, of course. Your typical police procedural drama clears up all the red herrings and last-minute revelations during the investigation phase: L&O needs to hold some of that back for the second half of the show.
