Is there even room for all thirteen at the table? In the painting it looks like there are settings for maybe eight and the rest are standing behind the table talking.
Traditionally, isn’t Judas sitting in the front? To do an unsubtle bit of foreshadowing.
Unless it’s an unintentional rascist thing, like in the Peanuts Thanksgiving special. I never noticed it until someone here mentioned it, and now I can’t unsee it.
I was watching a lot of L&O:CI fairly recently, like a year or two ago. It may not have started happening right away, but maybe by season 3 or so it seemed like Goren was doing this like every single episode. He didn’t trick the suspect like Colombo would, by getting the suspect to accidentally reveal info that only the killer would know; instead, when Goren knew the suspect did it but didn’t have the evidence to get a conviction, he would browbeat and psychologically manipulate them into confessing. He’d basically bully confessions out of them.
The rich/famous dude who’s at the top of Mrs Columbos favourite celeb list… I’m seriously worried about her judgement 
Maybe her judgment is picking out shady characters her husband needs to investigate.
Admittedly that routine came later. He was on for 8 or 9 of 10 seasons. Jeff Goldblum did real police work on the show.
Thank you!
Well, especially if they are rich enough to have their own lawyer. And that happens to me when McCoy goes on some crusade.
“Gunshow” is one of the worst. So is “Gov Love”. And “Bodies” is detestable. Weird priorities there Jacko.
An episode? That happened in like, every episode. Perry would never win a case if the killers had the sense to keep their mouths shut.
I don’t watch a lot of them. 
McCoy prosecutes a serial killer’s defense attorney in an effort to uncover where the killer’s victims’ bodies are stored.
Legal aid attorney Tim Schwimmer is arrested for aiding and abetting a felon, as he knows where - and actually went to see - the bodies of the murdered young girls.
The trial goes extremely poorly for Schwimmer, as McCoy uses a parade of distraught parents of missing young women to condemn the young attorney for his action
That is desteable.
McCoy goes to the Supreme Court to argue that same-sex marriage isn’t legally valid in the state of New York; and ultimately wins.
Wow, that is just horrible.
The summation doesn;t show how eager McCoy was. And this episode is a few eps before it was Decreed that Serena was gay. Couldn’t tell it from this episode!
And in Bodies, I’m not even sure the actual killer gets convicted. McCoy was too busy crusading against defense counsel.
I swear one reason we got our (minuscule) house cheap is that they had a massive couch diagonally in the (minuscule) living room. We had to step over their kids watching an old CRT TV that was 40" deep as well as wide… there was NO room in that room.
So my wife’s first impression of the house was “There’s no room for ANYthing here!”
(Luckily, being cursed with an overactive imagination, I could mentally shrink the couch, move it against the wall, and trade up to a smaller TV, as well as bookcases. Oh, and rip up the olive drab carpeting and linoleum…). But I had to convince her of what it could look like before she agreed.
Not to mention, I am pretty sure that attorney-client privilege is totally protected. This would not work IRL. ianal.
One of the more realistic parts of the show.
Maybe not absolutely– there are limits beyond which e.g. a mob lawyer would be participating in a criminal enterprise– but very broadly. Which Jack McCoy, the Grand Inquisitor of New York City wouldn’t care about; he’d do anything to win. Like try two defendants separately while presenting two incompatible theories of the crime. Or go relative-shopping for a cousin willing to sign off on risky surgery for a comatose victim so the victim would either recover and be able to testify or else die and up the charge to murder.
Relevant video.
26 posts were split to a new topic: Legality of Columbo’s trick with the cigar box
Perry Mason has his own special formula to win every case:
- Only represent innocent clients
- Get dumbass defendants to voluntary confess to crimes on the stand.
It works every time. Hell, if I was Hamilton Burger I would just agree to dismiss any case on principle if I found out Perry Mason was representing a defendant.
Mason’s spectacular variant on #2 is to get the guy on the stand to say stuff that makes someone in the gallery jump up and confess!