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Volume 22, Number 1/2/3 (1998) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum LAWYERS IN FILM: 1996 RALPH BERETS* Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.There is no longer much debate about whether America is a litigious society. Lawyers may be the butt of jokes, but they are also a central ingredient in how our society functions. Culturally, we may be preoccupied with the law, but in the media, especially film, lawyers are usually depicted in a negative light. Lawyer films in 1996 continued to reflect this anti-lawyer stance. The attorney characters in the films The Chamber and The Last Dance defend and lose two death row cases while trying to construct arguments for sparing the defendants’ lives, but acknowledge that there may be justifiable reasons for proceeding with the executions. In Sleepers, the defense lawyer is the sleazy, besotted Dustin Hoffman, looking more like Ratso Rizzo than Benjamin Braddock, and Brad Pitt, the prosecutor, acting more like the mafia than an honorable counselor of the law. In Primal Fear, Richard Gere, the attorney, is so full of himself he does not recognize that the suspect, Edward Norton III, is using him to cop an insanity plea. In The Ghosts of Mississippi, Alec Baldwin presents a sanctimonious portrait of moral superiority risking everything to prosecute Byron De La Beckwith thirty one years after the murder of Medgar Evers. Although De La Beckwith is found guilty, the film establishes minimal circumstantial evidence of his guilt. In A Time to Kill laws and court procedures are bent to justify a revenge killing that would cause havoc to civilized society if widely followed. In The People vs Larry Flynt the film transforms the real Larry Flynt into a funny, likable character who then, through the astute manipulations of his attorney, becomes the champion of free speech when he takes his case against Jerry Falwell to court and wins. Finally, in Paradise Lost the court appointed attorneys assigned to defending the teenage boys accused of murdering three eight year olds are shown to be so befuddled that even though the state has no substantial evidence to convict any of them, the jury finds all three guilty of capital murder and condemns them to life imprisonment or death. These eight major films released in 1996 present significant legal procedures that will be discussed in the following analysis. Many of these films were based on reality or claim to be related to actual people or situations. For example, Ghosts in Mississippi, is obviously a reinterpretation of Byron De La Beckwith's recent trial in Mississippi, during which he was finally found guilty of the murder of Medgar Evers, thirty one years earlier. The People vs Larry Flynt recounts the antics of Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, in his battles with the courts to publish smut as an exercise of free expression. Sleepers' author, Lorenzo Carcaterra, maintains that his story of Hell's Kitchen is based on fact, although many dispute the claim. John Grisham, who seems to have made an industry out of his personal experiences as a lawyer, has two entries this year, The Chamber and A Time to Kill. The most blatant and disturbingly real film was Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. If this were not a documentary, it would have been attacked for being too unbelievable to be convincing. Vicki Goldberg in a New York Times article, March 18, 1997 stated that "life today resembles a fictional paradigm more and more and sometimes even outdoes the movie version."1 [Photographer] Jeff Wall decided some time ago that the idea of the document was too predominant in photography, and that cinema, where the artificial and the real coexist without either taking precedence, was a better model. . . . With faith in the stability of the material world dissolving under the pressure of doubts, digitization and special effects even as we watch, reality is declared unreliable, unprovable and, when convenience dictates, disposable. they uncover the secret stories, mythic constructions and uncertainties that constitute our lives.2Do the lines that blur these distinctions disturb us or engage us? Modern man has acquiesced to relativity. We are no longer convinced of the validity of anything. We see something and then discover it was an illusion. Where the truth resides has become as amorphous as the answer to the question, what came first. All of us seek certitude, verifiability and truth, but we probably look in different places to discover it. Who is to say that where we look and what we discover is inaccurate or less reliable than what someone else uncovers? For most people, movies provide lasting images and portraits, while the facts of history books fade into the past as soon as they have been regurgitated on a final exam or college board entrance examination. This may not be reassuring to those entrusted with the responsibility of determining the truth or those selected to impose a sentence on others who have been accused of a crime, but then how do we ever determine what is right, proper, and correct? Films recreate reality for many reasons, primarily as a means of engaging the audience so that they will buy another ticket or induce someone else to purchase one. They also present a perspective, one created by the film maker, either from personal conviction or because he assumed his boss or his audience would adopt it (or be entertained by it). Certain topics, such as those that deal with highly charged social issues, such as abortion, euthanasia, freedom of speech, racial equality, the death penalty, and sexual harassment cannot be dealt with in a noncommittal fashion. They require taking a stand and although audiences may disagree with the point of view, they are much more likely to leave satisfied if they feel the topic has been presented with conviction, than if they feel cheated, the subject is inadequately resolved, or unfairly presented. Artists who create popular culture texts have a clear message or objective in mind when they develop their work. One of the primary differences between a work of "high art" and one designated as more suited to the mass market, pertains to the lack of subtlety with which the central issues and central characters are represented. The assumption that popular culture representations need to be presented with broad brush strokes clearly differentiating between good and evil, is distinguished from works of more high brow art which traditionally depict more complex representations of human characters, with many shades of gray, rather than stark contrasts of black and white. In each of the films to be discussed, there is clearly an undercurrent closely connected to a central cultural theme that determines, in part at least, the focus of the work as a whole. The issues raised are of central concern to present day culture. These topics are addressed in a judicial context to heighten their impact and to justify the character's commitment to an underlying principle. For example, both Last Dance and The Chamber dramatize arguments against the death penalty. Ghosts in Mississippi, A Time to Kill, and Sleepers exploit revenge as a justification for murder. People vs. Larry Flynt focuses on the first amendment's freedom of speech provisions. Primal Fear tackles the issue of the insanity defense. Finally, putting all these issues into their perspective, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills questions the community's desire to find an immediate explanation for the satanic murders of three eight year old boys. By looking closely at these contemporary films, we get a sense of how American society addresses contemporary social issues. Margaret Miles, in Seeing and Believing: Religion and Values in the Movies, stated that popular film "provides an index of the anxieties and longings of a large audience."3 She later stated that "films that succeed at the box office are those that identify currently pressing social anxieties and examine a possible resolution."4 In Dead Man Walking (1995) we find a strong dramatic argument questioning the justification for the death penalty. By creating a sympathetic bond between a death row felon and an endearing nun, the film portrays an emotional transformation and possible redemption of a hardened criminal. The Last Dance attempts a similar presentation but is far less successful in raising doubts about death penalty verdicts. For example, The Last Dance's central character, Cindy Liggett (Sharon Stone), is hardly a sympathetic character. She is cold and distant. Her poor background, drug induced violence and bad temper certainly contributed to her dastardly act of murder, but the film suggests she is now rehabilitated. The argument seems to be that since she recovers her emotions and becomes responsive to her attorney, Rick Hayes (played by Rob Morrow) and has become interested in drawing, she is now ready to be taken off death row and returned to society. A Time To Kill defines its perspective in bold strokes and without subtlety. We are drawn into the story by the graphic presentation of two scofflaws joy-riding in their pickup truck, drunk and out of control. They harass employees at a black country store and then attack a ten year old girl and brutally rape and beat her. They try to hang and then drown her, but she miraculously survives. Her father, Carl Lee Hailey (played by Samuel Jackson), in an act of calculated rage, seeks his revenge by gunning down these culprits in full view of dozens of witnesses at the courthouse where they are to be arraigned for the crime. There is no question that he committed the crime. He had earlier revealed his plan to the white attorney, Jake Brigance (Matthew McConaughey), who previously had defended Hailey's brother. Brigance could have warned the sheriff, as suggested by his wife, but instead, he goes about his business, perhaps not believing that Hailey will carry out his threat, or more likely, because he would have done the same if his daughter, a picture perfect little princess, were brutalized in a similar fashion. The "not guilty" verdict justifies the audience's desire for revenge and vindication, but legally, Hailey and Brigance have no legal grounds on which to defend Hailey's actions. The film's Jake Brigance uses the opportunity provided by his summation to recount a personal tale that was adapted from John Grisham's first published and most autobiographical novel.5 It is a story about the rape of a ten year old girl and how she was battered, hung, urinated on, and dumped into the creek. How she survived was a miracle, even though she would never be able to bear children. This little girl's horrendous plight is described in detail during the final moments of the trial. It is at the end of this speech that Jake suggests that color may have something to do with the impending verdict. This "story" is one of the few significant additions the film made to the novel. Although this is hardly a traditional summation, since it has little to do with the evidence presented at the trial, it has everything to do with the objectives of the film makers, who are deliberately increasing the dramatic pressure, so that the audience has no choice but to cheer for the verdict of "not guilty" at the end. That any jury might be persuaded by such a theatrical performance is highly unlikely, but it is perfect for the reel world of film. The impact of this summation is amplified by the previous scene, during which Jake's wife, Carla, comes home to Jake finally having recognized that he is really fighting his own battle to save his daughter, much more so than seeking notoriety for being a great attorney seeking the limelight. Not satisfied with the "not guilty" verdict, the film makers add an even more contrived resolution, by having Jake, his wife and daughter, attend Hailey's family picnic. Clues about the film's objectives are suggested by the dialogue. Lucien Wilbanks, the disbarred lawyer and Jake Brigance's friend, advises Jake that " you can only save the world, one case at a time." He tells Jake that it is his "job to find justice no matter how hard she is to find there (in the courtroom)." Although the odds are against Jake presenting a successful defense, he manages to win the case despite his bungling. He gets drunk the night before the summation. His most helpful assistant, Roark, gets kidnaped on her way home from Jake's house and is nearly executed. The star witness testifying for Carl's temporary insanity is shown to be a child molester. Brigance's house is burned down near the end of the trial. With his case in jeopardy, he's ready to plea bargain for a twenty year sentence, when Hailey advises Jake to try to see himself as part of the jury and argue accordingly. This is why Jake chooses to tell the story that ultimately clears Hailey's name. Only in Hollywood, or a fairy tale, could Hailey be expected to prevail. News accounts of the response to the original Rodney King verdict and responses to the O.J. Simpson trials demonstrate that court room decisions can have a significant impact on how secure we feel in our community. If a verdict contradicts the prevailing sentiments of a large segment of the audience, then violence, looting and mayhem may follow. As an alternative to this destructive purging of our psychic frustrations we turn to mass media representations that allow us to vicariously engage in the hostilities we feel have some psychic justification. Television and film serve this function quite effectively. Vigilante justice seems so much more efficient than our court procedures, but would any rational person choose such a social order over the judicial system we currently have. Not likely, but this is what films like A Time To Kill, on an emotive level, advocate. We think it would feel good to act on our most primal sense of justice and in drama this is relatively harmless, but in the real world, this type of action can only lead to chaos and lawlessness. Reel justice is not a viable substitute for deliberative debate and a jury system, no matter what the flaws in this system are. There is a doctrine in American law called "jury nullification," in which the jury refuses to follow the law, not for all time but as it applies to a single individual in a particular situation.6 Perhaps this is the way we should see Hailey's case rather than as a mindless promotion of vigilante justice. In The People vs Larry Flynt Alan Isaacman, portrayed by Edward Norton III, illustrates some of the image problems the American populace holds about attorneys. First it is important to note that even though Larry Flynt is a real person, his depiction in this film is a constructed "fiction." Larry Flynt was hardly concerned with first amendment rights; he was obsessed with making money and tweaking the noses of American snobs. His fight for free speech was primarily a result of expedience and luck. The ACLU's support of his Supreme Court battle and his attorney's successful handling of the constitutional challenge made it possible to transform Flynt, the purveyor of pornography, to a champion for freedom of speech. Milos Forman, the director of The People vs Larry Flynt, purveyed his own agenda when he made this provocative film. Forman had been forced to flee from Czechoslovakia during the Russian invasion of Prague. For Forman, when there is no freedom of speech or of the press, there really is no freedom at all. Isaacman, who in the film version is a composite of several of Flynt's attorneys, seldom manages to reign in the free spirited Flynt, but does control his outburst during the Supreme Court review of his case against Jerry Falwell. Flynt triumphs and becomes the champion of free speech. Many find this portrait offensive, because it makes a hero of a sleazemonger who hardly deserves our esteem. On the other hand, Flynt's screen personality is so endearing that it is difficult not to cheer for his triumph when confronted by self-righteous characters like Falwell and Keating. Flynt and Isaacman use the judicial system to maintain Flynt's business interests using the first Amendment to shield him from a public which has no patience with pornography. What we learn is that anyone who has enough money and enough power will be able to manipulate the system to his advantage. We are expected to sympathize with Larry Flynt because he was paralyzed by a sniper's bullet and because he is represented by an endearing actor, Woody Harrelson, who makes him more amusing than dangerous. Isaacman, the lawyer, for reasons the film never makes clear, is willing to represent Flynt even when he mocks the legal system and jeopardizes his lawyer's credibility. Would that Alec Baldwin in Ghosts of Mississippi had the same sense of humor and joie de vivre as Harrelson displayed in The People vs Larry Flynt. Since Ghosts is also based on real characters and actual events, there is no dramatic plot to speak of. What we need is insight into the motivation and behavior of the various characters, but this is not what we get from this film. Instead we are humorlessly dragged through a thirty year history lesson that attempts to explain why it took so long for justice to be meted out to Byron De La Beckwith. The argument in the film does not convince the audience that justice has been served. Primal Fear is a captivating, if not great, film. It focuses on a self absorbed attorney, Martin Vail (played by Richard Gere), who is using his seemingly innocent client, Aaron/Roy Stampler (played by Edward Norton III), to justify having left the prosecutor's office to further his career. Not uncovered until the final moments of the film is that his client has really been using him and he has been duped into presenting an insanity defense. The most frightening result of this battle of wits between attorney and client is that the audience knows that Stampler is a double murderer and is likely to be released from a psychiatric hospital. Because Gere and his former girlfriend, Laura Linnney, now prosecuting the case for the state, are so busy trying to prove to each other that they are in control, they both miss the obvious signs and consequently both bungle the responsibilities with which they have been entrusted. The film ends with a very high angle shot of the attorney walking out of the courthouse at the end of the film as if he were a tiny speck lost in the surrounding cityscape. Gere is duped unknowingly, but Michael, the prosecuting attorney in Sleepers, played by Brad Pitt, deliberately falsifies evidence so that he will lose the case against two of his childhood buddies so that they can get their revenge against Sean Nokes, the guard who sodomized and beat them when they were imprisoned as teenage delinquents. Sleepers proclaims to be based on fact, but research suggests it may be otherwise. The boys from Hell's Kitchen are imprisoned because one of their pranks went awry and they are sent to reform school, where they are unfairly punished and raped by the guards. Thirteen years later they are able to get their revenge, when Tommy and John, two of the boys, spot the brutal guard in a bar, and blow him away. When they are put on trial for the murder, their reform school friends, one a prosecuting attorney and the other a newspaper writer, help plot their defense so that they will have their revenge on those who oppressed them thirteen years earlier. The conditions which the kids endure at the reform school are truly horrendous; however, so they set out to take the law into their own hands and induce the participation of Father Bobby, a priest, to lie for them, giving them an alibi. Michael, the prosecuting attorney, belies his professional responsibilities and arranges to manipulate both sides of the trial, by feeding questions to the defense attorney, played by Dustin Hoffman in one of his most repulsive roles. He is drunk, drugged and greased down for most of his time on screen. The viewer is expected to see him as a lawyer so intimidated by the mob, with whom he has been working for years, that he cleans up his act sufficiently to remain relatively coherent throughout the trial. What is unbelievable and most distressing is that no one in this film seems to care about the judicial system or the legal process. As in A Time To Kill the audience is asked to accept the injustice of revenge killing as if it were the proper resolution to the abuse that these four boys were subjected to during their stay at the reform school. The most disturbing portrait of lawyers in action in 1996 must be awarded for the court appointed attorneys who seem to find so little to challenge the prosecution's case against the "satanic" killers of three eight year old boys in Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, even though the state had little evidence linking the suspects to the crimes. Watching Paradise Lost the viewer expects the suspects will be found innocent, since so little during the trial directly implicates them in the horrendous crimes with which the film opens; however, incomprehensibly, the jury finds all three of those charged guilty of murder and sentenced all of them to life imprisonment. Had this film not been a documentary, no one would have believed the case presented. How could a boy with a 72 IQ, who really did not seem to understand the questions posed nor the deeds performed, have implicated his friends and then not been found mentally incompetent? How could the state have won its case without explaining why there was no evidence of blood anywhere near the scene that was supposedly full of bloodshed? How could the jury have found these boys guilty when there was only poor circumstantial evidence linking them to the crimes? What this case most unfortunately illustrates is that Arthur Miller's The Crucible could very well have been set in present day Arkansas. The closed mindedness and vindictiveness of the community is unfathomable, until one reads the update on what has happened to those connected to both the victims and the accused. The most distressing disclosure concerns one of the parents of one of the victims. John Byers confessed during the trial that he used to beat his son and that he beat him the afternoon of the murder. He also gives the defense a knife that had his son's blood on it. This knife mysteriously disappeared from the police department. Mr. Byers, since the trial, instigated a knife fight between two minors, for which he was arrested. Later he was arrested again for a $20,000 burglary. He was involved in the whipping of a five-year-old neighbor's boy. Mrs. Byers pointed a shotgun at two carpet installers working in her house. She mysteriously died in March 1996. As a court room drama this film is full of unbelievable scenes. The judge virtually dozes off several times during the trial. The district attorney is more interested in winning and retiring, than he is presenting the case. The prosecutor seems flabbergasted when his expert witness is shown to have purchased his degree by mail order, never having studied for his doctorate degree in the field of the occult. If this film represents a portrait of justice in parts of America, we are all in serious trouble. All three of the convicted have appealed their cases, and to date, they have all been turned down. What appears to have implicated them is that Damien read books about the occult and the Wican religion, that he wore dark clothes, that he listened to Metallica's music and that he was regarded by the community as an outsider. While an all white jury in the non-documentary film, A Time To Kill, concludes by finding Hailey not guilty, even though there is no question that he committed the murders, it is far less disturbing that in this documentary film, of an ignorant community and a jury which condemns three boys to life imprisonment and execution on the basis of the flimsiest evidence. Had more experienced, more knowledgeable attorneys represented the accused, it is unlikely that these teenagers would have been condemned to death and life imprisonment. What can we conclude from these various portraits? Lawyer bashing in film continues. Although there are some halfway sympathetic portraits of attorneys in film, on the whole they are still an opportunistic, self-aggrandizing lot. Maybe with Liar, Liar, in which an attorney cannot help but tell the truth, we will turn the corner, making lawyers a more positive force in the media’s view of reality. |
