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Your Honor, I move that I be disbarred for introducing this evidence against my own client
If the facts are against you, pound on the law. If the law is against you, pound on the facts. And if both are against you, pound on the table!
— Legal aphorism
Mad Hatter: Oop! I'd like that last statement stricken from the record, please!
Joker: Record? Is someone supposed to be writing this down?
The case is going against the defendant, and the defense attorney suddenly starts making penguin noises, discussing his sex life with The Judge, or pulling sex toys out from under the defendant's chair.
The more desperate the case, the more likely the defense attorney uses such antics.
Maybe he’s stalling for time while an associate tries to find the evidence that will show who the real killer is, or maybe he’s finally just flipped under the strain of the case.
Either way, expect him to be allowed to go on making a mockery of the legal system for far longer than any reasonable Judge in Real Life would allow without having him jailed for contempt. To say nothing of the high chance he would be severely disciplined if not disbarred as soon as the nearest Bar Association ethics panel heard about it.
Often, this antic will result in a Penultimate Outburst.
Typical Courtroom Antics:
Examples:
Film
Literature
- Rumpole Of The Bailey has, in extremis, produced the occasional really impressive Courtroom Antic. In "Rumpole and the Last Resort", he secured an adjournment in spite of an unsympathetic judge by collapsing and dying right there in the courtroom. (It was the season finale, too, so we couldn't be entirely sure he hadn't been Killed Off For Real.)
- I think it was this that lead to one of the greatest plays on words in TV history (when it's revealed he didn't die): "You all thought I'd kicked the bucket, but really I'd only turned a little pail (pale)."
- You know that standard "We had our differences, but respected each other" speech people give when their worst enemy dies? Rumpole actually stood up and said thankyou after this was delivered by
Judge Bullingham the Mad Bull.
- The Discworld novel Making Money has a trial in which our hero, Moist von Lipwig, currently acting chairman of the bank, is on trial for the unexplained disappearance of nearly ten tons of gold. He's very nervous about a former accomplice of his threatening to reveal that he is, in fact, a former con artist who had been hanged under an assumed name, and has a slightly guilty conscience as he submits to questioning, when he sees a small dog (the actual chairman) wander in while sitting down and wagging its tail. These are both happening at once because the dog is holding in its mouth its favorite toy - a huge chewy vibrator - which has turned itself on and whose vibrations are propelling the sitting dog backwards across the courtroom floor and out of sight while everybody tries desperately not to notice and offend the Patrician. Lipwig reasons that a world in which this can actually happen in the middle of a court is a world which can handle him acting as chairman of a bank, and proceeds to confess everything about his backstory.
- Several chapters of Brian Clevinger's novel Nuklear Age are devoted to a lengthy courtroom fiasco. For starters, the heroes' (who are being prosecuted by their arch-nemesis) lawyer happens to be their nemesis' boyfriend, the entire jury is made up of people whose lives the heroes have ruined, and the judge is a bloodthirsty man named Hangemall Letgodsortitout. It needs to be read to be believed.
Live Action TV
Theater
- Defense attorney Henry Drummond calls the prosecutor to the witness stand in Inherit the Wind. This actually ends up becoming Drummond's Crowning Moment Of Awesome. This was based on the real cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan by Clarence Darrow from the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925.
Video Games
- Done a lot in the Gyakuten Saiban series of games (better known in the states as Ace Attorney); the first game alone has the protagonist using all of the above tricks. There's a twist in that Phoenix himself (a defense attorney) maintains a level of professionalism, but many of the prosecutors do not. In the first game, Manfred von Karma practically intimidates the judge into letting him run the courtroom; in the second game, von Karma's younger daughter Franziska (also a prosecutor) tries to cow the judge, the witnesses, and even the defense by smacking them with her whip, even going so far as to whip poor Phoenix unconscious after losing case 2; and in the third game, prosecutor Godot throws his scalding hot coffee across the room in a fit of pique several times. Ironically enough, Phoenix himself often gets berated by the judge for much less.
- Not to mention that all of Godot's responses tend to consist of bizarre philosophical tangents, most of them about coffee. Also, whenever the judge mentions that he's ready to render judgment or something like that, Godot cuts him off with 'I'll be the one to pass judgment, old man!' ... Yeah.
- The tradition continues into the fourth game, which has an entirely new cast. Of note is the main prosecutor, who doubles as a rock star. At one point he even doubles the 'penalty' (damage) the player will receive by air guitaring.
- See here
 for an excellent example of Franziska's whipping-ness.
Web Comics
- Richard of Looking For Group went through something like this, with the twist that he's on trial for not being evil enough. He killed everyone.
- The following from one of Irritability's early strips:
Judge: Even if you did have yout fingers crossed, you can't lie under oath!
Chappy: You don't understand you fat old bastard, I totally had them crossed!
Western Animation
- South Park skewered it with the "Chewbacca Defense" ([1]) in the episode "Chef-Aid".
- Duckman: Duckman resorts to desperate measures such as accusing a witness of being Japanese and acting generally ridiculous. "A-HA! You ASSUME! But everyone knows that when you ASSUME... (pulls out a chalkboard) uh... wait, there's some kinda trick to this..." Eventually his nonstop insanity causes the real culprit, King Chicken, to confess rather than have to listen to him any longer. What makes this particularly funny was the fact that Cornfed actually got Duckman acquitted before he used these tactics.
- On the short-lived Clerks The Animated Series, Randal calls a series of "surprise witnesses" during Dante's trial. All of the witnesses are directors of movies Randal didn't like, and he demands refunds from each of them. After he's finished, the witnesses leave, without ever saying a single word that has to do with the trial's actual proceedings.
- Subverted on Futurama where increasingly outrageous antics (the DEFENSE calling the JURY as a witness, then is later instructed to "disregard its own testimony") and requests ("Your Honor, I know the case is closed and you've rendered your verdict, but I want to testify") are met with the judge simply saying "I'm going to allow this."
- Double subverted in the same episode. The judge even says "I'm going to allow this" when the attorneys do things that are completely conventional, such as cross-examining a witness.
- Parodied on The Simpsons; while stalling for time in Bart's suit against the makers of Itchy and Scratchy, Lionel Hutz decides to call all his surprise witnesses again, to groans from people in the court; the group includes Ralph Wiggum, a Santa Claus in a cast, and Billy & Benny McCrary, the "world's fattest twins".
- Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law is chock full of these.
- In one episode of Rugrats, Angelica sues her parents for feeding her broccoli. Once in court, she instantly wins over the judge, calls her doll Cynthia and her stuffed zebra as witnesses, and the jury awards her all of her parents assets without even deliberating. It turns out that the episode was All Just A Dream of Drew's.
- Lampshaded in King Of The Hill when Hank is at a workman's comp hearing after being accused of faking a back injury because he was photographed after Yoga cured him. He asks permission to call in a suprise witness (his Yoga instructor, who proceeds to prance around, accuse the officials of having bad energy, and hit on the secretary) leading the chairman to remark that they'd never had anyone call in suprise witnesses before. Played Straight several times with Dale Gribble, who defends himself in a drug case by rejecting the courts authority because the American flag has the wrong trim, convinces Hank to fight his wrongfully incurred bill for renting pornography by accusing a vast artificially intelligent computer network known as "The Machine" of attempting to defraud him, and when representing himself in a case against his cigarette company calls himself to the stand as a witness in a scene that looks like a cross between Perry Mason and Gollum
- Animaniacs had an episode where Dr. Scratundsniff gets a parking ticket and the Warners defend him in court to contest. Examples include holding up a badger to the witness and telling another witness that they "shouldn't swear, its not nice," after having asked if they swear.
Real Life
- Truth In Television, as anyone who still pays attention to Jack Thompson knows. Subverted in that he actually got disbarred for it.
- Aside from his videogame-related shenanigans, this is also someone who once introduced dozens of pages of gay porn into evidence—pages which were then put directly into the evidence database.
- Temple Lea Houson fired two pistols into the ceiling, scaring the jury and causing them to flee the courtroom. He said to the judge that he did it to "prove his client's fear of the victim's 'incredible speed' of gunfire". He then successfully argued for a mistrial, as the jury wasn't sequestered.
- The above example in the Scopes trial (prosecutor called to the witness stand by defense) is not unique. It happened to prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in the Manson trial (this was deemed justified by Bugliosi having also been very involved in the investigation of the case).
- I'm pretty sure a lot of courtroom tropes from before the 1980's originated in the trial of Bruno Hauptman who was accused of kidnapping and murdering Charles Lindbergh, Jr. The defense was paid by William Randolph Hearst in exchange for working half-heartedly and betraying his client's confidences (the lawyer also received nightly visits of NYC showgirls with Champagne, curtsey of Mr. Hearst), a whole string of surprise witnesses who tended to contradict their own testimony and their statements to police, women fainting after pointing to Hauptman, and a judge who did absolutely nothing to reign in on the prosecutor's (who was also the Attorney General of New Jersey) excesses and violations of procedure (both wanted to use the case to advance their political careers). [2]
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