Basic Trope: A sham proceeding headed by a Hanging Judge.
- Straight:
- Judge Alex Hangman decides that Betty is guilty of murder, without any evidence, and throws her into jail for life with no possibility of parole for at least fifteen years.
- Alex has Crazy Carl acquitted, despite Carl having committed Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking.
- Exaggerated:
- Alex punishes Betty by having her shot to death by an angry mob.
- The trial is held at the gallows, and Betty already has a noose tied around her neck when it begins.
- Betty is charged with the murder of Charles, who clearly died of a heart attack on live TV. Alex still decides that Betty is guilty.
- Betty is so obviously innocent the court is relying on ridiculously tangential links and Insane Troll Logic just to get something they can accuse her of.
- Downplayed:
- Alex decides Betty is guilty of shoplifting, with no evidence, and gives her a $20 fine.
- Alex convicts Betty of murder even though the evidence is somewhat shaky. However, Claire, who is most definitely innocent, was tried along with Betty and acquitted. Alex makes it clear if Betty were obviously not guilty, he'd acquit her as well.
- Justified:
- Alex is a Knight Templar who indiscriminately punishes people he sees as "sinners". Betty happens to be one of them.
- Betty lives under a dictatorship, has a fairly established reputation of an active dissident and Resistance member, and is tried for an alleged murder of a State Sec agent. Since the regime considers her an enemy of the state already, why should the judges think otherwise?
- Betty is in a community that is mostly cut off from the rest of the country, meaning it doesn't have to go by the laws because there is nobody from the higher government to enforce this.
- Betty is being used as the scapegoat for a much bigger crime by someone powerful who needs her to be found guilty to advance their plans or cover their tracks. The court is either in their pocket or being pressed to find a guilty verdict.
- Inverted:
- Betty killed someone, but she is acquitted by the judge and declared innocent despite evidence to the contrary.
- Betty sits through an entire fair trial up until the guilty verdict for a crime she doesn't even recognize the concept of. She interupts it and declares she has had enough of these arrogant mortals and teleports off. The trial is thus a farce not because of its outcome or process but because it has no power over Betty.
- Alex sees Carl completely covered in blood, knife in hand, naked as a jaybird, standing Atop a Mountain of Corpses, and Laughing Mad. Carl is pardoned for all his crimes.
- Subverted:
- The trial seems staged to Betty, but it is not—it simply follows the rules of a very different legal system.
- The whole trial was actually staged to give the actual guilty party a false sense of security, thereby making it easier to trick them into outing themselves.
- Double Subverted:
- But even by that system's standards, it is horribly unfair.
- The guilty party is a step ahead of the judicial system, or else in cahoots with it or at least lobbying to reduce their sentence, so they are never brought to justice.
- Parodied:
- The presiding judge, jury, clerks, and all spectators at Betty's trial are actual kangaroos.
- Betty tries to defend herself, but the judge and jury use Insane Troll Logic to convict her anyway.
- Alex's court openly brags about its absurdly high conviction rate.
- Alex believes Betty is guilty just for having a lawyer.
- Alex 'tries' Betty after she's fined, imprisoned, or killed for her alleged crime.
- Betty is so obviously innocent that the court is growing increasingly desperate to find something they can convict her for. They go from maintaining a professional façade and logical-seeming arguments to Insane Troll Logic and drawing nonsensical links between insignificant details just to twist Betty's words enough to get something they can charge her with. The trial starts with her being blamed for a murder, but by the end they're trying to get her on tax evasion, and finally convict her when the evidence is twisted just enough to resemble the outline of a case for jaywalking at midnight in thick fog from outer space.
- Betty is tried for breaking and entering. She uses the excuse that there was an earthquake at the time, saying, "When the house is rocking, you don't bother knocking." It works.
- Zig-Zagged:
- There are fair judges as well as corrupt ones.
- Alex alternates between evaluating each claim based on evidence, letting defendants off even though the evidence points to their guilt, and condemning defendants even though the evidence points to their innocence.
- Averted:
- Alex is a fair judge.
- Betty doesn't face a trial, whether she's innocent or guilty.
- Enforced:
- Moral Guardians want the author to add a scene to show just how much of a bastard a group or individual was and decides to do it by having the hanging judge.
- The work is set in a real-life nation, or a thinly disguised analogue for one, that was or is an absolute monarchy, a People's Republic of Tyranny, or some other dictatorship with these.
- Lampshaded: "Hey, did you realize that the number of convictions has risen fivefold after Alex was appointed as a judge?" "Yeah, I wonder why..."
- Invoked: Somebody wants Betty out of the way and uses a lot of money to make it so.
- Exploited:
- Betty, aware of impending verdict, decides to make a complete ass of herself during the trial, to the point that the court has only two options: Convict Betty and let her basically use this freedom to incriminate and insult everybody involved because she's already being punished, or let her go so she won't talk.
- Carl, knowing Alex will rule in his favour, slaps Betty with a Frivolous Lawsuit.
- Defied: Betty exposes the judge before the trial so that a non-hanging judge could preside.
- Discussed: "I may be innocent, but Alex is presiding at my trial. I don't think this will end well."
- Conversed: "Is this show just making a joke about its format, or is it commenting on instances of this happening?" "Whichever, it's a shade smarter than most other legal shows."
- Implied: Betty's trial takes ten minutes.
- Deconstructed:
- After one too many false verdicts, someone informs the government about Alex, who is investigated for corruption. He is found guilty and is stripped of his position.
- Alex is known for his show trials, so Betty's friends, rather than try to clear her name, simply kill him and throw him a ditch. In absence of evidence and not wanting what happened to Judge Alex to happen to her, his successor Carol dismisses her case.
- Reconstructed:
- After a thorough investigation, somebody noticed that the effect was actually positive to a point, and the government reinstates Alex but assigns only very specific cases to him wherein another judge would legally let a guilty party go.
- Carol gets over her fear of reprisal and examines the original case further. It turns out that Betty is guilty of what she was accused of and she — as well as Alex's killers, who committed a crime, after all — get the sentences they deserve for a legitimate reason.
- Played for Laughs:
- Betty is a Hate Sink who, among other things, loves to inflict Disproportionate Retribution over 'offences' that never even occurred. While they do have enough real dirt on her to give her the desired sentence anyway, the heroes decide it'd be more fun and karmic to put her through a mock trial that uses Insane Troll Logic to convict her of bizarre things.
- It's a Black Comedy about how overly and blatantly unfair the local justice system is because Betty is a minority (Betty was not even in the same coast at the time of the crime they are trying to pin on her, for starters). They also treat her every deed and word in court (or rather lack of it) as hostility and contempt. Depending on what the author considers funny, the entire courtroom will be full of passive-aggressive racists a la Get Out (2017) or will look like a Klan jamboree.
- The entire trial, from beginning to end, takes five minutes, tops.
- Played for Drama:
- Betty's unfairly-delivered unfair sentence ruins her life.
- Once it becomes clear that the court system is corrupt, the citizens revolt en masse. Chaos ensues.
- Played for Horror:
- Alex gets Betty to confess by exploiting her phobia(s) in a way that threatens to kill or injure her.
- Alex himself is actually an Eldritch Abomination.
- Plot Foundation: Betty is given a show trial to signal a Halfway Plot Switch from light comedy to grim drama.
I won't have examples tried at the main page! That's a Kangaroo Court they run!
