Discussion Main / HollywoodLaw

Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Nattery and "This trope is bad", started by Ghilz on May 23rd 2011 at 8:09:47 PM

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Duplicate Trope, started by StarSword on Oct 1st 2016 at 8:37:35 PM

Does Turn in Your Badge count as Hollywood Law? In fiction, usually if a cop wants to resign then they do a dramatic speech and place their gun and badge on the desk of their boss and that's that. In Real Life, there is paper work involved before you actually do any of that, and even then you put it in a box or something like that.

I deleted a bunch of Conversation In The Main Page examples/subpoints with contradictory arguments. They may be actual examples, but someone with better knowledge of them (and law) would have to decide whether they're the non-examples I consider them, or relevant for the page. If they're relevant, do rewrite them as proper examples, and not more natter.

• Con Air
• My Cousin Vinny
• Good Will Hunting
• Double Jeopardy
• Frasier
• The Wire

Given the page definition of the trope, just how does Spongebob Squarepants even count? Of course there's no legal system among undersea creatures that a portrayal on the show can deviate from. I don't want to remove this without feedback however. What do you think?

Removed this:

• The Amazing Spider-Man: After Spider-Man catches the car thief, the cop who shows up almost immediately draws his gun and tries to shoot Spidey in the face. Especially egregious since Spidey was unarmed and doing nothing but talking, and the car thief was webbed to the wall not 20 feet behind him, directly in the cop's line of fire. Even if it could be assumed that the cop thought Spidey's web-shooters were weapons, that doesn't remotely justify an immediate lethal response without even giving a warning or stand-down order, and while a bystander could be hit.

I just watched this scene, and this was my first reaction. However, while I'm no legal expert, the cop could have thought that some sort of armed assault was in progress, which is why he drew his gun. Peter is already very close to him and then starts walking forward after the cop pulls his gun. A cop could conceivably try to justify firing on someone for advancing on him "in an aggressive manner" after already having drawn his gun on them. Plus, it's never shown that the cop was within his rights anyway.

Could someone who knows something about law consolidate this string of conversation into a single entry, or simply rule that it's not an example:

• In Dirty Harry, the villain is released because Callahan tortures him into revealing his murder victim's location; the moral here is that such rights just present Off on a Technicality, which merely allows criminals to get away with murder. In reality, however, this is to prevent suspects from being forced to falsely confess, and the body of the murder victim would be excluded by the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, since he was coerced to reveal this.
  • [1] - Fruit of the poison tree doesn't always attach, and in this situation the prosecutors could have at least tried to claim exigent circumstance or inevitable discovery. Under the law as it exists now, its doubtful that any of the evidence other than the original confession would be excluded. Figuring out what would have happened when the movie was filmed is harder, but they could have at least kept the defendant in jail and then run through the appeals process.
  • All of which Harry Callahan would know, being a police detective, but it's very doubtful that with such a horrible case the district attorney would choose to believe the suspect instead of him and dismiss the case, unless it was proven beyond any doubt. Nor would it grant the killer an automatic release anyway. He had assaulted Callahan and attempted to murder him, a police detective, felonies good enough to put him away for a very long time, even life.
  • Harry thought the girl was still alive, and he knew that Scorpio was guilty; so he was trying to save the girl, not stop him; if he wanted that, he could have just plugged Scorpio with his .44 Magnum and claimed he resisted arrest. Likewise he could have just pointed the gun at him, and said "talk— or die— and then denied it afterward. Rather, this was an obvious message against "bleeding heart laws which tie the hands of the police--" as lampshaded by Scorpio responding to Harry's demands by screaming "I want a lawyer! I have the right to a lawyer!"
  • Any evidence they find could likely be admissible under exigent circumstance. However, the whole point of the rules is to keep cops from torturing random people to get information that they don't have. Also Scorpio's reactions were understandable. I'd be screaming for a lawyer if Dirty Harry was beating me up for information.
  • The District Attorney lampshaded Harry's Hollywood Law style:
    District Attorney Rothko: You're lucky I'm not indicting you for assault with intent to commit murder.
    Harry Callahan: What?
    District Attorney Rothko: Where the hell does it say that you've got a right to kick down doors, torture suspects, deny medical attention and legal counsel? Where have you been? Does Escobedo ring a bell? Miranda? I mean, you must have heard of the Fourth Amendment. What I'm saying is that man had rights.
    Harry Callahan: Well, I'm all broken up over that man's rights.
  • Dirty Harry also brings up a common trope, i.e. that mistreatment of a suspect is an automatic acquittal, even if they simply aren't read their rights. In reality this is 100% false; rather, coerced confessions are simply excluded from the evidence, however the suspect can still be tried on admissible evidence. In the Dirty Harry case, there was plenty of evidence to convict the murderer— including the wounds that Harry had legally inflicted on him previously, thus identifying him as the killer. Furthermore, police do have the right to kick down doors, if they can claim "exigent circumstances—'' which definitely existed in this scenario.
  • The search is claimed to be in violation of Scorpio's Fourth Amendment rights. The doctor that treated Scorpio mentions the groundskeeper of the 49ers' stadium allows Scorpio to live there, which would constitute consensual, contract living. However, the groundskeeper, as an employee of the stadium and not the owner, has, in all probability, no legal standing to grant that kind of permission, which therefore makes Scorpio a squatter, and thus is not protected by the Fourth Amendment, so everything but his confession would be admissible, plus the felonies he committed when accepting the ransom (assault with a deadly weapon against a police officer, illegal possession of an automatic weapon, resisting arrest and possibly attempted murder of a police officer).

The first Common Example is quite subjective in seems, in my opinion Innocent People are railroaded IN REAL LIFE far more often then in fiction. Fiction more often then not says as long as you are a decent person something will save you.

• "Indictment: The McMartin Trial is chock full of Hollywood Law and just having a general artistic pass, ranging from withholding evidence (both sides), badgering of witnesses, falsified confessions, perjury, illegal seizure/destruction of property, improper instances of strip/cavity searches and being held in the incorrect facilities, and everyone involved generally acting like the suspects are guilty before evidence has even been attained. Then again, that was the point, as it was a more-or-less accurate retelling of the real McMartin trial with several aspects played up or changed for Rule of Drama. The sad part is the fact that about 85% of the atrocious law seen actually happened, as this was one of the cases that sparked the irrational belief of their being a "national conspiracy of Satanic day care centers, ritually abusing our children." All the defendants were eventually acquitted, thankfully."

I don't think this counts as Hollywood Law if the events in the film actually happened that way.

• "Regarding the rape, the traditional law — still the law in much of the US today — is that tricking someone into sex by impersonation is not a crime unless the perpetrator is impersonating the victim's spouse."

Really depends on the state. It's called Rape by Fraud or Rape by Deception, and some states have laws about it, some don't. But it no longer always has to be the spouse that's impersonated. Edit or cut entry?

• "Holes: Wrongly Accused protagonist Stanley Yelnats at his trial doesn't have a lawyer. Not "got a bad lawyer" or "can't afford a good one", he doesn't have a lawyer at all, even though that's constitutionally mandated in America. The curse on his family must be quite powerful to do that."

Stanley did have a lawyer in the book -specifically stated as incompetent and not very good at his job. The patents lawyer his dad hires finds out in about ten minutes why Stanley couldn't have done what he was accused of, and has some sharp words for/about Stanley's defense lawyer (implied to be the lowest ranking public defender or somesuch) not figuring it out himself. The curse was apparently more that he got the worst possible lawyer.

(Figuring it out himself would mean doing stuff like having possible witnesses at the school interviewed and finding out just how legal the search of Stanley's home/room was.)