Hollywood Law: Difference between revisions

** Yet it does happen in real life- because the fraudster will usually be/have been prosecuted for fraud and the money has either gone (on high living and/or the court case) or 'disappeared'.

*** Hardly. Suspect assets are frozen, and so stolen money can't be used on one's defense; and likewise, a felony theft carries a higher criminal penalty if the money isn't returned. While assets are lost if they can't be recovered, this doesn't simply allow a racketeer to simply flip off the victim, as shown in that episode's obvious instance of [[Artistic License Law]].

** In an older episode, a guy beats his girlfriend (with her consent) to cause a miscarriage and frame the rich lawyer they intended to sue, taking careful measure to ensure the fetus was under 24 weeks old so they could avoid going to prison. Ben and the others act like there is nothing they can do and have to use all sorts of legal loopholes, never mind the original couple conspired to commit blackmail, perjury, defamation, entrapment, and fraud.

** Too many examples to list, but whenever a judge [[Off on a Technicality|tosses out evidence against the defendant]] early on during a trial to make the case that much harder for the prosecution, though the defendant will always get their just desserts in [[Justice by Other Legal Means|one way]] [[Vigilante Execution|or another]]. However, one prominent example comes to mind:

* In an episode of ''[[Little House on the Prairie]]'', Judd Larabee is accused of burning down Jonathan's barn. A judge is called in to preside over the case. When he arrives, he appoints Charles as the jury foreman even though Charles is the best friend of the victim. He then assigns Charles with the task of selecting a jury. Throughout the case, the judge scolds people for wasting the court's time when they try to present evidence. When the jury deliberates, they have 11 jurors who say Larabee is guilty and one juror who thinks he's not guilty. The judge then orders the one juror to stand up and explain why he thinks the man is not guilty before dismissing him from the jury. Then, he replaces the juror, but only after asking the replacement what his verdict would be. No one objects or finds any of these actions to be unusual.

* ''[[Arrow]]'': Just about ''everything'' surrounding Moira Queen's trial in season two; the entire sequence seems to have been written by someone who was vaguely aware that criminal trials (and death penalties) ''exist'', but was more than a little fuzzy on all the niggling little details.

 

== [[Theatre]] ==