Hollywood Law: Difference between revisions

** Also, this is an [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|ongoing controversial issue]]; people have been [[Bothering by the Book|harassed for various "unrelated" reasons]] (they can't be arrested for the act itself; how do you keep a jury from being informed about jury nullification if informing juries is the crime for which they are being tried) for passing out [[wikipedia:Fully Informed Jury Association|FIJA]] pamphlets outside courthouses.

** A similar such law applies in British jurisdictions, commonly known as "the Rule in ''Stonehouse''." Effectively the rule is that a judge ''cannot'' direct a jury to find a person guilty of a crime (although he can direct the jury to find them not guilty.) Lawyers can't resort to that in appeals to juries, though, because it's a breach of their ethics: they cannot ask a jury to ignore the law they are sworn to uphold. But accused representing ''themselves'' in politically charged cases have been known to resort to this defence and be successful with it.

** Of course, there are many countries (Germany and the Netherlands, for example) where there is no such thing as a "jury" and the judge ''is'' in control all the time.

* Hollywood/TV interrogations: Real interrogations are rarely as exciting, or quick, as portrayed in media. Police are very careful during interrogations not to lead, badger, or abuse a suspect, and risk a good defense attorney having the testimony disallowed as evidence. Particularly in major felony crimes (the focus of most TV crime shows), interrogations can last hours or even days, and are mostly boring question-and-answer sessions designed to wear a suspect down over time. Stereotypical techniques like yelling, insulting, "good cop/bad cop", and other aggressive interrogation techniques are used whenever police think they are useful, and they can get away with them. Those situations just aren't as common as Hollywood would have you believe, largely because serious civil-rights action in mid-to-late 20th century exposed their rampant use of "third degree" police tactics including torture, psychological manipulation, and various other atrocious interrogation-methods-- often which were ''excused'' by both police and the federal Supreme Court. Furthermore, while police are allowed to lie to suspects about certain things like the evidence against them, they are definitely not allowed to lie about the legal consequences about a confession (for instance, getting a guy to confess to attempted murder by giving him the 'Shoot the Dead Guy' schpiel down below).