Nampara
-
Posts
104 -
Joined
Content Type
Blogs
Gallery
Downloads
Discussion
Posts posted by Nampara
-
-
1 hour ago, Sir RaiderDuck OMS said:
Any retrial of this case is likely to be a loser for the prosecution, especially given how flimsy their case was in the first place.
That much is true. But it's not because of the prosecution's concern that the alleged resurrection could somehow be brought up at trial. It's because of the probable change in the public's mood regarding the case and Emily as the defendant (outrage replaced by skepticism and sympathy), worry about wasting resources (murder trials are expensive), political calculations at the DA's office (no one wants to be associated with a losing cause), and, as you note, a clear demonstration in hand that the evidence the DA has at his disposal is insufficient to secure a conviction.
-
2
-
-
21 minutes ago, Sir RaiderDuck OMS said:
Respectfully disagree. There's no corpse anymore and Emily and her friends in the church have a baby who they claim is Charlie. Assuming the blood types are compatible (and remember this is even before they knew about positive and negative blood factors), all the defense need do is put Emily on the stand to say "My baby's not dead. He's sitting right over there in Birdy's lap." If even one juror is religious enough to believe the child could be a resurrected Charlie, getting a murder conviction would be impossible.
1. Stealing a corpse after the body has been identified, an autopsy has been performed, a coroner's report as to cause of death has been prepared and filed, a burial has taken place, etc., does not prevent a murder trial from going forward. It's just a separate crime -- grave robbing. Arguing that "there's no body!" works only if the alleged homicide victim's body was never found, so that it's plausible that death didn't actually occur. "Someone dug up my baby, so I couldn't have murdered him," is an illogical and legally frivolous argument.
2. Emily testified in her first trial about how her son's murder and death destroyed her. It would be impossible to recant all that. Any testimony to the effect of, "Oops, I guess I was wrong and good ol' Charlie isn't dead after all," would be a complete joke. And no competent judge would allow a stunt like pointing to a baby on someone's lap and claiming it's the deceased.
3. Even if the law recognized fantastical claims about resurrection, as a matter of logic, an alleged resurrection would not preclude a charge of homicide for having caused the death in the first place. I.e., you first have to kill someone for them to be "resurrected" months later. Reanimation in some ghoulish way doesn't get the accused off the hook.
-
9
-
-
24 minutes ago, Sir RaiderDuck OMS said:
Also remember that Emily now has new baby who she's claiming to be a resurrected Charlie, even if she knows he isn't. With no way to conclusively prove this living, healthy baby isn't her child (DNA testing was still decades away), good luck getting a conviction for his murder.
The law doesn't recognize resurrection. Charlie Dodson was legally declared dead, so he stays dead. The fact that his mother later shows up with another infant is irrelevant. The reasons for not retrying Emily after the mistrial are practical; there is no need to prove or disprove anything about the replacement baby.
-
4
-
-
5 minutes ago, Xantar said:
Meanwhile, I noted in the thread for the previous episode that the church was turning out to be an irrelevant sideshow, and I stand by that. In all honesty, Tatiana Maslany’s role could have been excised in its entirety without any problem, and it really hurts me to say that. She was completely wasted.
The church was not irrelevant, since its financial condition was the true cause of the kidnapping. You are right, however, that the character of Sister Alice, especially in all the biographical and psychological detail lavished upon her, was inessential to the core story. She provided color and texture to the drama, but that's it.
-
6
-
-
38 minutes ago, SeanC said:
Barnes did a completely awful job of both cross-examining Emily and making his closing argument. He essentially just started arguing that she was guilty of adultery and therefore was guilty of murder;
Even by the standard of highly abbreviated closing arguments in movies and TV shows, the prosecution's closing here was laughably bad. It basically conceded, "I ain't got nothing, but she's a dirty woman!"
You're right that the cross-ex of Emily was also very weak. Barnes should have taken full advantage of the opportunity to attack Emily's credibility across the board. He should have implied to the jurors that they would have every right not to believe her testimony that she had nothing to do with, and indeed was completely unaware of, the kidnapping plot.
The fact that no one talked about the risks of cross-examination when the defense team was debating whether to put Emily on the stand was incredibly unrealistic. That's always the most important consideration.
-
10
-
-
The noir-ish deconstruction of Perry Mason the show, and Perry Mason the lawyer, has reached its zenith. Not only is Mason a crooked lawyer in the sense of possessing fabricated credentials, he's now a crooked lawyer in the most fundamental way, through bribing a juror. (A felony, in case there is any doubt about that.) Why make such a big deal about Paul Drake's payoff-proof conscience when the show's protagonist leans the other way? And not only is the old TV program's admittedly rather preposterous convention of last-minute confessions by witnesses openly mocked, the big show trial can't even yield a verdict, let alone an acquittal. I guess the legal process in this universe, like right and wrong in a noir, is always inconclusive and hazy.
HamBurger continues his unethical conduct too, this time openly colluding with defense counsel to help sabotage a prosecution his own office has brought.
Ennis meets his end as the last proverbial loose end to be tied up by his equally villainous but sharper partner. Didn't it occur to him that when he was busy erasing all the potential squealers, there was only going to be one bent detective standing at the end? But it was a good noir fate: blood and karma, but no true justice.
I cringed a little at Mason's "lady lawyer" conversation with Della, particularly Della's on-the-nose riposte. This dialogue had to be intended as a parody of the sorts of things these characters might have said to each other had the show actually been produced in the 1930s, or maybe during the era of Burr's Perry Mason.
-
3
-
-
14 hours ago, eleanorofaquitaine said:
So I am okay if there is no ultimate twist to this story because that's more in the spirit of what noir actually is about - the moral corruption of humanity.
Noir is about corruption and mystery. Struggling with ignorance, confusion, and deceit is a core part of the noir protagonist's journey. Their world is as much an epistemological mess as it is a moral cesspool.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that I am advocating a "twist" for its own sake. I am not. But predictability is a serious potential flaw in a story like the one in Perry Mason, particularly one that's eight hours long. We'll see what the season finale reveals, but so far, as indicated in my previous post and the post to which I was replying, some of us have found the tale a little less surprising than we had hoped.
-
1
-
-
21 hours ago, DakotaLavender said:
It reminds me of some seasons of True Detective and The Sinner: so much interesting and layered buildup to a totally uneventful conclusion.
There is a bit of an anticlimactic feel to the show right now, I agree. Part of it is that the villains were telegraphed a little too much: The religious organization that we expected from the start would turn out to be crooked, really is crooked. The crudely corrupt cop is revealed as crudely corrupt. And there's a Fargo fragrance to the whole affair: they're criminals, and they're evil for kidnapping a child, but they're also cloddish and inept.
Nothing in Perry Mason so far has matched the twisty and twisted shock value of the moment in the film version of L.A. Confidential when {spoiler alert} Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) suddenly shoots fellow cop Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) in the middle of a seemingly professional chat about the case.
-
4
-
-
15 hours ago, Blakeston said:
People who are "healed" at church revivals are often just filled with adrenaline. There are a lot of wheelchair-users who aren't fully paralyzed, and are capable of standing up and walking around a bit if they put all their strength into it. If someone in that situation believes that a preacher has healed them, they might be able to lift themselves out of the chair and use their legs, and feel like a miracle has happened. But that "miracle" isn't going to last very long, and they're going to need their wheelchair soon.
I once read a critique of this sort of activity, entitled something like, "Why Does God Hate Amputees?" The point is that all the "healings" conveniently involve health conditions that are ambiguous to begin with. Is he paralyzed, or is he pretending? Why not find a supplicant with a missing leg and leave no room for doubt after the grow-back miracle occurs?
-
2
-
-
6 hours ago, shapeshifter said:
I thought rather than outright “stealing from the rich [clients] to give to the poor [clients]” that
Robin HoodEB was *just* borrowing from his wealthier clients.There's no such thing as borrowing from a client. First, taking out even an actual, documented personal loan from an individual client would be unethical. But the type of "borrowing" meant here is the practice of dipping into the client's funds that are managed by the lawyer (typically an escrow account), and then replacing those funds later to make the client whole. This too is flatly unethical, but it's also a crime. There's no form of embezzlement that is excused by the law merely because the theft is paid back soon afterward, although restitution may help mitigate the offense and reduce the criminal penalty. But that doesn't matter much for an attorney who faces disbarment.
Many solo practitioners or very small law firms have occasional cash flow problems, especially in tough times. These businesses are generally not heavily capitalized, so they depend on regular fee generation and collection to meet their operating expenses and to provide personal incomes for their owners, i.e., the firm's partners. E.B. was shown to enjoy both living and displaying a comfortable lifestyle, which he probably thought (a) he deserved and (b) was necessary to keep up the image of a successful attorney and generate new business. When he fell on temporary hard times, he clearly caved in to the financial pressures, some of which were self-imposed, and raided his clients' accounts.
-
3
-
-
9 minutes ago, paigow said:
Carla: What???!!! You got $300?????
$300 (1932 USD) = $5.6k (2020 USD).
-
1
-
-
18 minutes ago, Jextella said:
Glad I'm not alone. It got convoluted fast.
This is typically a trait of noir and neo-noir. When the film version of The Big Sleep was being produced, the filmmakers couldn't figure out whether a particular character had committed suicide or had been murdered. They asked Raymond Chandler, the author of the novel on which the movie was based, and even he didn't know!
-
1
-
3
-
2
-
-
Episode 6 of Perry Mason proves the ironclad rule of neo-noir: It's always about real estate in the end. Especially in Los Angeles! Chinatown, The Two Jakes, L.A. Confidential, even Who Framed Roger Rabbit -- whether you're talking about water rights, development rights, or rights of way, at the bottom of the corruption is someone willing to do some killing to make a killing. (Nordic Noir has applied this principle with great glee, as seemingly every police department and/or mayoralty in Finland, Iceland, Sweden, etc., is populated by crooks in league with a sinister corporation trying to push through a new bridge, tunnel, port, casino, or complex of some kind.)
Mason will get to the bottom of whatever scam is being perpetrated here, of course. But there will be casualties along the way; let's hope more of them are bad guys rather than good guys.
Side comment: Emily should have informed Mason of her motel tryst, no doubt, but it makes him look awfully naive to be so thunderstruck about the revelation. Why does he think people have affairs? Just to exchange loopy love letters? Perhaps if he had interrogated her more aggressively about all her dealings with Gannon, he would have learned of this incident in advance.
-
1
-
14
-
-
19 hours ago, paigow said:
Defendants have the option to represent themselves in court even if they have not passed a bar exam. Therefore, Mason not passing [or fraudulently passing] the bar exam should not invalidate any of his victories.
That's not really the point. Acquittals are never subject to collateral attack in the American system. For example, if a jury found Emily not guilty, and the next day Mason confessed his fraud, it wouldn't make any difference to her. She's free, and can't be tried again; the fact that her lawyer was a fake would be irrelevant.
But convictions are subject to collateral attack. If Mason were disbarred or sanctioned for his bar membership fraud, any client who had obtained an adverse result in a criminal proceeding would potentially have a claim for ineffective assistance of counsel, or for having been denied counsel altogether (not that this type of claim would necessarily have succeeded in the 1930s; I'm looking at this from a more general point of view).
And civil matters, if Mason took on any clients who weren't criminals, would potentially fall into a gray area. Having a fake lawyer might not affect some transactions retroactively; but with others, it might. This type of discussion is beyond the scope of this thread, I think.
-
2
-
-
2 hours ago, sistermagpie said:
Regarding the test itself, Perry took it and passed it so his credentials would be legitimate there.
Not subject to attack without reliance on extrinsic evidence (e.g., testimony of a squealer) does not mean "legitimate." It just means his bar credentials are facially valid, which is a very different concept. If Mason's fraud were ever exposed, there is no chance that the legal system would treat him as having been a legitimate attorney up until the time of the deceit's coming to light. Mason knows all this, of course, meaning that he'll be accepting certain risks for himself and on behalf of his future clients by proceeding with his legal career.
-
1
-
-
4 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:
With Sister Alice, I am still not sure if she believes her schtick or not. If she does, I don't see what she is doing as compromised.
It doesn't matter what she may believe privately. She understands that fundamentally, she is an entertainer who is putting on a show to make as much money as possible. She's a purported religious guide who lives in a mansion during the Depression -- that's the ultimate definition of "morally compromised."
-
2
-
-
50 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:
In fact, I'd totally buy it if he went up against another lawyer who came from a good family and considered himself a more legitimate lawyer than Perry and yet paid somebody to take his tests for him.
That could easily happen, because in this Perry Mason universe, virtually everyone is morally compromised. That certainly includes Perry, Della, E.B., Emily, Sister Alice, Drake, Strickland, etc. Is anyone not compromised? Maybe Clara Drake, but we don't know her all that well. And some of these people are frauds as well.
There's a difference between being morally compromised and being a fraud. Perry used to be only the former; now, he's both. A good example of the distinction among the lawyers seems to be HamBurger. He's certainly morally compromised, since he's willing to help someone cheat on the bar exam to serve his own ends (presumably). But as far as we know, his Yale Law and bar credentials are legit, so he's not a fraud.
-
1
-
-
17 hours ago, sistermagpie said:
But only for something that genuinely bothers their conscience, and I didn't see the moment where Perry agreed to do this as a struggle. I doubt he'll be taking particular pride in simply having a license to practice law rather than taking pride in the fact that he helped Emily.
No decent person can be permanently comfortable feeling that his professional position, his status, his income, etc., are all based on a lie -- that he's a sham, a fake. Many people suffer from "imposter syndrome" -- anxiety about being exposed as a fraud or a failure -- even when they are perfectly qualified for, and very good at, what they do. Imagine this kind of worry when you actually are a fraud. The "I did a good thing!" excuse will fade as Emily's acquittal (assuming that's what happens) recedes into the past. After securing her freedom, is Mason suddenly going to confess his deception, or at least immediately resign from the bar, so no one has to go to the trouble of throwing him out? I doubt it, or there'd be no more show.
This Perry Mason is a cynical, hard-boiled character, but I don't believe he's a sociopath who can live a lie perpetually and convince himself that he fully deserves all the good things that come his way as a result.
-
1
-
-
13 hours ago, momo said:
Kim Kardashian West said... she had successfully completed her first year of law studies while preparing to release a documentary about her advocacy work for criminal justice reform. West, 39, said she works daily on her law studies for a total of 20 hours per week and just completed her first year of a four-year apprenticeship program in California.
I wonder how she determined that her first year was "successfully" completed. Did her mentor administer any kind of test? Or is this merely an "I'm done because I'm done" situation?
In any case, 20 hours per week seems low to me, even for a four-year program. I hope it's at least a year-round apprenticeship, rather than one based on the school year. I'd say that a typical first-year law student in a three-year program puts in at least twice that many hours per week, counting the weekends -- often more. At my absolute busiest in law school, for a stretch of my second year when I was combining classes with multiple law review responsibilities, I was putting in 10-12 hours per day on weekdays, plus time on weekends.
-
16 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:
I can't say for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if Perry wasn't bothered by this lie at all.
He'll definitely be bothered when, e.g., his ex-wife says to his son, "Your father is an important lawyer now -- aren't you proud of him for working so hard for this accomplishment?" The fact that Mason overrode his conscience for the sake of what he deems the greater good (justice for an innocent woman) doesn't mean that he has no conscience. That's the key to understanding noir-ish characters. They accept pain for results, but the pain still hurts.
As for Bernie Madoff, although he apparently was happily amoral, one of his sons, who'd worked at his firm, committed suicide a couple of years after the scam was exposed.
-
2
-
-
39 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:
Anyway, those of us who have spent a lot of time on message boards for the last 10 or 20 years** know by now that any plot point that excites as much discussion as this one has is quite likely not going to be very significant in the following episodes.
But this could be the exception to the rule.Hard to say. Will there be another season of this Perry Mason?
It's quite possible that the only purpose of this little fraudulent scheme was to do what I mentioned above: to create a "twist" that abruptly converted Drunken Noir Detective Perry Mason into Perry Mason, Esq., in seeming defiance of the story's direction. Having placed Mason at the counsel table, the route there could be conveniently forgotten.
But we've already seen E.B. pay a long-delayed price for his own past ethical lapse (dipping into a client's account for emergency funds), so it's not hard to imagine a simmering storyline in which Mason's career-launching transgression eventually comes back to haunt him. I doubt that it would involve a full disclosure -- a disbarred Perry Mason would be weak protagonist for a legal show! -- but maybe blackmail? guilt? a cover-up? Della's own misconduct exposed? We'll see. On The Shield, crimes committed by the corrupt cops in season 1 were still having major consequences in season 7.
-
1
-
-
31 minutes ago, FrankOFoley said:
So I don’t find it unrealistic that Perry could pass the bar exam with HB prepping him.
True, that plot point was not unrealistic at all, given that the clear implication was that HamBurger gave Mason the answers as well as the questions. People who cheat on exams do so because cheating works.
-
1
-
-
11 hours ago, paigow said:
E.B. has a lot of fancy suits. Borrow $100 from Lupe and get some altered. Faster than getting a custom suit before trial.
Go down to the morgue and pick a new suit "off the rack."
-
2
-
2
-
-
14 hours ago, sistermagpie said:
It's also relevant, though, that presumably at this point Perry Mason isn't planning a career as a lawyer. He's only looking at this specific case where he's a last resort. If he wins he'll no doubt consider becoming a lawyer for real.
If Mason's going to accept more clients down the road, hopefully he'll at least crack open a book on criminal procedure. And he'll certainly learn through experience and "osmosis" just from being involved in complex legal matters. This happens with all lawyers, regardless of the genesis of their bar memberships. However, I don't see how he could retroactively legitimize his own path to the bar. The system provides no way of undoing that kind of fraud. He'll just have to live with the lie -- again, essentially par for the course for a hard-boiled character. These types always have to be tormented by some past wrong that they can't undo.
-
3
-
S02.E07: Last Exit to Brooklyn/S02.E08: Better Angels
in The Alienist [V]
The unsung hero of the season finale was the underappreciated Ding Dong -- constantly taking a hit for the team. "Let me explain it to you." *Punch in nose.* "Oh, you want a finder's fee?" *Punch in nose.* "You mean Goo Goo stood us up?!" *Punch in nose (and elsewhere).*