Accuse the Witness: Difference between revisions
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'''Phoenix:''' Of course! That is precisely what I am doing!|''[[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney|Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney]]: Justice For All'', Case 1}}
A [[Courtroom Antic]] which involves accusing an unlikely or controversial witness of being the perpetrator of the
An unscrupulous cousin to [[The Perry Mason Method]].
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* The prosecuting attorneys on ''[[Law and Order]]'' have occasionally filed charges against a family member of their real suspect in order to pressure them into a confession, plea bargain or other "short-cut" resolution to the case.
** They'll also occasionally threaten to expose personal information that the defendant would rather go to jail than have made public (which seldom raises any questions as to whether they might be innocent and confessing ''just'' to keep their secret hidden), to achieve the same end. In both instances, the DAs will lampshade the desperation nature of the ploy, plus the likelihood that if the defendant doesn't bite, the presiding judge may not even let them follow through on their threat.
* Subverted in ''[[Homicide: Life On the Street]]'': in an antic taken from the book which inspired the series, in a murder for which the body was not found, the defendant's lawyer insists that the whole case is nothing more than a publicity stunt, and that the "victim" is going to walk into the courtroom... Now! He doesn't, but, as the laywer points out, the fact that everyone ''looked'' proves that they have a reasonable doubt. Once the defendants have been convicted, the thunderstruck prosecutor and defense attorney ask a jury member why the antic didn't work: one of the jurors noticed that ''the defendants'' hadn't
** The first episode of Matlock uses this same scene almost exactly, except his client was innocent (his clients are always innocent), and so, also looks.
** It's also used in the 1987 film ''From the Hip'', with Judd Nelson as the defense attorney and John Hurt as the accused; this time, it's Nelson who notices his client didn't look, and Hurt defends himself by scoffing at it as being too obviously theatrical a stunt to take seriously.
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