Hanging Judge: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"There is no such thing as a plea of innocence in my court. A plea of innocence is guilty of wasting my time. Guilty!"''|'''Inquisitor Lord [[Shout-Out|Fyodor Karamazov]]''', ''[[Warhammer
A '''Hanging Judge''' is a ruthless judge who rules his courtroom with an iron fist as his own personal fiefdom. He will hand out brutal sentences [[All Crimes Are Equal|for the most minor infractions]]. He may be corrupt and using the law for his own ends, a [[Corrupt Hick]] using his power to dominate the local community, a [[Knight Templar]] who believes his punishments are justified, or just a bully who gets off on abusing his power, but any hero who ends up in front of him can expect no mercy and precious little justice. You better have an [[Amoral Attorney]] at your side when you confront the '''Hanging Judge''' in the courtroom, or it's guaranteed that you won't walk out as a free bird after the trial.
Typically presides over a [[Kangaroo Court]].
{{examples}}
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== Comic Books ==
* [[Meaningful Name|Judge Gallows]] from ''[[The Sandman]]'' spin-off ''[[The Dreaming]]'' (and the earlier horror anthology ''[[Unexpected]]'').
* ''[[Judge Dredd]]'' is a protagonist example. He's ''not'' corrupt, the laws are just ''that'' ruthless. Anyone who willingly gives up, though, receives a (relatively light) prison sentence.
** The Dark Judges, however, are this. Judge Death's [[Catch Phrase]] is "The crime is life, the sentence is death!" after all.
** This trope is lampshaded when Dredd meets an actual Hanging Judge (or feed-to-flying-rats-judge) in [[Mordor|Cursed Land]].
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* J. S. Le Fanu's short story ''An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street'' features the ghost of a hanging judge. {{spoiler|Unfortunately for anyone who rents his house, the judge ''still'' likes to hang people.}}
** Le Fanu's ''Mr. Justice Harbottle'' features a particularly corrupt hanging judge who is punished supernaturally.
* Jaroslav Hašek's anti-war novel, ''The Good Soldier Švejk'' (set during [[World War I]]) features a general, who works as a judge under martial law. His favorite pastime is sentencing people to death; he makes the procedure so quick that he doesn't even say the required "In the name of His Majesty, the Emperor, I sentence you to death by hanging", just "I sentence you to death".
* ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' - According to Harry, The Merlin tends to act as one over trials of lawbreakers of magic (with a strong implication that a good chunk of the offenders could be rehabilitated with a proper mentor). But again, Harry isn't exactly the most unbiased source when it comes to The Merlin's actions...
** In The Merlin's eyes, nobody ''can'' be rehabilitated. Considering most people on the Council view Harry as a walking Time Bomb, the Merlin's not the only one who thinks that, so there are very few people willing to take on a warlock and rehabilitate them. In Council trials, the accused is not allowed to speak, and the final verdict is usually based on a soul-gaze given by the Merlin himself. We know of three people to escape the death penalty after being found guilty of using black magic: {{spoiler|Harry's mother}}, Harry, and {{spoiler|Molly}}. The first two were taken in and trained by Ebenezer, and Harry claimed responsibility for {{spoiler|Molly}}. Harry's the only one to date for whom rehabilitation has worked. Only time will tell {{spoiler|for Molly, but she did relapse a bit in ''Turn Coat''.}}
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== Live-Action TV ==
* A less extreme example is Judge Roger 'The Mad Bull' Bullingham in ''[[Rumpole of the Bailey]]'' (although he would undoubtedly hang people if the death penalty still existed in the UK). As it is he despises defence barristers, assumes being on trial automatically indicates you are guilty, and issues biased instructions to the jury.
** A (relatively) poor replacement for Bullingham after the death of the actor who played him (Bill Fraiser) was Mr Justice Graves, often refered to as Mr Injustice Gravestone. He is less agressive than Bullingham but non the less tries to unfairly influence the jury, only with more subtle methods. There is also a real 'hanging judge', Mr Justice Vosper, a relic from the days of the noose who summed up dead against one of Rumpoles' old clients, leading to his execution. He was later proved innocent.
* Judge Judy from...''[[Judge Judy]]''. Though to be fair, she is always, ALWAYS right. Just ask her.
* The episode "Judge Dread" of ''[[Law & Order|Law and Order]]'' featured a judge that was so harsh that her image was used on packets of cocaine to represent ''its'' potency; after she strikes down a white-collar criminal's plea agreement for being too lenient, he is convinced by another con to hire a hitman to kill her.
* An episode of ''[[Law and Order Special Victims Unit]]'' featured a judge who imposed harsh penalties on juvenile defendants, citing a claim she was sending a message (most of the kids were sent to a facility for sex offenders for minor misdemeanors such as public urination. The case that brought it to their attention. A sixteen year old sent a racy photo by text message to her boyfriend, and was tried for distributing child pornography.) The detectives and a defense lawyer soon discovered the prison she was sending the kids to was run by her brother, who gave her a large kickback for every inmate she sent. She was caught accepting bribes in the end. Like many L&O plots, that was based on a true story—and then copied with significantly less elegance in just about every other Lawyer Show.
* The judge [[Square One TV|George Frankly]] faced was supposedly a hanging judge.
* An episode of ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' (the one with the Spanish Inquisition) features a judge who plans to emigrate to South Africa because he is disgusted with the leniency of the British penal system and longs for manly punishments such as hanging and the cat-o-nine-tails.
* Judge Clark Brown from ''[[Boston Legal]]''. He's handed out cruel and unusual punishments for some [[What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?|very minor crimes.]]
* Judge Jefferson Dixon from the ''[[Cowboy G Men]]'' episode "Hang the Jury".
* Judge Alvarez in the ''[[Cold Case]]'' episode "Jurisprudence".
* Mr Justice Kent, the mark in the ''[[Hustle]]'' episode "Lest Ye Be Judged".
* Parodied in the ''[[Jeeves and Wooster (TV series)|Jeeves and Wooster]]'' episode "In Court After the Boat Race (or, Jeeves' Arrival)" which featured a magistrate who treated stealing a policeman's helmet as if it were mass murder and who handed down a five shilling fine as if he were pronouncing the death sentence.
* The judge who passes sentence over the eponymous trio in the sixth episode of ''[[Filthy Rich
* General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett becomes one in ''[[Blackadder Goes Forth]]'' in a military court. He's completely ready to have Blackadder shot for shooting '''his''' prize pigeon, though Blackadder is supposed on trial for disobeying orders Melchett barely mentions them. He fines the Defence £50 for turning up and refers to Blackadder as 'the Flanders Pigeon Murderer'.
* ''[[Wanted: Dead or Alive]]'': In "Miracle at Pot Hole", Randall brings a suspected murderer to Pot Hole, but fears the man won't receive a fair trial when he finds the townspeople in the grip of a power-mad bully who serves as the hanging judge over a [[Kangaroo Court]].
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== Tabletop Games ==
* As the page quote indicates, more than a few Inquisitors in [[Warhammer
* ''[[Deadlands]]'' Has a number:
** A number of NPCs, such as Roy Bean, Isaac Parker and, in ''Hell on Earth'', Richard Tolliver.
** A monster called the Hanging Judge, which repeats all the sins you've ever committed as it hunts you down. The worst sin? Being Texan - Texans killed them in life.
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** As a side note, [[Laser-Guided Karma|Freisler was killed by a collapsed beam when a bomb fell on his courthouse]].
* Vasiliy Ulrikh, the presiding judge of [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]'s show trials.
* [[wikipedia:George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys|Judge Jeffreys (or to be exact, George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys of Wem)]] was called both "the Hanging Judge" and "the Bloody Judge" as a result of his habitual excesses, particularly during the so-called "Bloody Assizes" that marked the putting down of the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685. Jeffreys was notorious for his manipulation of juries and his violent language toward prisoners and witnesses even in that unscrupulous age. He has been a popular figure in historical fiction set in the seventeenth century, and has become for Britons the archetypical Hanging Judge.
** Judge Jeffreys starred in [[Neal Stephenson]]'s ''[[The Baroque Cycle]]'' as one of the protagonists' nemeses.
** He was also a villain in [[Peter S. Beagle]]'s ''Tamsin''.
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* John "Maximum John" Sirica, who presided over the Watergate scandal, might qualify. Lawyers who appeared before him gave him the nickname because he always applied the maximum penalty under the relevant sentencing guidelines.
* Judge Roy Bean, "The Law West of the Pecos," gained a reputation as a hanging judge, though he seems to have passed that sentence on only two men—one of whom escaped.
** It's worth noting too that he played fast and loose with the law, often exceeding his authority or making unauthorized "changes". Though in some cases he was actually ''less'' harsh-for instance, horse theft was a capital offense, but Judge Bean let people go so long as they returned the horses.
* [[Older Than Feudalism|Athenian]] lawgiver Draco is the [[Ur Example]], giving us the word "draconian" to describe excessively harsh punishment. It is said that when asked why minor offences get the same death sentence as the serious ones, he said that in his view these lesser crimes deserved them, and he couldn't think of any punishment harsher than death for more serious ones (good thing they [[Fate Worse Than Death|didn't have]] [[TV Tropes]] back then).
** Incidentally, the Greeks of his time seem to have regarded him as a genius and a courageous and enlightened lawgiver as he did make the trains run on time.
*** Hold the phone; [[Completely Missing the Point|the ancient Greeks had trains?]]
* Time/Life treats Issac Parker, a Hanging Judge, in a favorable light, claiming that he brought peace to a lawless territory, and, among other things, treated Indians as fairly as whites. According to Time/Life the only reason he hanged so many people was that there was an excess of [[outlaw]]s in his territory who of course "needed killin'."
* Robert McQueen, Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland from 1788-1799 and sometimes referred to as 'the Scottish Jeffries'. A survey of Scottish historians named as one of the twelve vilest villains in Scottish history.
* Pontius Pilate, the man who sentenced [[Jesus Christ]] to crucifixion, was not any nicer to the rest of the people in his jurisdiction. In that time, hanging would have been getting off lightly. Pilate was so renowned for brutality, he got recalled to Rome as they felt his harshness was provoking rebellion, and they didn't want that.
** [[Up to Eleven|Even worse]] was Gaius Verres, who had been praetor of Sicily. First of all, he extorted so much loot, slaves and capital from Sicily that some have estimated that he actually caused a recession ''[[Beyond the Impossible|on his own]]''. His handling of corn and grain harvesting was so poor parts of Italy starved and he nearly ended up with a slave revolt. Anyone who confronted him he put on trial for treason or espionage where he was the judge and jury, and sentenced them to death. He was discredited in a case by Marcus Tullius Cicero, where it was revealed that he had sentenced Roman knights to death without trial, in one instance in order to disguise his own corrupt dealings with a gang of pirates (and sexual slavers). The Romans considered this to be a [[Moral Event Horizon]]. You will be pleased to hear that he was eventually murdered on the orders of Mark Antony, who [[Karmic Death|wanted some of the art treasures he had thieved from Sicily.]]
* Laurence J. Rittenband, the judge who presided over the Roman Polanski case. Say what you want about Polanski, but to say that Rittenband had a squeaky-clean image compared to Polanski, would be one of the most ridiculous things said. He was into girls much younger than the ones Polanski was into for crying out loud!
* Judge Mark Ciavarella became infamous for his harsh treatment of juvenille offenders, sending children as young as five to Detention centers for relatively minor crimes, such as trespassing or even insulting a teacher on Myspace. It was later revealed that he was ''[[Moral Event Horizon|making obscene amounts of cash from his convictions as the owner of the center paid him for each new prisoner he sent there]]''. He was later ''[[Laser-Guided Karma|convicted and sentenced to twenty-eight years in prison]]''. The good folks at ''[[Cracked.com]]'' probably [http://www.cracked.com/article_19648_5-real-judges-who-put-most-evil-supervillain-to-shame.html summed up] Your feelings about him by saying They'd "be completely fine with an amendment to give every American the right to kick this man in the balls once."
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[[Category:Crime and Punishment Tropes]]
[[Category:Villains]]
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