Anonymous user
Hollywood Law: Difference between revisions
→Comic Books
No edit summary |
|||
Line 40:
*** That would be the Keane Act and the Ingersoll Amendment, the latter so named for the comic columnist Bob Ingersoll, who analyzed and criticized poor representation of the law in comic books.
* In a recent issue of ''[[Daredevil]]'', a judge appointed under Norman Osborn overruled a Not Guilty verdict in a criminal trial and sent the innocent defendants to prison, ignoring 300 years of legal precedent and the US constitution. To be fair, though, the Marvel Universe at the moment seems to be a fascist dictatorship under Osborn, so the law probably changed to allow this (completely illegal and unconstitutional in our world) decision.
** To further highlight the batshit insanity of this: under the US legal system, there is one and only one circumstance under which a judge can declare a criminal defendant to be guilty -- that being, if the defendant has waived his right to a jury trial and requested summary judgement. The Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution vests the right to convict defendants of criminal trials solely in juries. In a jury trial, the absolute most a judge can do is set the entire trial aside, declare a "mistrial", and have the entire case tried again from scratch with a different jury, and even then he needs strong procedural reasons to do so. Some confusion happens with writers because there are procedural circumstances where judges are allowed to arbitrarily disregard a ''guilty'' verdict from a jury, and declare the defendant to be "Not Guilty"... but that doesn't violate the Sixth Amendment because you need a jury for ''conviction'', not necessarily for acquittal. However, the reverse of this -- taking a 'Not Guilty' that a jury has already handed down and flipping it around to 'Guilty' -- is simply not possible under US law, and would earn any judge near-instant impeachment for even trying it.
** Osborn getting that job he had in the first place, long after being exposed and jailed for being a superhuman homicidal maniac, whose standard M.O. was flying around a city throwing bombs and who once planned to murder ''all life on Earth'', is however a pretty straight example.
*** Yes, in that you become ineligible for most and/or all political offices, especially at higher levels, if you've committed a felony, and Osborn was never pardoned.
Line 51 ⟶ 52:
* Marvel writers have repeatedly had a character charged with "treason" over acts which have nothing to do with the deliberately narrow definition of treason expressly spelled out in the U.S. Constitution. (For one thing, it must involve a foreign enemy. It does not mean "acting against a government agency" or "insubordination".)
* A [[Punisher]] made hash of the [[Insanity Defense]] by having a judge, not remand the Punisher for psychiatric examination, but simply decreeing that he was "insane" on the basis of counsel's rhetoric (and over his vehement objection.)
== Film ==
| |||