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Jury of the Damned: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Dan'l Webster had faced some hard juries and hanging judges in his time, but this was the hardest he'd ever faced, and he knew it. They sat there with a kind of glitter in their eyes, and the stranger's smooth voice went on and on. Every time he'd raise an objection, it'd be "Objection sustained", but whenever Dan'l objected, it'd be "Objection denied". Well, you couldn't expect fair play from a fellow like this Mr. Scratch.''|'''Stephen Vincent Benet''', ''[[The Devil and Daniel Webster]]''}}
In ''[[The Devil and Daniel Webster]]'' by Stephen Vincent Benet when Daniel Webster is defending his client Jabez Stone against the Devil, he demands the right to a trial with an American judge and jury. The Devil agrees, provided he gets to choose the judge and jury. He provides a jury of traitors and murderers to sit in judgment on Stone.
This has been played with many times in homages, pastiches and parodies of ''The Devil
▲See also [[Joker Jury]] and [[Historys Crime Wave]].
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
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== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[The Devil and Daniel Webster]]'' was made into a brilliant film version in 1941, also known as ''All That Money Can Buy'', with a screenplay by Benet.
* The 2001 film version, released in 2007, ''Shortcut To Happiness'' [[Setting Update|transfers the story to modern day Las Vegas]].
* There is an animated version titled ''The Devil and Daniel Mouse''.
* In the 1946 movie ''[[A Matter of Life and Death]]'', Englishman Peter Carter is put on a trial before a celestial jury to determine whether he has the right to remain on Earth. The prosecutor is American Abraham Farlan, who hates the British for causing his death in the American Revolutionary War. Carter's defender, Doctor Reeves, challenges the composition of the jury, which is made up of representatives who are prejudiced against the British: a Napoleonic French officer, a Boer soldier from the Boer War, a Russian killed in the Crimean War, an Indian killed in the annexation of the Punjab, a Chinese man who died in the Boxer Rebellion, and an Irishman from the early 20th Century.
== [[Literature]] ==
* The originator of this trope was the short story ''[[The Devil and Daniel Webster]]'' by Stephen Vincent Benet.
* ''The Barsoom Project'', sequel to [[Larry Niven]]'s ''Dream Park'', features a sequence where the [[Player Characters]] are put on trial by the [[Anthropomorphic Personification|manifestations]] of humanity's sins and crimes as defined by the literal themepark version of the Eskimo religion.
* In the [[Xanth]] book ''Heaven Cent'', Prince Dolph has to protect the skeleton Grace'l Ossein from one of these, though it's less a jury of the damned and more a jury of characters met earlier in the book.
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* ''[[The Monkees]]'' episode 'The Devil and Peter Tork'.
* ''[[The Ghost and Mrs. Muir]]'' episode 'Not So Faust'.
* ''[[Swamp Thing]]'' TV series: Anton Arcane complains that the jury is not impartial, as they all know him well. This troper thinks it was a dream sequence or something.
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Richard in ''[[Looking for Group]]'' is held in court to be judged by his
** Or [http://lfgcomic.com/page/533 did they?]
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'''Nixon:''' Yes, master. }}
** Given that Nixon has been dead for nearly 20 years, this speaks volumes as to how long the Simpsons have been on the air.
* ''[[Tiny Toons]]'' episode 'Night Ghoulery' ("The Devil and Daniel Webfoot" segment).
* ''[[Tripping the Rift]]'' episode ''"The Devil and a guy called Webster"''.
** To elaborate... Chode sells his soul to Satan. To get out of paying what he owes, the crew intends to travel back in time to the 1880s to hire Daniel Webster to represent him. Unfortunately, they accidentally travel to the ''19''80s, and brink back
* In ''[[The Smurfs]]'' episode 'Harmony Steals the Show', Harmony Smurf is put on trial by a jury of (generic) ghost musicians and composers in a dispute about being in a [[Deal with the Devil|legally-bound contract]] that allowed him to use a ghost's original symphony as his own in exchange for being that ghost's eternal spectral nightclub performer; only the ghost making the charge against Harmony is found guilty of plagiarism when the "original symphony" he claimed he created was revealed to be musical pieces stolen from other musicians.
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[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Plots]]
[[Category:Jury of the Damned]]▼
[[Category:Example as a Thesis]]
[[Category:Crime and Punishment Tropes]]
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