Off on a Technicality: Difference between revisions

** "Juvenile": A suspect cannot be tried as an adult because the murder took place before the law allowing minors to be tried as adults was passed and she's way too old to be tried in Family Court.

** Just as frequently, L&O would invert the trope; getting damning evidence in under technicalities. One example would be a letter, written by the psychiatrist of the defendant to the victim warning her of danger, was ruled inadmissible due to spousal privilege (as the psychiatrist was counciling man and wife). But since they were legally separated at the time, Jack McCoy was able to argue that spousal privilege was void, making the wife a third party to the sessions, thus voiding Doctor/Patient privilege, thus letting the letter back in and nailing the defendant.

* ''[[Law and Order Special Victims Unit|SVU]]'' has a few:

** A sexsomniac mistook his fiancee's sister for his fiancee while "sleepwalking" and the DA can't charge him with rape because he wasn't conscious of what he was doing and he regularly had consensual sex with his fiancee in his unconscious state. It's both [[Hollywood Law]] since his culpability would still be a matter for a jury or judge to decide (the DA acted like his condition was a 'get out of jail free card') and [[Hollywood Psych]] as sexsomniacs cannot premeditate sexual encounters with a specific person; the condition is based on them being completely out of touch with whom they're having sex with.

* On ''[[The Mentalist]]'', there was an episode featuring a man who was accused of murdering his wife and only wasn't convicted because a videotape proving that he lied about not being at the crime scene when it happened was ruled unadmissable for not being presented on time. {{spoiler|it was revealed later that the man was really innocent and that the real murderer doctored the tape to frame the victim's husband.}}

* In the [[Batman (TV series)|live-action Batman series]], Batman was a deputy and sometimes even acted as a prosecutor. Despite this, no enemy of his ever tried to convince the judge to dismiss evidence that only came into light because of Batman breaking into places without a search warrant.

 

== Fan Fiction ==