Lawyers Watch—and Judge--Legal Dramas
The Houston Chronicle asked real-life defense lawyers to critique police shows on TV and learned—no surprise here—that the legal scenes are entertaining but laughable.
Among the fictional scenes, unlikely to play out in the real world:
–On Law & Order, defense lawyers sit idly by while their clients confess to prosecutors.
–On CSI, forensic lab technicians interview murder witnesses and rely on massive budgets to fund their investigations.
–On The Closer, courts forgive illegal interrogation.
Defense attorney Kent Schaeffer notes that today’s TV dramas are more law-and-order-oriented than the old Perry Mason shows. “Used to be the prosecutors were saps and the cops were Barney Fife,” he told the newspaper. “Now the prosecutors are heroic.”
But portraying law enforcement in a positive light can have some drawbacks. Some jurors acquit if prosecutors don’t present an air-tight case supported by forensics, a phenomenon known as the “CSI effect.”
