Moses Crim Law - YouTube du Jour
Criminal Law Video Question
&
List of Crime/Legal Movies
CRIME/LAW MOVIES
There are many dramatic movies with criminal plots or legal overtones.
Watch them with the fresh eye of a student of crimes and defenses.
Many crime films come to mind. Here are a few: The Maltese Falcon (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Rear Window (1954), The Wrong Man (1956), Twelve Angry Men (1957), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Compulsion (1959), Inherit the Wind (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Cape Fear (1962), Wait Until Dark (1967), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), In the Heat of the Night (1967), Bullit (1968), , Molly Maguires (1970), Dirty Harry (1971), The French Connection (1971), The Godfather I (1972), The Paper Chase (1073), The Sting (1973), Serpico (1973), Magnum Force (1973), Death Wish (1974), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia ( 1974), The Godfather II (1974), Warriors (1974), Conversation (1974), Chinatown (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Marathon Man (1976), China Syndrome (1979), The Onion Field (1979), Kramer v. Kramer (1979), And Justice for All (1979), Breaker Morant (1980), Body Heat (1981), Blade Runner (1982), 48 Hours (1982), The Verdict (1982), Rambo- First Blood (1982), Scarface (1983), Sudden Impact (1983), Once Upon A Time in America (1984), Blood Simple (1984), Commando (1985), The Jagged Edge (1985), Witness (1985), Something Wild (1986), Raw Deal (1986), Nuts (1987), Matewan (1987), Fatal Attraction (1987), The Untouchables (1987), The Big Easy (1987), Wall Street (1987), The Thin Blue Line (1988), Lethal Weapon 1 (1987)and Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), The Accused ( 1988), The Music Box (1989), Die Hard 1 (1988), Mississippi Burning (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Class Action (1990), Another 48 hours (1990), Reversal of Fortune (1990), Presumed Innocent (1990), JFK (1991), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Point Break (1991), Cape Fear (1991), Thelma & Louise (1991), Reservoir Dogs (1992), Patriot Games (1992), A Few Good Men (1992), Carlito's Way (1993), The Firm (1993), Philadelphis (1993), Pulp Fiction (1994), Natural Born Killers (1994), The Professional (AKA Leon) (1994), Speed 1 (1994), Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Usual Suspects (1995), Murder in the First (1994), Seven (1995), Casino (1995), Kiss the Girls (1995), Fargo (1996), A Time to Kill (1996), Sleepers (1996), Ransom (1996), Priomal Fear (1996), The Devil's Own (1997), Sleepers (1996). The Ghosts of Mississipi (1996), The Chamber (1996), (Donnie Brasco (1997), LA Confidential ( 1997), Conspiracy Theory (1997), The Devil's Advocate (1997), A Perfect Murder (1998), American History (1998), Shadow of a Doubt (1998), Very Bad Things (1998), Heat (1999), Snow Falling on Cedars (1999), Double Jeopardy (1999) - based on misinterpretation of double jeopardy See Wiki, Eye of the Beholder (1999), El Mariachi (1999), Erin Brockovich (2000), Memento (2000), Training Day (2001), Legally Blonde (2001), Oceans' 11 (2002), Thirteen (2003), The Life of David Gayle (2003), Kill Bill - Vols. I (2003) & II (2004), Collateral (2004), Crash (2004), Man on Fire (2004), History of Violence (2005), North Country (2005), The Departed (2006), Fracture (2007), American Gangster (2007), Michael Clayton (2007), No Country for Old Men (2007), Public Enemy (2009), etc. Of course, there are many other good ones.
War movies, e.g., Platoon (1986), Saving Private Ryan (1998) are full of action, passion, and blood, but because they involve different rules, i.e., the rules of war, where players are trying to kill or seriously wound one another, they don't make great examples for our studies in criminal law.
There are lots of great westerns with crime themes, e.g., The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), High Noon (1952), Shane (1953), The Searchers (1956), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Magnificant Seven (1960), How the West Was Won (1962), Fistful of Dollars (1964), Good the Bad the Ugly (1966), Once Upon A Time in The West (1968), The Wild Bunch (1969), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Little Big Man (1970), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Silverado (1985), Last of the Mohicans (1992), Unforgiven (1992), Lone Star (1996), Open Range (2003), and Lonesome Dove - TV Series, etc.
My Suggestion: During the criminal law semester, watch crime plot TV shows and the laterst crime movies with the fresh eye of a student of criminal law. Occasionally a free classic crime movie will come up on sites like Hulu, Crackle, and Google.)
copyright © ray moses 2009
copyright © ray moses 2009
Slide One - Week One- Class One
Necessity - Choice of Evils - First Class -
Does this vignette have anything in common with our first case Dudley & Stephens (D&S)? What would Lord Coleridge tell this young man? Would it be, "You and your sister are legally bound to die with your father. Faced with this calamity where it appears that at least one must die, you are to simply do nothing. Your inactivity may result in everyone
perishing rather than just one, but that's the breaks. Keep a stiff upper lip. Help may arrive." Are there relevant distinctions between D&S and the mountain climbers? Certainly, the crisis in D&S took longer to develop and
arguably might not have reached the point of ultimate danger faced by the climbers. Also, there's not much
question as to who has to be sacrificed in the case of the roped climbers; casting of lots wouldn't be practical.
If you are roped to a climber who has fallen and neither of you can remedy the situation that places both of you in peril
of imminent death, is it criminal of you to cut the rope binding you together, knowing (but intending) that the dangling climber will most certainly fall to his death? Unless the law justifies or excuses a knowing killing, it is classified as murder. Do human beings generally have the inner will to resist causing death of an innocent in a situation such as the moral dilemma depicted in the clip? If you want to justify or excuse what would otherwise be murder in this scenario, how do you do it with the criminal law?
Consider the defense of necessity (1)? Does the common law case of Dudley & Stephens give us an answer
as to the availability of necessity as a defense at English common law? Was it correct to deprive Dudley and
Stephens of a necessity defense to the crime of murder with malice aforethought (intent to kill)?
Note that UCL 5th, page 291, says "Necessity may not have been a common law defense in England,
but it is a part of the common law tradition of the United States."
Do either or both the Model Penal Code and the Texas Penal Code
Dudley & Stephens case?
Examine Section 3.01 MPC and Section 9.22 TPC.
In the clip that you see above, the son (the potential murder defendant with the pocketknife) who cuts his beloved
father free knowingly killed another human being in order to save himself and his sister. Does it matter that the
father orders his son to cut him (the father) loose? Does the consent of the homicide victim (the father here)
absolve the killer of criminal responsibility? Does it matter that two people will be saved if one is sacrificed?
Is the situation different if only the son and the father were on the rope?
If you are going to allow the son a necessity defense, explain how the choice-of-evils balances out? Must there be a pressing emergency so that it is immediately necessary to take what would otherwise be criminal action to avoid
imminent harm or should the law permit corrective action before the peril of death becomes imminent? Should the
son have to wait until the last second to make the cut? What if help arrived shortly after he cut the rope?
If the sons cuts the rope and sends his father to certain death, has the son done anything immoral? Is it socially desirable that the father be cut loose in order to save the son and daughter? If we choose not to justify or excuse
the son's knowing killing of his father, what punishment befits the act and the actor? If we do punish the son, can we support that decision on the basis of specific deterrence, general deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and/or retribution?
Would this vignette have been useful to us if the father had thought to carry his own pocketknife?
[Do you recall the movie Alive in which there was no homicide, i.e., killing of one person by another, but where cannibalism was necessary for a group of young Uruguayan rugby players stranded in 1972 in the high Andes
when their plane crashed? (1)
To the contrary, the 1944 Alfred Hitchcock movie Lifeboat, from a story by
John Steinbeck, involves a group of passengers trying to survive in a lifeboat after their ship is torpedoed on
the open sea by a U-boat; there's no cannibalism. but several deaths, including homicides, take place
before rescue occurs. There are also two other films about the open boat based on the 1842 case of Alexander
starring Tyrone Power and The Last Survivors (1975) starring Martin Sheen.
Monty Python's sketch suggests facetiously that all aboard the lifeboat will willingly give up their
lives for the group's survival. Even if this were true, how is the choice to be made?
Suppose that among the candidates aboard the lifeboat are an escaped, convicted murderer
who knows how to navigate a boat, a thin Mother Teresa, a bulked-up Hulk Hogan,
a terminally-ill invalid, and a cute 6-month-old infant.]
