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Former county commissioner Jimmy Dimora is on trial in Akron, Ohio, for corruption. Channel 19 is covering the trial, but are not allowed to take cameras into the federal courtroom. So they did the next best thing -or some would call a better thing- and recreated the court scenes using puppets! This video is day two. You can also see day one at WOIO. Link -via Fark
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was a million-dollar movie star in 1921, when there weren’t all that many million dollar movie stars. After a Labor Day weekend party, a young actress named Virginia Rappe was hospitalized and later died. Arbuckle was the prime suspect in her death. The prosecution’s evidence came from the testimony of Maude Delmont, a woman with a shady past who kept changing her story.
The newspapers never questioned Delmont’s version of events, and they kept flogging Arbuckle. His reputation was in a shambles, even after his friends Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin vouched for his character.
But Arbuckle’s lawyers introduced medical evidence showing that Rappe had had a chronic bladder condition, and her autopsy concluded that there “were no marks of violence on the body, no signs that the girl had been attacked in any way.” (The defense also had witnesses with damaging information about Rappe’s past, but Arbuckle wouldn’t let them testify, he said, out of respect for the dead.) The doctor who treated Rappe at the hotel testified that she had told him Arbuckle did not try to sexually assault her, but the prosecutor got the point dismissed as hearsay.
No matter what happened in court, Arbuckle also went through “trial by newspaper.” Find out what happened to Fatty Arbuckle, legally and professionally, at Past Imperfect. Link
This week, mental_floss is running a series about Abraham Lincoln’s adventures as a young man, before he got into politics. In part one, we learn about a murder in Illinois. What does that have to do with Lincoln? We find out in part two, in a story of a wrestling match between Lincoln and another young man that linked the parties together. In part three, Lincoln the lawyer argues for the defense in an unorthodox but memorable manner. What happened then? Find out how all of this affected Lincoln’s political career, in part four.
by Seth Jarndyl, Improbable Research staff
What is the lengthiest spoken oath regularly required of witnesses in a formal legal trial? I believe the answer is: 374 words, in the legal courts of Burma (now Myanmar), until at least the middle of the nineteenth century.
That, anyway, is the longest I have found in examining legal documents and historical reports from the nations of the world over the past five hundred years. If anyone knows of, and can document, a longer oath, I would of course be pleased to hear of it.
A English translation of the oath appears in Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie’s 1853 book Burmah and the Burmese, published in London. Mackenzie writes:
Witnesses, both in the civil and criminal causes, are sometimes examined upon oath, though not always. The oath is written in a small book of pa1m-leaves, and is held over the head of the witness. Foreigners, however, take their own oaths.
Mackenzie calls the small book The Book of Imprecations, but says that “the Burmese call it, the Book of the Oath.” It includes some sentiments for any witness who would testify untruthfully:
May all those who, in consequence of bribery from either party, do not speak the truth, incur the eight dangers and the ten punishments. May they be infected with all sorts of diseases.
Moreover, may they be destroyed by elephants, bitten and slain by serpents, killed and devoured by the devils and giants, the tigers, and other ferocious animals of the forest. May whoever asserts a falsehood be swallowed by the earth, may he perish by sudden death, may a thunderbolt from heaven slay him—the thunderbolt which is one of the arms of the Nat Deva.
more …
The blogger New Jovian Thunderbolt offers this novel legal argument:
American law originates from British Common Law. Specifically Common Law before we split from them. 1776 and all that. It’s where the 2nd Amendment comes from and a right to defend yourself. But after 1776, our jurisprudence system was evolving along its own path.
Britain didn’t overturn trial by combat until after we declared independence. No American court has really addressed it. Ergo, trial by combat may still be legitimate under U.S. Law.
If so, court TV could become a lot more interesting.
Link | Photo by Flickr user Patch Heart Photography used under Creative Commons license
Previously: Kentucky State Officials Must Swear an Oath Against Dueling
Clara Tang is going down in the history books. She is currently the oldest woman on record ordered to stand trial for murder in Australia. She is 92.
After almost 70 years of marriage, Mrs Tang – suffering dementia – allegedly killed Ching Yung Tang in their plush sixth-floor unit in the Connaught apartment complex overlooking Sydney’s Hyde Park on March 12, 2010.
It is said that Clara believed her husband was trying to poison her. She allegedly confessed to the murder.
Is 92 too old to stand trial for murder? Is there a point where the cost of proceeding outweighs the need for societal justice?
Les Kennedy of the Sydney Morning Herald has more: Link
A man is accused of a crime. Is he guilty? Stick his hand in a pot of boiling water. If he is unharmed, God has proclaimed his innocence and protected him. If the suspect is burned, he’s guilty and can be punished (further). This is the basic premise of the legal tradition of trial by ordeal, discredited since the Enlightenment. But was it an effective determinant of guilt? University of Chicago economist Peter T. Leeson says “yes”:
How might these trials have worked, without divine intervention? The key insight is that ordeals weren’t just widely practiced. They were widely believed in. It’s this belief – literally, the fear of God – that could have allowed the ordeals to function effectively.
First, consider the reasoning of the defendants. Guilty believers expected God to reveal their guilt by harming them in the ordeal. They anticipated being boiled and convicted. Innocent believers, meanwhile, expected God to protect them in the ordeal. They anticipated escaping unscathed, and being exonerated.
The only defendants who would have been willing to go through with the ordeal were therefore the innocent ones. Guilty defendants would have preferred to avoid the ordeal – by confessing their crimes, settling with their accusers, or fleeing the realm.
The next thing to understand is that clerics administrated ordeals and adjudged their outcomes – and did so under elaborate sets of rules that gave them wide latitude to manipulate the process. Priests knew that only innocent defendants would be willing to plunge their hands in boiling water. So priests could simply rig trials to exonerate defendants who were willing to go through with the ordeal. The rituals around the ordeals gave them plenty of cover to ensure the water wasn’t boiling, or the iron wasn’t burning, and so on. If rigging failed, a priest could interpret the ordeal’s outcome to exculpate the defendant nonetheless (“His arm is healing well!”).
Link via Volokh Conspiracy | Journal Article | Photo: Sony Pictures
A look back at the most interesting court cases of the last 100 years.
During the 20th century, a so-called “trial of the century” occurred every few years, fueled by media sensationalism and a public thirst for juicy gossip, celebrity lifestyles or good old-fashioned revenge. Here are 20 trials that have, at one time or another, been deemed the indisputable “trial of the (20th) century.”
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by johnson.
