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Rhyme and Reason

The start of this week's episode had a familiar feel to it. A nuclear family is sitting around the kitchen table eating Sunday dinner. (We regularly eat Sunday dinner together as a nuclear family.) The teenage son, Kevin Blair, wants to go on an unsupervised, co-ed camping trip. (I have a son, Greg, who wants to do all sorts of crazy, unsupervised things, most of them involving a skateboard.) Kevin's mother, quite reasonably from where I was sitting, thinks that a camping trip is not the best idea she has ever heard of. Tempers flare. Kevin gets up from the table and leaves. He returns with a gun that he fires in the direction of his mother. Except for the gun and shooting part, this is just like an evening at the Salvesen household.

Kevin is arrested for murder. A civil lawyer (i.e., a lawyer who has a civil law practice as opposed to a nice and considerate lawyer) initially represents Kevin until Helen Gamble tells him he is over his head and he had better hire Bobby Donnell. Which he does - who after all could refuse Lara Flynn Boyle?

The rest of the Kevin Blair storyline focuses on whether he will be charged as an adult or as a child. In Massachusetts, in order for a child between the ages of 14 and 17 to be tried as an adult, he or she must either have been previously committed to the care of the Department of Youth Services and now charged with committing a serious offense, or he or she must be charged with having committed an offense involving the infliction or threat of serious bodily harm. In addition, the child must present a "significant danger" to the public, based on the offense charged and his or her past record, and the child cannot be amenable to rehabilitation as a juvenile.

In Sunday's episode, Helen Gamble seeks to have Kevin charged as an adult - which would likely lead to a mandatory life sentence. Following a hearing (one of those "let's have a hearing on this incredibly important legal issue tomorrow"), and some angst, the Judge decides that Kevin can be charged as a adult. This is a realistic decision. Although charging a child as an adult is not favored, where a prosecutor seeks to have a child charged as a adult, courts uniformly acquiesce. However, I thought the Judge's reasoning was somewhat silly. In yet another ex parte meeting, Donnell protests that the Judge's decision - by which she necessarily determined that Kevin could not be rehabilitated - demonstrates a lack of hope. A fair point. The Judge asserts that she decided to allow Kevin to be charged as an adult because she wanted to believe - no matter what the evidence was -- that a child could not commit such an act.

In the second story, Eugene Young represents a convicted murderer on his appeal. The conviction is based on yet another confession that was unlawfully obtained from the defendant who had asked for his attorney in the midst of the police interrogation. As an aside, the interrogation reminded me of a couple of NYPD Blue episodes I had seen. I still think that the characters of The Practice ought to get out more and muscle into other shows, like NYPD Blue, though I don't think any of them are licensed to practice in New York, but I digress. The videotape of the confession is played at the hearing before the Appeals Court - which would never happen. Moreover, was I the only one who noticed the extreme professional quality of the videotaped confession? The camera zooms in for a close up on the defendant. It slowly moves around the room to show the characters from different angles. Maybe I am being too critical (of course, I am) but I was distracted by this.

There were other details of this storyline that were exceptionally unrealistic. First, at the appellate argument, an attorney would never stand up in the middle of an argument and start talking over the other attorney's presentation. The appellate court justices would go ballistic if this happened. Second, and just as unbelievable, the Appeals Court never reconvenes to announce a decision from the bench. It issues written decisions. This way the Appeals Court avoids silly demonstrations - like the one presented by Eugene when he accuses the Court of shirking its duty.

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Eugene's blow-up - for which he is promptly jailed for contempt - is tied up with his own son's misconception that it is his father's role to get the guilty off. Euguene's speech, which is a version of the true but hackneyed "t'is better that ten guilty men go free, than one innocent man be found guilty," needs something, but I'm just not sure what. As we know, Eugene is now running the firm and has apparently won the wrestling match with his conscience over the morality of his profession.

Finally, a younger and then-single Lindsay Dole is approached to handle a class action asbestos matter. She fills the firm with fake computers and art, plays hard to get, and lands the case. I didn't buy it for a minute.

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