Tagged: Arrow

The Law Is A Ass #437: Green Arrow Joins The FB Aye-Yi-Yi

No, I didn’t lie.

All I said I was that I finished with the Arrow episode “Docket No. 11-19-41-73.” I never said I was finished with Arrow.

Now, all Arrow had to do for me to be finished with it was get through the last two episodes of the 6th season without any outrageous legal gaffs. Aaaaaand it couldn’t even do that. Hell, the season finale “Life Sentence” couldn’t even get through the “Previously on Arrow” part without an outrageous legal gaff.

You will recall, unless you purged the nonsense of “Docket No. 11-19-41-73” from your mind – and I wouldn’t blame you if you had – that Oliver (The Green Arrow) Queen and Team Arrow were fighting Ricardo Diaz, a crime lord who had taken over Star City. In the “Previously on” section of “Life Sentence” Oliver went to FBI agent Samandra Watson and asked her help to take down Diaz. Watson, who had been in Star City all season investigating whether Oliver Queen was secretly the Green Arrow – so far unsuccessfully – told Ollie, and I quote, “You want my help, I’m going to need you to say the words.” “The words” being an admission that he was the Green Arrow.

Now what Ollie should have answered was, “Listen, lady, how about I tell your frelling boss that instead taking down a frakking international crime lord, like you’re supposed to do, you’re threatening to withhold FBI cooperation unless I admit I’m a criminal?” (Although, I would have substituted in a few of what Mr. Spock called “more colorful metaphors.”) Instead, Ollie admitted he was Green Arrow. And by the end of the episode –

SPOILER ALERT!

– the FBI used Ollie’s confession to get him to agree to a plea bargain. We’ll forgo discussing the details of the plea bargain for the nonce, because we have other nonsense to discuss first. Such as the fact that the FBI was able to use Ollie’s statement against him in the first place.

The Fifth Amendment says that no person can be compelled to be a witness against himself. Courts have interpreted said language to mean the government cannot coerce a confession from a person. Now as I don’t think any of you have any problem accepting that an FBI agent is part of the government, the real question is, did Agent Watson compel Ollie into confessing? What say thee, Messrs. Merriam and Webster?

You say to compel is, “to cause to do or occur by overwhelming pressure.” I think what Agent Watson did fits that definition nicely, so I am unconvinced that Ollie’s confession could have been used against him in a court of law. So unconvinced, in fact that I think even Jean Loring, as bad a lawyer as she showed herself to be in Ollie’s trial, could have won that argument.

Watson’s next step in bringing down Diaz, the one taken after she had stepped all over Ollie’s constitutional rights, was to go to Quentin Lance, the acting mayor of Star City, and have him sign an authorization for the FBI to operate in Star City, because “Diaz’s crimes are local.” Then Diaz spent the rest of the episode trying to extort Mayor Lance into rescinding said authorization. Which makes me wonder, was no one paying attention to what Diaz had been doing all season?

Here are just a few of Diaz’s many crimes. Diaz used Star City’s docks to import illegal narcotics into the city which he then distributed for sale. That means Diaz was involved in crimes that either crossed state or international borders or both. The FBI has jurisdiction to investigate interstate and international crimes. It don’t need no steenkin’ authorization from the local authorities.

Diaz joined The Quadrant, an international criminal organization. Or what the FBI calls transnational organized crime. And you know why the FBI calls it that? Because it has jurisdiction to investigate TOC activities at the local level without authorization.

Still I can’t fault the show for making this mistake. Without the B plot, the episode would have had twenty minutes to fill. And it might have filled it with something even dumber.

Which brings us full circle, back to Ollie’s plea bargain. In return for Ollie admitting he was Green Arrow and pleading guilty to whatever federal offenses he violated by being the Green Arrow, the federal government agreed to grant immunity for all the members of Team Arrow. Then Ollie went off to federal prison.

While Team Arrow all went to state prison. See, the FBI and the federal government could only grant Team Arrow immunity from prosecution for federal crimes. It had no jurisdiction to grant them immunity from prosecution for any state crimes they may have committed.

Remember when John Diggle, Dinah Drake, and Felicity Smoak testified that Ollie wasn’t the Green Arrow? That was perjury. Remember how Ollie was being prosecuted for vigilantism? Well those three could have been prosecuted for all the acts of vigilantism they committed as Spartan, Black Canary, and Overwatch. As could Curtis (Mr. Terrific) Holt and Rene (Wild Dog) Ramirez. Team Arrow could even have been prosecuted as aiders and abettors for all the crimes Ollie was prosecuted for in “Docket No. 11-19-41-73.” The feds couldn’t have granted them immunity for any of those state crimes. So Ollie’s happy ending? Only if he’s happy that Team Arrow’s on the Friends and Family Plan.

Okay, Team Arrow wasn’t actually prosecuted and didn’t actually go to prison. I guess law schools in Star City don’t have any classes on the difference between federal and local jurisdiction. Which is probably fortunate for us. After the nonsense that was “Docket No. 11-19-41-73,” did we really want to suffer through Docket Nos. 11-19-41-74, 75, 76, 77, and 78?

The Law Is A Ass #436: Is Green Arrow Not Guilty By Reason Of Inanity?

I’m sick of it!

I’ve spent the past three weeks writing about the Arrow episode “Docket No. 11-19-41-73” and like Popeye said, “That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!” No matter how long it takes, I’m going to finish with “Docket No. 11-19-41-73” today. Even if I have to write about it from the beginning all the way to the SPOILER WARNING! at the episode’s end.

(more…)

The Law Is A Ass

The Law Is A Ass #435: Green Arrow Adds Insult To Perjury

Suppose you were a lawyer. (Don’t worry, this is just a thought experiment. I wouldn’t wish that fate on my worst enemy; only on myself.) Suppose also, that you told your significant other you wouldn’t get married until you had established yourself as a lawyer. Suppose further that you couldn’t establish yourself as a lawyer, because you kept losing all your trials. And, finally, suppose you continued losing trials until your significant other became a super hero and secretly helped you win them. What would you call yourself?

Self-centered would be a good start. Then you could move on to lucky your significant other was so understanding. Calling yourself a bad lawyer goes without saying, but you should probably say it, anyway. Finally, you could call yourself Jean Loring, because that was her character arc in 1961, when she was introduced in the comics.

Jean’s not like that in the comics anymore, but let’s not go there. (Aw, c’mon, if we go there, Amazon gives us a cut! –Ed.) Instead let’s go to the world of the TV series Arrow, where Jean Loring is just a bad lawyer and hasn’t become an insane murderer. Yet.

I’ve spent two columns so far writing about the Arrow episode “Docket No. 11-19-41-73.” You know, the one where Oliver (Green Arrow) Queen was on trial for violating Star City’s anti-vigilante law and some assorted homicides and assaults. So far, I’ve only covered the prosecution’s case. Now, to have Jean paraphrase that Get Smart episode when Max was on trial for murder, “For the past two columns, I have sat idly by while my worthy opponent, the prosecuting attorney has stood up here and made a complete jackass out of herself. Now it’s my turn.”

Two state’s witnesses – John Diggle and Dinah Lance, both of whom are secretly costumed heroes who work with Ollie on Team Arrow – lied under oath. They testified that Ollie was not Green Arrow. If Jean were to get information that Ollie was the Green Arrow, she would be ethically required to report their perjury to the court. Moreover, Jean would also not be able to question Ollie or any other witness, if she believed they would lie under oath and testify he wasn’t Green Arrow. That would be suborning perjury.

So the last thing Jean would want to do is ask Ollie, “Are you the Green Arrow?”Naturally, it was the first thing Jean did. Did it before she even put on her first witness. And Ollie told her he was. Because he’s the hero, he wouldn’t lie. He wasn’t under oath yet.

Once Jean knew Ollie was Green Arrow, she suggested their best tactic was jury nullification; that is admit to the jury that Ollie was Green Arrow but argue that the jury should still find him not guilty, because of all the good he had done as the Green Arrow. Basically, you asking the jury to nullify the law by ignoring it and returning a verdict that is contrary to the evidence and the law.

There were a few minor problems with Jean’s jury nullification plan. First, lawyers aren’t supposed to do it. You can’t ask the juries to ignore the law, you’re supposed to ask them to obey it. Second, because jury nullification is not permitted, when judges see lawyers engaging in jury nullification, they put a stop to it. Third, Judge MacGarvey, the judge presiding over Ollie’s trial, was corrupt and under the control of Ricardo Diaz, the crime boss who ruled Star City and who wanted Ollie to be convicted and rot in prison.

Did I say minor problems? A bar serving under-aged drinkers has minor problems. This plan had major problems; more than the 4077th.

Jean was trying a case in front of a judge she suspected had a vested interest in making sure Ollie was convicted and her plan was to hope he’d allow her to assert an improper defense he had every reason – both ethical and financial – to stop. It’s a good thing the 2017 Cleveland Browns didn’t fire their head coach after that 0-16 season, because with those strategy skills, the Browns would have snatched Jean up in a second.

Ollie rejected jury nullification, so Jean went with a more conventional defense. Her first witness was Felicity Smoak; Ollie’s wife and Team Arrow’s resident computer hacker. You know one of those characters who’s constantly typing on a computer and are contractually obligated to say,“Hack into the Pentagon’s computer. They’ve got the most sophisticated security in the—”

“I’m in.”

Felicity testified as a computer expert that a photo of Ollie as the Green Arrow was a fake that had been digitally altered. Which it was. So Felicity was telling the truth. Had Jean stopped there, everything would have been fine.

She…. didn’t stop there.

The code of lawyer ethics has a protocol for lawyers who believe a witness is going to commit perjury. Ethically, the lawyer can’t ask the witness questions and elicit lies. That’s suborning perjury. But ethically, the lawyer can’t refuse to call witnesses the defendant wants called, either. It’s the client’s defense. Defense counsel is the defendant’s advocate and is supposed to do what the client wants. So when the defendant wants the lawyer to call a witness who will commit perjury, the lawyer is supposed to call the witness and then just say something like, “Tell us what happened in your own words,” and let the witness give a narrative account That way, the witness testifies but without the lawyer asking any questions that elicit any lies.

Yes, that solution splits more hairs than Floyd the Barber shortly before the big Mayberry Founder’s Day Parade. But it’s the compromise the profession set up to cover the problem.

Jean, being a bad lawyer, didn’t do that either. She asked Felicity, is Oliver Queen the Green Arrow and Felicity answered no. Jean was pig-headed and did things her way. Which raises the question, was that suborned perjury or stubborn perjury?

Jean compounded the subornation with her next witness, Oliver Queen. She asked him whether he was the Green Arrow knowing he’d say no under oath and he played along by saying no. So far we’ve had four witnesses who committed perjury, a defense attorney who openly suborns perjury, and a prosecutor who didn’t interview any of her witnesses before calling them. Could this trial get any more preposterous? Of course it could.

Right after Ollie’s testimony, the episode had an act break. It needed a hook to keep the audience from changing channels while the network hawked some new drugs whose side effects always seem to be lymphoma, heart failure, kidney infection, death, loss of life, and diarrhea.

So just before that act break, the episode decided to insult our intelligence by having a surprise witness drop into the courtroom through the courtroom’s shattering skylight. A surprise witness wearing a Green Arrow costume.

And what was this surprise witness’s testimony? Wouldn’t you like to know?

Actually, I presume you would like to know. So I’ll tell you. But I’ll tell you next time. Just as the show needed an act-break hook, I need a this-column’s-too-long-and-needs-to-break-until-next-column hook. And as hooks go, a mysterious, skylight-shattering surprise witness works better than a pirate’s prosthetic.

The Law Is A Ass #434: Green Arrow’s Prosecutor Is Trying My Patience

If, as it has been said, a fish rots from the head down, then Team Arrow, from The CW’s Arrow, must be a twenty ton whale shark that’s decomposing from the head, Oliver (Green Arrow) Queen, down through the rotting body that is Green Arrow’s support group, Team Arrow. Why I call them rotten is something we’ll go into as “The Law Is a Ass” continues to suffer the migraine that is the Arrow episode “Docket No. 11-19-41-73.”

Ollie, a super hero in Star City was on trial for violating Star City’s anti-vigilante law and for some homicides and assaults occasioned by the fact that on occasion he shot people with arrows. I started writing about Ollie’s trial last column. I didn’t get too far. I covered the facts that Ollie’s trial was in Judge McGarvey’s courtroom; that McGarvey was under the thumb of Ricardo Diaz, the crime lord who rather openly ruled Star City; that Alexa Van Owen was the prosecutor; and that Jean Loring was defense counsel. I mentioned that Alexa called John Diggle, who was secretly the second-in-command of Team Arrow, and that John, with Ollie’s full knowledge and approval, perjured himself by testifying Ollie was not the Green Arrow.

I pointed out that Alexa wasn’t doing a very good job, because she called witnesses she had not interviewed before trial, so did not know what their testimony would be. I think the second thing they teach you in law school is don’t call a witness about whose testimony you’re uncertain and don’t ask a question whose answer you don’t already know. (The first thing they teach you is how to find the Tuition Office.)

So did Alexa’s job performance improve as the trial went on? Is the Dalai Lama Catholic?

Alexa’s next witness was Dinah Drake, a detective in the Star City Police Department, and also secretly the super hero Black Canary. And guess who didn’t lock down Dinah’s testimony before calling her as a witness?

Did you guess the prosecutor who didn’t know in advance that Dinah was going to perjure herself and testify that Oliver Queen wasn’t Green Arrow. How do I know that Alexa didn’t know what Dinah was going say in advance? Logic and the Rules of Evidence.

If Alexa had interviewed Dinah and learned Dinah was going to say Ollie wasn’t Green Arrow, then Alexa wouldn’t have called her. Not calling a witness whose testimony will contradict your case is so basic that not even Dr. McCoy would have quibbled over the logic. If, on the other hand, Alexa had interviewed Dinah and Dinah had told her Ollie was Green Arrow, then Alexa would have had a prior inconsistent statement from Dinah, which she could have used to impeach Dinah’s testimony.

The Rules of Evidence in most states allow a party in a trial to impeach its own witnesses. When the party calling the witness wants to impeach it’s own witness with a prior inconsistent statement, that party must first show that it was surprised by the testimony and that the testimony has affirmatively damaged its case. Or, put in language that even Cousin Vinny could understand, “Hey, Judge, I didn’t know da witness wuz gonna say dat, and it hoits my case.”

If Alexa had a prior statement from Dinah saying Ollie was Green Arrow, she could have argued to Judge McGarvey that Dinah’s testimony both surprised her and hurt her case. After McGarvey agreed — and even this bleeding-heart former defense attorney, agrees Alexa could show surprise and affirmative damage – Alexa could have impeached Dinah with the prior inconsistent statement. That Alexa either didn’t either know what Dinah was going to say or failed to impeach Dinah only shows that she didn’t interview Dinah before trial.

Oh, Alexa did impeach Dinah, but her method of impeachment was just as incompetent as her tactic of not interviewing her witnesses before trial. Alexa asked Dinah, over objection, whether she had murdered a drug-dealer named Sean Sonas. (Dinah had; trust me. I’ve seen all the Arrow episodes so I saw her do it.) Dinah declined to answer on 5th Amendment grounds.

Courts have held it’s improper to call a witness you know will invoke his or her 5th Amendment rights, because it is an attempt to build one’s case out of what the jury will infer from the witness’s invocation of the 5th Amendment. It’s just as improper to impeach a witness by asking a question you know will cause the witness to invoke the 5th Amendment. The jury will infer the witness must have committed the crime that the witness refuses to testify about and disregard the testimony of a witness it infers to be a criminal.

When Alexa asked Dinah whether Dinah murdered Sonas, she violated this principle. Not only should she never have asked the question, Judge McGarvey should have sustained the objection and never allowed the question to be asked. But, like I said earlier, McGarvey was a Black Friday judge; bought and paid for at bargain basement prices.

Alexa’s next witness was Rene Ramirez, secretly the Team Arrow member called Wild Dog. Rene originally planned to follow Team Arrow’s putrescent perjury party line and say Ollie wasn’t Green Arrow. (Meaning, once again, Alexa probably didn’t interview him before trial.) Rene changed his mind when Diaz threatened to harm Rene’s daughter, if he didn’t testify “properly.”

So for the first – and only – time in her trial, Alexa had a witness who did testify that Oliver Queen was Green Arrow. Then Alexa got to the heart of the various homicide and assault charges leveled against Ollie. She asked Rene if he ever saw Green Arrow kill or maim people. Rene testified that he had, but there were too many occurrences for him to estimate how many people it was.

With that triumphant testimony, Alexa rested her case.

And promptly lost every homicide and assault count leveled against Ollie. Or should have, anyway. This is a TV trial, remember, so we can’t expect it actually to follow such things as burden of proof or proof beyond a reasonable doubt. We can hope, but we shouldn’t really expect it.

See, in a trial for homicide and assault, it isn’t enough for a witness to testify that he saw the defendant kill or maim lots of people. The witness has to testify that he saw the defendant kill or maim the specific victims named in the indictments. Or, if not that, how about the testimony of the medical examiner that he pulled green arrows out of the corpses of people Oliver Queen was charged with killing? Something, anything, to prove that Ollie killed the people named in the indictment as opposed to a general murder of murder victims.

Had a competent defense counsel moved for a verdict of acquittal on the homicide and assault counts because the prosecution failed to offer any evidence that the defendant actually killed or assaulted the named victims, it would have been granted. Naturally Jean Loring, didn’t even go through the motions by making the motion. After all, where would the drama in the episode be if a prosecutor as inept as Alexa Van Owen were facing a competent defense attorney?

So after spending a couple of weeks describing what a lousy prosecutor Alexa Van Owen was, is it now time for me to write about what a lousy defense attorney Jean Loring was?

No.

Next time will be.

Meaning this column has run out of what the newspaper game calls column inches. We’ll have to talk about what a lousy attorney Jean Loring was next column. And probably the column after that. There was so much barristerly balderdash in “Docket No. 11-19-41-73” that I’m afraid we’re in for a long haul down the halls of justice.

The Law Is A Ass #433: Green Arrow Wants Me To Trial Little Tenderness

The Law Is A Ass #433: Green Arrow Wants Me To Trial Little Tenderness

I think I’m losing all respect for Oliver (The Green Arrow) Queen. And considering when the TV series Arrow started he was a stone killer except he killed people not stones, I didn’t have very much respect for him to begin with.

We’re talking about the Arrow episode “Docket No. 11-19-41-73.” Keep those numbers handy; we’ll be talking about them for a while. And, no, I wouldn’t advise playing them in your local lottery. Why should those numbers be winners? Nothing else about this episode was.

Ricardo Diaz, the crime lord who had taken control of Star City earlier in the season felt it wasn’t enough that he used the corrupt politicians under his control to impeach Oliver as the Mayor of Star City, he also had his underlings prosecute Oliver. Diaz wanted Oliver to spend the rest of his life in prison, while Ollie watched Diaz ravage Star City. Diaz even brought in a special prosecutor, Alexa Van Owen with her 99% conviction rate, to prosecute Ollie. And that still wasn’t the worst thing Diaz did. Considering Kirk Acevedo, the actor playing Diaz, never saw a piece of scenery in the Arrow sets that he didn’t treat as a blue plate special, the worst thing Diaz did was emote.

Now you may be wondering what crimes Star City was prosecuting Ollie for in the case and episode called “Docket No. 11-19-41-73.” Wonder no more, I’m here to tell you.

That is, I would be here to tell you, if the episode had bothered telling us. I know Ollie was being prosecuted for violating Star City’s anti-vigilante ordinance by being The Green Arrow. I know that, because it’s the one count in Ollie’s indictment the episode did bother to mention.

Actually, there were probably multiple counts of illegal vigilantism. Star City Council enacted the anti-vigilante ordinance early in Season 6, so any time Ollie went out as the Green Arrow after that – which, considering the show is called Arrow, was every episode – that was a new, and separately-indictable violation of the ordinance. But there still had to be more.

Laws passed by city councils, as opposed to laws enacted by state legislatures, are misdemeanors not felonies. I’ve mentioned this before and I wish TV people would remember it. Misdemeanors don’t normally carry sentences in excess of one year. Felonies do. Prosecutor Van Owen offered Ollie a plea bargain with a fifteen-year agreed sentence. So, Ollie had to be charged with at least one major felony for an agreed sentence of fifteen years to be considered a bargain.

But what felony? The show didn’t tell us specifically, but it did give us enough information to let me make a law-school-educated guess. I’m guessing there were multiple indictments for the many murders and assaults with a deadly weapon that Green Arrow committed by shooting actual arrows into actual people over the course of the show.

There had to be some murder indictments somewhere in mix, because Ms. Van Owen’s offered plea bargain was to a single count of First Degree Manslaughter. Courts have ruled that a person cannot plead guilty to a crime, if it is not a lesser included offense to one of the crimes charged in the indictment. Pleading to crimes which are not lesser included offenses of one of the indicted offenses violates the defendant’s constitutional right to receive notice.

Manslaughter is not a lesser included offense of some “Don’t Be a Vigilante” Ordinance. First of all, manslaughter is a felony and, as I said, the anti-vigilante ordinance would be a misdemeanor. So manslaughter is a higher-degree crime than the anti-vigilante ordinance. It can’t be a lesser included offense.

Moreover, manslaughter wouldn’t contain any elements in common with anti-vigilante. One can be a vigilante without killing people. Hell, as brutal as he is, Batman does it all the time. So manslaughter also isn’t an included offense of anti-vigilante laws. On the other hand, manslaughter is a crime of lesser degree than murder and does contain common elements with murder. So if Ollie was offered a plea to manslaughter, he has to have been indicted for one, or more, murder.

After Ollie turned down the plea offer, the trial started. So did my note taking. Two legal pads and several Bics later, I was ready to start writing about the trial. Lucky me.

As her first witness, prosecutor Alexa Van Owen called Dr. Elisa Schwartz. Green Arrow had once brought fellow super hero Black Canary into Dr. Schwartz’s hospital with a knife wound and Dr. Schwartz was the attending physician. Alexa asked Dr. Schwartz that, as she was close enough to Green Arrow to determine his identity, whose face did she see? Dr. Schwartz answered that she was too busy treating her patient and didn’t pay enough attention to Green Arrow to determine his true identity.

Uh, Alexa, didn’t you vet your witness so that you’d know the answer to that all-important question before calling her? No. Okay. Still, a mistake that fundamental makes me doubt that 99% conviction rate. Seriously, on L.A. Law Susan Dey also played a prosecutor named Van Owen who would have done a better job. Hell, Susan Dey’s other big role, Laurie Partridge, would have done a better job.

Alexa’s next witness was John Diggle, Oliver Queen’s personal bodyguard, and also secretly Spartan, the second-in-command of Team Arrow. She asked John if Oliver Queen were the Green Arrow. He said no. And as the head of Oliver Queen’s security, John would know whether Ollie was Green Arrow. Again I’m forced to ask, did Alexa not vet her witnesses before calling them so that she’d know how he would answer her questions?

Okay, I admit that John perjured himself (with the full knowledge and approval of Ollie) because Ollie was the Green Arrow and John knew that. But Alexa didn’t know that. All she knew was that she posed a question to John and she didn’t know that he wasn’t going to give her the answer she was hoping he’d give her.

But Alexa impeached John’s damaging testimony. She pointed out all the injuries he had incurred in his years as Ollie’s body guard, so he couldn’t have been that good a security officer. Right, a body guard got injured protecting his charge; aren’t they supposed to do that? So John was conscientious in his job, that certainly proves he’s an unreliable witness the jury should ignore.

Did I say Laurie Partridge could have done a better job than Alexa? Hell, the Partridge Family dog Simone could have done a better job. At least he knows about vetting.

I’d tell you who Alexa called as her next witness, but this column is already pretty long and, when it comes to covering old Docket No. 11-19-41-73, I’m like someone who took sandpaper to his tablet computer. I’ve only scratched the Surface. (I’m not sure I’m even up to the third one yet.)

So, I’ll follow the time-honored tradition that all TV courts use when they need to go to commercial break. This column is in recess and will reconvene next week.

The Law Is A Ass #432: Things Aren’t Impeachy Keen with Green Arrow

A wise man once said “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Usually in summer school.” No, it wasn’t George Santayana. It was me; I lied about the wise part. But whoever said it, the sentiment is true, so it would behoove Oliver Queen not to start planning that Disneyland vacation just yet. He has some summer schooling in his future.

First, I’m going to SPOILER WARNING you that I’m about to give away much of the plots of the Arrow episodes “Brothers in Arms” and “Fundamentals.” If you haven’t seen them, you might want to stop reading and go to Disneyland in Ollie’s stead.

Okay, now I’m about give you some needed background information by blitzing through about two-thirds of a season’s worth of Arrow episodes in just one paragraph. Pay attention.

Oliver Queen, who is both the Green Arrow and the mayor of Star City, is under investigation by both the FBI and Star City, for being the Green Arrow; which violates Star City’s anti-vigilante ordnance. Meanwhile, crime boss Ricardo Diaz, has taken control of Star City. So much so that in the Arrow episode, “Brothers in Arms,” Ollie could only find seven officers in the entire Star City Police Department who weren’t on the Diaz payroll. And in another episode which I’ll get to presently, police officers actually address Diaz as “Boss” right on a public street. That’s a level of corruption that would make Gotham City take notice, and Tammany Hall take notes.

Having brought you up to speed speedily, we go back to “Brothers in Arms.” Dinah Drake and the other six police officers who weren’t under Diaz’s thumb got intel that Diaz’s right-hand man, Anatoly Knyazev, was about to make a drug drop. They conducted surveillance and watched Anatoly make the delivery. So they arrested him on the scene and with the drugs.

Only to have Star City District Attorney Sam Armand immediately kick the case. Ostensibly he dismissed it because the police didn’t have a warrant when they arrested Anatoly. In reality, Armand was one of the many Star City officials on Diaz’s payroll. Like I said, Diaz’s corruption was more wide-spread than chlamydia in a whore house.

Now, I recognize that Armand would want to get the case against his boss’s right hand man dismissed. Still, it’s doubtful that he would have done so in such an obvious manner.

Dinah might not have had a warrant, but she did have reliable intel that Anatoly was making a drug delivery. They watched Anatoly go to the spot where the delivery was scheduled to take place and saw Anatoly give a briefcase to the man who met him at the delivery site. Anatoly’s actions corroborated Dinah’s reliable intel. The combination of observations and intel would have given Dinah probable cause to believe she had seen Anatoly commit a crime. When the police see a crime being committed, they can make an immediate arrest without having to obtain an arrest warrant first. Courts don’t actually require the police to tell the perp, “Wait right here while I go and get a warrant so I can come back and arrest you.”

Most district attorneys wouldn’t dismiss this case because of a lack of a warrant. They’d let it go before a judge who could hear the evidence and decide whether the arresting officer had sufficient probable cause to make a warrantless arrest.

Armand should have let one of Diaz’s corrupt judges dismiss the case. Or had one of the other corrupt cops steal the evidence, which would have necessitated the charges being dropped. Then no one would have suspected him. Instead, he chose to act in a way that was sure to make mayor Oliver Queen suspect that he was on the take and fire him.
After Ollie verified Armand was on the take, Ollie fired him. Along with police captain Kimberly Hill, who was also on the take. Like I said earlier, the corruption in Star City was so wide-spread, you could plot its growth on graft paper.

Which only created new problems for Ollie. When you’re the subject of criminal investigations, firing some civil servants might cause them to go to the TV news, claim you fired them to impede their investigation, and accuse you of obstruction of justice.

Can you guess what Armand and Hill did for the cliffhanger of “Brothers in Arms?”

In the next episode of Arrow, “Fundamentals,” the Star City City Council held a hearing to determine whether it should impeach Mayor Queen. At the end of the episode, the Council voted to impeach Oliver. At which point, Oliver, told Deputy Mayor Quentin Lance that he’d been impeached, so Quentin was the mayor now.

Which isn’t the way it works. As anyone who to learn from the history of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton would know.

An impeachment is an indictment, not a conviction. Articles of impeachment are the formal charges brought against the official. They lay out what high crimes or misdemeanors the official has committed to warrant said official being impeached, but they don’t remove the official from office.

When the House of Representatives voted to impeach Andrew Johnson or Bill Clinton, neither president was removed from office. Both continued to serve as president, while the Senate conducted a trial on the House’s articles of impeachment. If either man had been convicted in the trial, then he would have been removed from office. History tells us that the Senate acquitted both presidents and both served out their full terms. Without any interruption in their being President.

So, even though Star City City Council voted to impeach Mayor Queen, he wouldn’t have been removed from office or turned power over to Deputy Mayor Lance. He would have continued as mayor while some other body conducted a trial. He would only have been removed from office if he was convicted of those articles of impeachment. At some later time.

Speaking of later times, I know that earlier I said I’d write about yet another episode of Arrow presently. Well, to pervert an old saying, there’s no time in the presently. I’ll have to write about that episode in future columns. But they’ll be goodies. Remember all the fun we had dealing with the Arrowverse episode about the trial of The Flash? Next time it’s the trial of Green Arrow.

Mike Gold: My Timey-Wimey Toddlin’ Town

Well, last Sunday my pal John Ostrander did a lovely and quite informative column around his inability to come up with a topic. And tomorrow, my pal Denny O’Neil has an equally interesting column addressing the same basic issue. So, damn, I’d look pretty lame if I pulled the same stunt today, wouldn’t I?

Yeah, I know. I should be used to that.

So, instead of impressing you with my astonishing ability to wax on for 591 words about how there’s an echo chamber between my ears – it’s August; there’s supposed to be an echo chamber between my ears… or, at least, the Attica! chant – I’m going to write up a couple of paragraphs about a comic book show I’ll be doing in 15 days. Stream of consciousness, to paraphrase Kris Kristofferson, means you have nothing left to lose.

Danny Fingeroth, who’s name will magically reappear in Denny’s column tomorrow, finally found the one way to get me out to Chicago’s Wizard World show August 24 – 27. No, it’s not the availability of that wondrous delight, the Italian beef sammich. I get back to Chicago three or four times a year, so that’s not quite a deal maker.

No, Danny suggested we do a panel about America’s first mammoth Doctor Who convention, held as part of the Chicago Comicon (since sold to Wizard World) way back in 1982. Larry Charet, who, along with Bob Weinberg and me, were sponsors of the Comicon back then and Doctor Who had pretty much just taken a serious hold among American geekdom. We massively underestimated the number of folks who would be interested in attending… by… well… a lot. We made the Chicago Fire Department nervous, which, historically, is a dick move. We made the American Nazi Party nervous as well, but you’ll have to attend our panel in order to find out why.

I believe this was one of the first, if not the first, Doctor Who show that attracted the attention of a 15-year old named John Barrowman, who had been living in nearby Joliet Illinois at the time. John also will be a guest at Wizard World, so hopefully, I’ll be able to find out. Not that we’re taking credit for inspiring the man who became Captain Jack Harkness on Doctor Who and on Torchwood… but, with him no longer part of Arrow (at least for the time being), maybe the good folks at BBC-Wales can get him back to the timey-wimey stuff.

Of course, going home for Wizard World puts me back in the neighborhood of a hell of a lot of friends, as well as a gaggle of good folks that I haven’t pissed off for a while. Writers, artists, retailers, media folks, actors, broadcasters – it’s a fun place to be. And I’ve always had a great time at Wizard World Chicago, even though it’s actually in Rosemont Illinois, a town sandwiched in between the City of Chicago and the Airport of O’Hare. If you go there, check out Rosemont’s water tower and, if there are children around, try not to laugh out loud.

A month later, I’ll be at the Baltimore Comic-Con, one of my favorites. A damn good show run by damn good people.

That’s the reason we started these big comic book shows. Friendship, seeing people from all over the planet and making rude and obnoxious comments about the high price of stabbed comic books.

At least, we think those are comic books in there. Outside of the cover… who knows?

Joe Corallo: Iron Miss

This past week I finished watching Iron Fist. I also went to a discussion at Manhattan’s Strand bookstore on queer representation in comics, with speakers including Jennifer Camper and Phil Jimenez, but I really want to focus on Iron Fist. Well, I checked out some of the old MST3K episodes they just added to Netflix too. That last part actually ties into my Iron Fist discussion. Yes, really.

The Internet has been flooded with reactions to Iron Fist that have been all over the place. Praise to malaise. I had already seen all the other Marvel Netflix series so I was diving in regardless of what the critics had to say. I got through it all in about days of watching.

It was a rough three days.

I’m not going to get too deep into spoilers, but if you want a 100% spoiler free viewing experience of Iron Fist and haven’t watched it yet, you may want to check it out first before reading ahead.

Welcome back! Okay, so is it just me or was there way too much of a similarity between this and the first season of Arrow? This all happens in the first episode, but Danny Rand coming back from being assumed dead after traveling far with his family and there being an accident and coming back to reclaim his dad’s company, his best friend’s dad being the bad guy, the Triad and the Hand both being Asian led criminal organizations, and that’s just off the top of my head. I might like the show more if I hadn’t seen it done a few years ago now.

Arrow was able to avoid the implications of cultural appropriation. As ComicMix’s own Martha Thomases pointed out in her last column, there is nothing inherently white about the character, so why did he have to be white? I totally understand the argument that casting an actor of Asian descent just because the character knows martial arts wouldn’t be ideal either. That’s what I talked about last year when I wrote about Iron Fist as a lose/lose. I’m not convinced that I was wrong yet.

The show also feels like it thinks it’s more clever than it actually is. I, like I imagine many others, figured out a major plot point a good ten episodes before Danny figured it out. I also liked the “thrown in an asylum when you’re actually magic and they just don’t know it” trope better when I saw it in Return to Oz and Buffy the Vampire Slayer many, many years before that.

Later in the week I ended up watching the MST3K classic, The Pumaman. This clumsy 1980 superhero outing is about a white guy who has the powers of an ancient God/alien worshipped by Aztecs and has a man of Aztec descent as his sidekick despite the fact that guy was definitely more knowledgeable of what was happening. The part of person of appropriate background to serve as sidekick this time was played by Jessica Henwick, whose opinions on this can be read here. Her character, Colleen Wing, is hardly the first character to play this role, nor is the sidekick in The Pumaman. The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet, and more franchises have this premise. It’s dated and at this point it’s just boring. Give us something more creative.

Between all that and the character of Danny Rand quite possibly being the most annoying, unlikeable, mansplaining protagonist in a Marvel property makes this a bit hard to watch. If you enjoy it, great. There are people that do and they’re not wrong. I just found this to be a clumsy, ham-fisted attempt at the genre.

For the sake of fairness I will also say what I enjoyed about Iron Fist. It had a great score.

Another martial arts based franchise got a reboot recently. I saw Power Rangers with some friends over the weekend. It’s definitely a movie for a younger audience. I was impressed by how the character of Billy is a black autistic teenager, has a lot of screen time, was easily the second most consequential Power Ranger. The heroes in this were more diverse than in the original, but Rita was whitewashed with seemingly little backlash to that, which seems strange to me. Why care so much about diversity in one element of your film and not the other.

That said, I’d still recommend Power Rangers over Iron Fist. It has a little more heart, is about 11 hours shorter, and cares a lot more about Krispy Kreme.

My favorite superhero TV show these days is The Flash. Heck, it may be my favorite TV show period. Grant Gustin is doing a great job as Barry Allen/The Flash and the stories have wonderful “Easter eggs” for those who know DC continuity. One of the best is casting John Wesley Shipp, who played Barry/Flash in the earlier TV incarnation of The Flash, is in this version first as Barry’s dad and now as Jay Garrick, the Flash of Earth-2.

What also is great is the supporting cast on the show. On The Flash, they’ve even increased by one to include Tom Fenton (perhaps best known as Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films) as Barry’s “frenemy”. He’s also joined “Team Flash” as it’s called, even on the show.

This is where the TV versions of the Flash (and the other superheroes) differs from the comics. In the comics, the hero is usually a lone wolf type; others in his circle don’t know his/her double identity and keeping that secret is considered vital. On TV, however, the superhero needs a circle of friends to help them function. Just as it’s been said that it takes a village to raise a child, on TV shows it takes a team to make a superhero. Actually, more than a team – the supporting cast acts a lot more like a family.

This isn’t true just on The Flash – it also holds true on Supergirl and Arrow as well. Legends Of Tomorrow is a team, as is Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. There are good reasons for this – any TV show needs a good supporting cast for the main character to act with (or against). Those interactions provide drama, comedy, their own storylines and, with a continuing series, that’s necessary. It also lets the lead not be in every scene which can really burn out an actor. As an audience, we invest emotionally not only with the lead character but with the supporting cast. (I’ll be honest – on Arrow I’m not all that invested in the lead actor; often it is the support characters that I like better, especially Felicity.)

On Flash, for example, they have a wonderful conceit; there’s the character of Dr. Harrison Wells, played by Tom Cavenaugh. He’s the same character in each of the three seasons so far but he’s also very different as each season we get a new Harrison Wells from a different dimension. In the first season, he was a villain, in the second season he was something of an asshole, and in the current season he’s a bit of a goof. That must be a lot of fun for Cavenaugh and it creates a different dynamic with the team for each season.

Some comics have family – the Fantastic Four functioned best when the writers and editors realized the FF were not just another team; they really were family. Also, I remember when DC would publish large giant comics for the “Superman Family” or the “Batman Family.” Superman, for example, had his best friend, his girl friend, his cousin, his dog, other super-pets, and the kids from down the timeline, a.k.a. the Legion of Super-heroes. However, it’s not quite the same thing as the TV shows. There’s a central location where they all meet and work out of – S.T.A.R. labs, the Arrow cave (or whatever they’re calling it), the DEO HQ, the Waverider. Home.

Needless to say, the TV shows and the comics are different animals, each with their own needs. It costs less to produce the comic books and the special effects and locations are limited only by what the artist can draw. Yet, I will admit that I’ve come to prefer the TV versions in most cases. I think that, overall, they’re a bit better thought out. OTOH, they don’t have to justify decades of continuity; they’re re-interpreting and re-inventing everything. There’s more freedom in that.

It’s good to keep in mind that no man is an island.

No metahuman is, either.

Dennis O’Neil: The CW’s Adventure In Time and Space

cw-crossover

The big honkin’ four-part crossover on the CW is past and I guess we have no particularly interesting reactions to it. If I were in a mood to pick nits, I might raise an eyebrow, chuckle in the manner of one who knows he is not one of the little people, and observe that it was really only a three-part crossover. Oh sure, The Flash and his friend Cisco did pop into Supergirl’s turf at the very end of the first episode, but by then the Maid of Might and her crew had solved their difficulties and all was (temporarily) well. All The Flash and Cisco did was ask for help dealing with some of their problems.

This is a crossover? Maybe by your definition (I sneer, cocking an eyebrow). Anyway, it seems that some alien invaders were causing woe on the neighboring universe, where The Flash and company hang, and so Supergirl joins The Flash in a brief migration through – here we guess – some kind of rent in the space-time continuum and for the next three hours of programming good guys from The Flash, Arrow, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow smite the baddies, who look like something Alberto Giacometti might have dashed off after a particularly bad night.

I’m oversimplifying the story, which I kind of enjoyed. But if I were inclined to further quibble, while not rising to the level of complaint, I might ask since when did Earth – our Earth in our dimension – become a way station for extraterrestrials? I gather, from recent Supergirl episodes, that our good old terra firma is teeming with ETs, Hordes of them: Hundreds? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? And if this is the case, Supergirl’s reality sure as heck isn’t our reality, and if that’s the case, shouldn’t there be some sort of signifiers? At least something as simple as irising doors. I mean, a few aliens, sure, but armies of them?

And on a similar note: if we humans actually made contact with beings of another dimension, without wrecking the cosmos in the process, it would be the biggest of big deals – easily the most significant event in history. Questions would get answered and some of those answers would alter our reality and perhaps finally take us where we’ve never been able to go. This would be big. Maybe even bigger than the Kardashians. So would we treat it casually, even if we were superbeings? Sure, you might not want to reveal something that would risk your secret identity, but… to hell with your secret identity and excuse me, please!

At the end of the final scene in the crossover, someone gives Supergirl a gadget that would fit in her purse and that lets her travel between dimensions as casually as I travel to get the mail. Even though – yes! – we know it’s fiction, this kind of story might diminish, ever so slightly, our sense of awe and wonder and lessens our reverence for the universe and that would be a shame.

 

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks