Paul Biegler's Anatomy Of A Murder

The film our group has recently watched, an American courtroom crime drama film “Anatomy of a murder”, is considered to be “the finest pure trial movie ever made". Among other important aspects of trial, it reveals the extremely important role of a defense attorney and the power of words. Actually, the job of a defense attorney is to reach the best possible outcome for the client by hiring and managing investigators, gathering information from witnesses and studying similar cases. In some cases, talented attorneys manage to convince the jury and the judge in the innocence of an accused person or to commute a sentence in his favor, even if the circumstances seem hopeless.

In “Anatomy of a murder”, a former district attorney Paul Biegler is

contracted to lead a case of  US Army Lieutenant Frederick Manion, who has been arrested for the first degree murder of innkeeper Bernard "Barney" Quill and does not even deny the murder. In front of the jury and the judge, Biegler appeals to the fact (which still needs justification) that Quill had raped Manions’s wife Laura. As Lieutenant suggested, this could clear him from the moral point of view and influence the jury’s decision, but was, of course, a poor justification for a murder. Manion’s wife, by the way, made an impression of a vulgar, provocative and flirtatious young woman who may have committed adultery.
That is why Biegler decided that the accused may be eligible for a defense of irresistible impulse—a version of a temporary insanity defense.

The defense attorney found a precedent in a court record when a man accused of a crime was acquitted on the grounds of “irresistible impulse”. However, this version is put under question as two psychiatrists give conflicting testimony to Manion's state of mind at the time that he killed Quill. Moreover, the fact that Barney had had no manifestations of mental disorder before the murder was not in his favor, as well as his well-known skill to use a gun. But the attorney, with his propensity for courtroom theatrics, managed to win over the

jury.
Biegler, so to say, used all kinds of oratorical tricks to open the jury’s eyes to more facts and change their mind to Manion’s favour. The attorney’s folksy speech and laid-back demeanor hid a sharp legal mind – he knew that the jury could not “unhear” what that they had already heard, for example, the details of the rape.
Biegler also did everything possible to get the testimony for the defense of Mary Pilant, who turned to be the daughter of the victim. Though not intentionally, she appeared in the courtroom at the last moment and it produced a kind of a theatrical effect, particularly since she brought Laura Manion’s panties as a piece of evidence and revealed that she was Barney Quill’s daughter.
All in all, the paradoxical result was the acquittal of Lieutenant Frederick Manion with the justification of his temporary insanity, though the accused himself had admitted that he had murdered Quill. The prosecution was not prepared for such a turn – the local district attorney assisted by high-powered prosecutor Claude Dancer based the accusation on the simple fact that Manion claimed to have murdered Quill and his mental insanity was not 100% proved.
Thus, a question of ethics and law arises. The trial is, of course, meant to be competitive and both sides, defense and the accusing party, try to reach the best possible result, which is to win a lawsuit. It is considered to be the only practically possible way of maintaining the presumption of innocence. So an attorney is entitled to give any arguments he/she finds necessary and even to conceal some information given to him by his client (or rather he has the right to keep some of their conversations secret). But it is controversial whether a lawyer should defend the interests of an accused person if he/she knows in advance about his guilt and his lack of remorse. It is obvious that an attorney is free to take (and get paid) or to decline a case. When it comes to litigation, all those involved should distance themselves from the moral side of a matter and be guided only by the letter of law. It is even regarded that a person acts unprofessionally and brings law into discredit if he/she gives way to emotions.
A good example is the last scene of a film “…And justice for all” starring Al Pacino as a lawyer.

Al Pacinos’s character, attorney Arthur Kirkland, defends a guilty judge Henry T. Fleming who is accused of raping a girl. From the legal point of view, Fleming can’t be sentenced as there is lack of evidence, but his attorney is well aware of his guilt and disgusted with the whole case. At the end of the film, on the last trial of his client Kirkland first speculates on the ultimate objective of the American legal system and criticizes the principle of competition. Soon he gets overwhelmed with emotions and announces that his “honorable” client should go to jail. When the judge tries to call the attorney to order, he replies: "You're out of order! The whole trial's out of order!” It is doubtless that Kirkland behaved unprofessionally, but what if his sense of justice strongly resisted the acquittal of a

rapist?
To draw a conclusion, I have considered two legal cases brought from courtroom crime drama films and the extremely important role of defense attorneys in those trials. A lawyer with a sharp legal mind can help to acquit a guilty person, but is it how our legal system is initially supposed to work? Is our judiciary system “out of order”? It gives a lot of food for thought.