With Lawyer Shows (Like Cop Shows), the Choice Has Always been Escapist Rubbish vs. “Realistic” Rubbish

[Re: “12 Angry Men: A Revisionist View (Reginald Rose’s War on the American Legal System).”]

By David in TN
Thursday, May 12, 2022 at 12:04:00 A.M. EDT

Our friend, Walt Lewis, in his book, The Criminal Justice Club, wrote this about TV lawyer programs:

“After a few months, my deeply entrenched, preconceived ideas about the supposedly evil, racist criminal justice system slowly began to change. My experiences as a deputy city attorney were not what I expected. Could it be, I wondered, that nearly everything I had seen on my favorite television shows in the 1950s and 60s, Perry Mason with Raymond Burr, and The Defenders, with E.G. Marshall, was false or misleading? Every week for nine years in the 1950s and 60s, the viewing public saw criminal defense attorney Perry Mason brilliantly defend an innocent man or woman wrongfully charged with murder. The prosecutor was always the villain trying to obstruct justice. The real murderer (never the defendant) always blurted out a confession from the witness stand or from the spectator seat of the courtroom.”