Re: *** Official GRAN TORINO Discussion Thread
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Originally Posted by schmidtt
We can only speculate what evidence would come in at the murder trial
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Only on the defense side. The prosecution's evidence is straightforward: police reports, autopsy report, ballistics, guns, shell casings, crime scene photos, an eyewitness or two (depending on who is willing and most presentable).
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Originally Posted by schmidtt
but, assuming the defense could get in what is depicted in the film I think the gang members have a decent self defense case
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The key phrase is "depicted in the film". In real life, defense attorneys usually don't have the luxury of starting with a neatly omniscient presentation of what happened. They have to reconstruct from fragmentary clues and frequently conflicting accounts by people who are often unreliable. It takes time, talent and attention to reconstruct events with sufficient integrity to develop a good defense, and then you have to figure out how to prove it. So one of the other assumptions you'd have to make is that these gang members would know, and could afford, the caliber of legal talent that could provide that kind of representation.
And then there's the pesky matter of Michigan Criminal Procedure 780.972, which I quoted above.
