Word: courtroom
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Significant gains have been made since the days when blacks in the South were allowed to sit on only one side of the courtroom. In 1986, for example, the Supreme Court made it more difficult for prosecutors to use peremptory challenges to keep blacks off juries. A few months later, an all-white jury in Alabama awarded $7 million to a black mother who sued the United Klans of America over the lynching death of her son, a far cry from the days when an all-white Mississippi panel freed two white men in the infamous 1955 murder...
...effort to keep juries from falling asleep, lawyers are taking acting lessons to punch up their courtroom performances...
From The Merchant of Venice to L.A. Law, courtroom scenes have been a staple of drama. Increasingly, trial attorneys like Harpell are consulting actors and drama coaches to bring more theater into the real-life courthouse. In acting seminars across the nation, lawyers are paying $150 or more an hour to learn how to improve their performances before judges and juries. Says Actress Katherine James of Applied Theater Techniques: "Ten years ago, lawyers asked what we could possibly have to teach them. Now they call us up and cry, 'Help...
...reason for the drama boom is that a rising number of cases reaching the courts involve complicated business disputes. The result is juror boredom. "Jurors come into the courtroom expecting Perry Mason," says San Diego- based Actor-Director Ronald Arden, who has been coaching lawyers for a decade. "But most of the time they're getting Mickey Mouse." The emphasis on unemotional analysis inculcated in law school can actually work against the attorney who is trying to convince ordinary human beings. "As a whole, we don't use our bodies or voices well," admits Attorney Jerry Coughlan of the National...
While the attorneys may be acting more like thespians, real actors are beginning to spice up courtroom drama. U.S. Judge John Grady, chief of the federal district courts in Chicago, recently allowed actors to read depositions taken from absent witnesses in a securities case. Such depositions, usually read in a deadly drone by court reporters or law-firm secretaries, often contain important evidence but can put juries to sleep. One of the attorneys objected that an actor was hamming it up, but Judge Grady pronounced himself delighted by the lively break from what is typically the "dullest part...