In America's courtooms, the verdict is laughter. Sit back and enjoy a collection of verbatim exchanges from the halls of justice, where defendants and plaintiffs, lawyers and witnesses, juries and judges, collide to produce memorably insane comedy. A: You mumbled on the first part of that and I couldn't understand what you were saying. Could you repeat the question? Q: I mumbled, did I? Well, we'll just ask the court reporter to read back what I said. She didn't indicate any problem understanding what I said, so obviously she understood every word. We'll just have her read my question back and find out if there was any mumbling going on. Madam reporter, would you be so kind? Court Reporter: Mumble, mumble, mumble, mumble, mumble.
This assortment of unintentionally amusing courtroom exchanges ranges from the testimony of expert witnesses to jury selection to cross examination to creative defense, closing argument, and sentencing -- a rollicking guide to America's legal system.
(A) collection of hilarious outtakes from courtroom situations. . . . The humor derives from laypersons--prisoners, witnesses, jurors--who produce a wealth of banalities and faux pas, or from lawyers and judges, whose pomposity and long-windedness beg to be deflated.--Booklist.
Like a graffiti-covered wall, the State v. Diderot case has legendary defense attorney John Wilkes' name written all over it. The victim is pretty, blind, white, and defenseless, and her alleged attacker is anything but. Lyle Diderot has a face that would terrify his own mother, not to mention prospective jurors. He's the longtime leader of the Whiz Kids, a street gang that got its name from the obscene acts it performs on a fallen enemy. Anyone who tangles with this bunch ends up "yeller" in more ways than one -- a fact that has not gone unnoticed by Judge Yulburton Abraham Knott. Judge Y. Knott would sooner give the Son of Sam instant parole to a nunnery that Diderot a fair shake and Wilkes feels he's more likely to get justice from the KGB than from Knott and his reputable chamber of horrors. But Judge Knott won't be getting the last word: he's soon found slumped over his desk with a knife in his back. And Wilkes is the prime suspect from a drunken night he can barely remember . . . .
This assortment of unintentionally amusing courtroom exchanges ranges from the testimony of expert witnesses to jury selection to cross examination to creative defense, closing argument, and sentencing -- a rollicking guide to America's legal system.
Napoleon’s forces invaded Spain in 1808, but two years went by before they overran the southern region of Andalucía. Situated at the farthest frontier of Napoleon’s “outer empire,” Andalucía remained under French control only briefly—for two-and-a-half years—and never experienced the normal functions of French rule. In this groundbreaking examination of the Peninsular War, Charles J. Esdaile moves beyond traditional military history to examine the French occupation of Andalucía and the origins and results of the region’s complex and chaotic response. Disillusioned by the Spanish provisional government and largely unprotected, Andalucía scarcely fired a shot in its defense when Joseph Bonaparte’s army invaded the region in 1810. The subsequent French occupation, however, broke down in the face of multiple difficulties, the most important of which were geography and the continued presence in the region of substantial forces of regular troops. Drawing on British, French, and Spanish sources that are all but unknown, Esdaile describes the social, cultural, geographical, political, and military conditions that combined to make Andalucía particularly resistant to French rule. Esdaile’s study is a significant contribution to the new field sometimes known as occupation studies, which focuses on the ways a victorious army attempts to reconcile a conquered populace to the new political order. Combining military history with political and social history, Outpost of Empire delineates what we now call the cultural terrain of war. This is history that moves from battles between armies to battles for hearts and minds.
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