A man recently released from the pen after many years bashes another guy's head in during a bar room brawl. His lawyer -- a kind of Barry Schenk -- claims that if the killer hadn't spent so much time in the slams he wouldn't have developed this violent reflex.
The case gets complicated when it develops that the defendant was framed for the earlier crime by a cop who wanted to see justice done. In other words, the defendant seems guilty of the murder only because he was unjustly sent up the river years earlier. Survival in Sing Sing depends on the ability to quickly defend one's self without thinking. Therefore, how can it be his fault? It's an interesting question. The writers weasel out of answering it by exposing the defendant's history of violence prior to his conviction for the earlier crime. In fact, they pin the guilt on him for a pre-pen murder.
It would be more interesting if the guy's pre-Sing Sing past had been pristine, but it would have been a tougher job for the writers to handle, with no satisfyingly neat ending in the offing.
The writers probably didn't know this but social psychologists studying what's called "personal space" -- that is, the invisible sheath around our bodies that we consider our own territory -- is larger in prison inmates than among civilians. If anyone wants to bother looking up this study of the "body buffer zone", the author is A. F. Kinzel and the article appeared in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1970.
The cop who framed the defendant would be an interesting subject for a story himself, but I won't get into it here.
The case gets complicated when it develops that the defendant was framed for the earlier crime by a cop who wanted to see justice done. In other words, the defendant seems guilty of the murder only because he was unjustly sent up the river years earlier. Survival in Sing Sing depends on the ability to quickly defend one's self without thinking. Therefore, how can it be his fault? It's an interesting question. The writers weasel out of answering it by exposing the defendant's history of violence prior to his conviction for the earlier crime. In fact, they pin the guilt on him for a pre-pen murder.
It would be more interesting if the guy's pre-Sing Sing past had been pristine, but it would have been a tougher job for the writers to handle, with no satisfyingly neat ending in the offing.
The writers probably didn't know this but social psychologists studying what's called "personal space" -- that is, the invisible sheath around our bodies that we consider our own territory -- is larger in prison inmates than among civilians. If anyone wants to bother looking up this study of the "body buffer zone", the author is A. F. Kinzel and the article appeared in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1970.
The cop who framed the defendant would be an interesting subject for a story himself, but I won't get into it here.