- Thanks to Curiosity Stream for keeping LegalEagle in the air. (sword clangs)
- I wish had enough poison for the whole pack of you. I would gladly give my life
to watch you all swallow it. - I haven't seen that in court, but generally, that's
not a great strategy. (cheerful music) Hey Legal Eagles, it's time
to think like a lawyer. Today we are covering the trial of Tyrion from Game of Thrones. Like a lot of you out there, I am waiting for the series finale. But in the meantime,
let's take a look back at one of the more famous repercussions of the Purple Wedding, which is the trial of Tyrion Lannister, who is framed for the murder of King Joffrey. (Joffrey gasps) - He's choking! - It's been a long time
since I've seen this, so I'll be looking at it with fresh eyes, but it'll be interesting to see how realistic the trial scene is compared to American modern jurisprudence. As always, leave your comments in the form of an objection, which I will
either sustain or overrule, and stick around until
the end of the video, where I give Game of Thrones
a grade for legal realism. So, without further ado, let's dig in to the trial of Tyrion Lannister. So, here Tyrion is being held in captivity by the equivalent of the
police in King's Landing. To recap, King Joffrey was
killed on his wedding day by some sort of gruesome poison, and because of many of the
statements that Tyrion made to and about the king, he is being accused of actually killing King Joffrey, which, of course, is not in fact true. Nonetheless, he's being held in captivity and is being accused of
the crime of regicide. All right, the sort of Game of Thrones equivalent of the perp walk,
being walked into court. - [Man] King slayer! - So, this is a pretty unusual court. All of the people in the audience, generally called the
gallery, almost always you have it being perpendicular to the actual place where the judge sits. Here, you have these long rows going toward where the
judge is going to sit. This doesn't make a whole
lot of sense as a courtroom. Obviously, this is a
great hall where usually official business is conducted. But this doesn't make a whole
lotta sense as a courtroom. Generally speaking, the accused don't have to wear handcuffs when they're in court, unless there is some known reason why they have to be restrained, like they are known to
have outbursts in court or they jump across council table and try and attack the
judge, the prosecutor, which has been known to happen. But otherwise, for obvious reasons, you don't want to poison
the mind of the jury and see this person as some sort of animal that has to be chained up. You want them to get a fair hearing. So generally, criminal defendants are not locked up when they're in court. You would generally rise when
the judge arrives as well. - I, Tommen of the House Baratheon, First of My Name, King of
the Andals and the First Men and Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, do hereby recuse myself from this trial. Tywin of the House
Lannister, Hand of the King and Protector of the Realm,
will sit as judge in my stead. - So, in the US, you have
a constitutional right to a jury trial, and that jury must be made up of your peers. Now, query in the sort of royal house who would be the peers that would sit in judgment over a nobleman
like Tyrion Lannister. But you can also see that it
is a clear conflict of interest for one of the three
members of the panel or jury that's going to decide your fate to be a member of your own house. Here you can imagine
prejudice going both ways. There could be prejudice
because his father may want him to face execution because of how much he loved
Joffrey, his grandchild. Or you could imagine that
he could get leniency because he's a member of the same family. - Tyrion of the House Lannister, you stand accused by the
queen regent of regicide. Did you kill King Joffrey? - No. - Did your wife, the Lady Sansa? - Not that I know of. - That's a fair response. He may not know whether his
wife committed homicide or not. You would have to ask her. So that would be speculation for him to talk about whether his
wife killed King Joffrey. - How would you say he died, then? - Choked on his pigeon pie. - So you would blame the bakers? - Or the pigeons. Just leave me out of it. - I should note here
that there are already several problems from an
American law perspective. Number one, if this was in America, Tyrion would be given the right against self-incrimination
under the Fifth Amendment, which would allow him
to not have to testify against himself in a criminal proceeding. And already, the adjudicator
has asked him several questions that could be incriminating
towards his defense, and he would have the
right not to take the stand and not to have to answer those questions. But I don't get the sense that Tyrion could have avoided those
questions if he wanted to. Additionally, Tyrion would
have a Sixth Amendment right to an attorney being present
throughout this entire ordeal because we don't expect
members of the public to be able to defend
themselves in a court of law without the help of an
advocate like a lawyer. And here, he has no attorney
to act as an intermediary, and he makes these statements
that are somewhat inflammatory and could get him into trouble. - The crown may call its first witness. - Once we got King Joffrey safely away from the mob, the Imp rounded on him. He slapped the king across the face and called him a vicious idiot and a fool. (audience gasps) It wasn't the first time
the Imp threatened Joffrey. Right here in this throne room, he marched up those steps and
called our king a halfwit, compared His Grace to the Mad King and suggested he'd meet the same fate. When I spoke in the king's defense, he threatened to have me killed. - Okay, so you might assume
that these statements by Tyrion qualify as hearsay and therefore can't be used against
Tyrion in a court of law. However, it's important to know that hearsay is an
out-of-court statement used for the truth of the matter asserted. They are trying to
establish that he actually said these things and had a
motive to kill King Joffrey. So that is sort of the truth
of the statement at issue, that he thought the king was
a vicious idiot and a fool. So the question is, can
those statements come in? Well, one of the exceptions
to the hearsay rule is generally the admission
by a party opponent or a party admission
exception to the hearsay rule. And under that rule, you
are allowed to use hearsay statements where the statement
is ostensibly made by a party to the litigation or
a party, in this case, to the criminal proceeding,
and is adverse to that party. And here they are using
a statement of Tyrion's, who is a party to the litigation. He is the defendant, and it
is adverse to his interests. So that statement is allowed to come in. Generally, the admission
by a party exception exists because you can
cross-examine the declarant because they're a party
to the proceedings. The big problem, at least historically, with hearsay is that it's
an out-of-court statement where you could not
cross-examine the declarant. But where the declarant is available, you are allowed to bring in their out-of-court statements
through other witnesses. So in this particular case,
I think the party admission exception would apply,
and they would be able to use Tyrion's statements
against him in this proceeding. - Oh, why don't you tell
them what Joffrey was doing? - Silence!
- Pointing a loaded crossbow at Sansa Stark while you tore
at her clothes and beat her. - Silence! - That would probably be
another constitutional violation in the United States. Tyrion has a right to
confront his accusers. And although he's probably not allowed to do it during the direct
examination of the witness, eventually he would have the right to cross-examine the person who
was making these statements, especially when that person
is relaying statements that Tyrion supposedly made out of court. So for him to be shut down entirely and not be able to face his accusers and the witnesses against him would be a clear US constitutional violation. The confrontation clause
to the Sixth Amendment states that in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to be confronted with the
witnesses against him. And here Tyrion does not have the right to confront the witnesses
against him, and that would be a clear constitutional violation
in this criminal trial. - This was found on the body of Dontos Hollard, the king's fool. He was last seen spiriting Sansa Stark, the wife of the accused,
away from the feast. She wore this necklace
the day of the wedding. Residue of the most rare and terrible poison was found inside. - Was this one of the poisons
stolen from your store? - It was the strangler, (audience gasps) a poison few in the Seven Kingdoms possess and used to strike down
the most noble child the gods ever put on this good Earth. - Yes, King Joffrey, what a good guy. Such a shame that he
perished in his youth. Of course, this is completely
improper character evidence, which is prejudicial against the accused in this particular case. But that is why character evidence should not be used in
a criminal proceeding. Putting aside the problems
with the Grand Maester's expert opinion here, in
any criminal proceeding, you have to show what's
called the chain of custody of any particular piece of evidence. Because the police will
gather the evidence, and then you need to show what happens to that evidence from every
step, from being gathered to being stored to
being produced in court, because all kinds of things can go wrong, especially when you're dealing with DNA evidence or fingerprint evidence. And here, the Grand Maester has apparently just picked up this random bracelet. He then stuffed it into his shirt pocket or the sleeve of his shirt and just withdrew it at the trial itself. If I was a criminal
defendant, I would really want to know what happened and
who possessed this necklace or this bracelet throughout
the entire course of its existence so that I could show that it hadn't been tampered with. If the Grand Maester, for example, had an ax to grind against the defendant, which he clearly does
here, he could've taken the bracelet and added
a drop of the poison that he is accused of using
against Joffrey the King here. So there's all kinds of
reasons that in modern-day jurisprudence you have
to show chain of custody. And if I was able to
cross-examine this Grand Maester, I think I could really
do a world of damage showing his, number one,
bias, and number two, that the chain of custody of effectively the murder weapon is really
questionable at best. - [Tywin] Do you remember the
precise nature of this threat? - I'm afraid I do, my lord. He said, "Perhaps you should
speak more softly to me, then. "Monsters are dangerous, and just now "kings are dying like flies." - [Tywin] And he said this to you at a meeting of the small council? - Yes, after we received
word of Robb Stark's death. He didn't seem gladdened by the news. Perhaps his marriage to Sansa Stark had made him more sympathetic
to the northern cause. (audience gasps and groans) - While the latter
portion of that testimony is clearly speculation,
he's speculating about the frame of mind that Tyrion had when he received the news
of Robb Stark's death, the prior statements of Tyrion
at the small council meeting, again, probably come in
under the party admission exception to the hearsay rule. - Father, may I ask the
witness one question? - One. - Finally Tyrion gets to
confront one of his accusers. Geez, this is clearly a
Sixth Amendment violation. And on top of it, no judge in the world would ever limit a criminal defendant facing life imprisonment or execution to one single question
on cross-examination. This is an abomination
of a criminal trial, at least as it accords with the US modern standards of jurisprudence. It's not good to be a criminal defendant in 15th century England, or
the equivalent in Westeros. - I did not kill Joffrey,
but I wish that I had. Watching your vicious bastard die gave me more relief than
a thousand lying whores. (dramatic orchestral music)
(audience jeers) I wish I was the monster you think I am. I wish I had enough poison
for the whole pack of you. I would gladly give my life
to watch you all swallow it. - I haven't seen that in court, but generally that's not a great strategy. Not a great defense strategy to insult the entire gallery and the
entire jury at the same time and suggest that although you didn't kill the victim, you wish you had. - I will not give my life
for Joffrey's murder, and I know I'll get no justice here. So I will let the gods decide my fate. (suspenseful orchestral music) I demand a trial by combat. - I assume you'd have to
make some sort of motion with a court and you can't
just request a trial by combat when the trial is not going
particularly well for you. That being said, trial
by combat is a real thing that actually existed in
the 15th century in England. But it also existed well into the 20th century in many places. And in fact, some of the last instances of trial by combat existed
in the 1960s in France. So it is not crazy for a criminal defendant to request trial by combat. Probably not a great move by Tyrion, because I think generally speaking, real-life trial by combat required the actual accused to be
the one doing the combat. But trial by combat was never an option in the United States, so not realistic from a US perspective. (playful music) Okay, that was the trial
of Tyrion Lannister from season four of Game of Thrones. Now it's time to give this episode a grade for legal realism. (gavel bangs) On the one hand, you have
evidence that is certainly probative of someone
actually committing regicide in killing the king through poison. You have some hearsay statements that are likely to come in under the exception to the hearsay rule, so that evidence probably would've been able to be used in this particular trial. On the other hand, you have tons of constitutional violations,
including the violation of the right against self-incrimination, the violation of being able
to confront your accused, and the violation of having an attorney present during a criminal proceeding. All in all, Tyrion did
not get a fair trial and the deck was stacked against him in a way that hopefully does
not exist in modern US law. So I'm giving the trial
of Tyrion Lannister a D-minus for accuracy. This episode should be killed by poison, preferably the strangler. - I found it surprisingly beautiful in a brutal, horribly
uncomfortable sort of way. - Did you know that much of what happens in Game of Thrones is actually
based on real-life events, especially the War of the
Roses in Plantagenet England? One of the best documentary
series I've ever seen is the Real War of Thrones
on CuriosityStream. It's an amazing series that
explains all the details that happened in real life that gave rise to a lot of what actually
happened in Game of Thrones, for example, how the
Lannisters are basically identical to the real-life Lancasters and how the Starks are
effectively the real-life Yorks. It's an amazing series with
incredible production values. So if it seems like a lot of
Game of Thrones feels like real historical events,
that's because it actually is. If you want some clues
about how Game of Thrones is going to end, your best
bet is CuriosityStream. Legal Eagles will get a free account for 31 days by clicking the link below or using the promo code LegalEagle. Using the promo code really
helps out the channel. So click on the link below and get CuriosityStream for free,
and get your Game of Thrones fix while you're waiting
for the next episode. Do you agree? Leave your objections in the comments and check out my other Real
Lawyer Reactions over here, where I'll see you in court.
