PERSPECTIVE
Trigger Happy
Shoot first, ask questions later
STEVEN POOLE
A cross film, theatre or television, the legal drama portrays an alternative universe in which a puzzling binary question can be settled beyond doubt, to the intellectual and emotional satisfaction of the audience. The world outside our windows might be a never-ending blizzard of chaotic and irrational rubbish where certainty is impossible, but in the microcosm that is the courtroom we can at least witness an ideal version of truth-finding and justice.
So it has been since the ancient Greek tragedian Aeschylus composed The Eumenides, the third play in his Oresteia trilogy, in which Orestes is arraigned for the murder of his mother and his guilt debated in the first 12-person jury trial, presided over by the goddess Athena herself. That symbolises the moment in the evolution of human civilization when endlessly ramifying blood feuds are replaced by impersonal, impartial justice, to the benefit of all.