The Ringer: All Posts by Jane Coaston2017-09-25T13:20:15-04:00https://www.theringer.com/authors/jane-coaston/rss2017-09-25T13:20:15-04:002017-09-25T13:20:15-04:00How ‘Law & Order’ Valorizes Law and Order
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<p>As the longest-running TV drama in history returns to explore true-life crime stories like the Menendez brothers murders, how does its pro–justice system approach fit in 2017?</p> <p id="9rxwMB">You have seen an episode of <em>Law & Order</em>. </p>
<p id="XNWe8S">Since September 13, 1990, there have been 1,118 episodes of the <em>Law & Order</em> franchise (for comparison's sake, the CBS newsmagazine <em>60 Minutes</em>, which premiered in 1968, has just 274 more episodes). Though there are technically five American series within the <em>Law & Order </em>franchise family—<em>Law & Order</em>, <em>Law & Order: Special Victims Unit</em>,<em> Law & Order: Criminal Intent</em>, and the brief <em>Law & Order: Trial By Jury </em>and <em>Law & Order: Los Angeles</em>—the flagship was the longest-running hour-long prime-time TV series in American history. So yes, you have most likely seen an episode of <em>Law & Order</em>. </p>
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<p id="aXp0lo">Perhaps you were home sick from school. Working from your apartment. Or very, very hungover. Or perhaps, like me, you unabashedly and unreservedly love it, own DVD sets of it, used to take naps to it between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. every day in college. </p>
<p id="ggKkZN">Some people enjoy cooking shows. Others enjoy watching old episodes of <em>Friends</em>. I enjoy the calm, slow pace of watching three <em>Law & Order</em> episodes in a row. It is not quite mindless television. Each episode has its own complexities. But in a world of <em>Mad Men</em> and <em>Breaking Bad</em>, shows that changed the programming landscape, <em>Law & Order</em> is wonderfully, delightfully unchallenging. </p>
<p id="lbwp0t">Police procedurals have had a place on television since <em>Dragnet</em> premiered in 1951. But <em>Law & Order </em>was different, not only in its staying power but in its format. As the title describes quite adequately, the show depicts both the “law”—discovering the body, the initial investigation, the arrest of a suspect—and the “order”—the prosecution of the defendant. </p>
<p id="KJR4Xk"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/13/arts/review-television-new-series-has-2-tiers-the-chase-and-the-trial.html">According to a 1990 review</a> from <em>The New York Times</em>, one reason this was done was so that hypothetically, the show could be split into two pieces in syndication. This gives the show something its original contemporaries (<em>In the Heat of the Night</em>, <em>Hill Street Blues</em>) and current challengers (<em>NCIS</em>, for example) didn't even know they lacked: warm, comforting consistency.</p>
<p id="CS0UzQ">Each episode begins the same way: a body is found, or a crime is discovered to have been committed in New York City. (Real <em>L&O</em> fans will recall that in seasons 1 and 2, the body was usually discovered by patrol officers or cops walking the beat. Only in Season 3 did the whole of New York City become a veritable morgue.) The detectives investigate and interview witnesses with the <a href="https://youtu.be/-HKy4bVKD1w?t=2m17s">best damn facial recall</a> you've ever seen in your life. The witnesses help the detectives locate a suspect. The suspect is interrogated. There are two options: the suspect definitely committed the crime, or the suspect knows who did and will eventually give up the actual perpetrator. The perpetrator is arrested. Then, we head to court, where the perpetrator is arraigned. Then, the perpetrator's attorney heads to the Manhattan district attorney's office to meet with the assistant district attorney. And then there's a trial. Roll credits. </p>
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<p id="LPobyz">But <em>Law & Order </em>isn't necessarily fair. "I can't tell you the number of times, when I'm in the room and <em>Law & Order</em> is playing I have yelled at the TV," Tina Luongo told me. The reason? "The minute they mention 'public defender,' it's said with either a tone of disparagement or someone's playing a client that's disgruntled or, if there's actually someone playing a public defender, that role is written as if that person is inexperienced or not committed or just a joke. It's offensive." </p>
<p id="UFwv7I">Luongo is the attorney-in-charge of the Legal Aid Society's Criminal Practice. Based in New York, Legal Aid represents low-income individuals and families in more than 300,000 cases and matters every year. The Criminal Practice alone has a staff of more than 550 attorneys, representing clients in nearly 230,000 cases a year as part of the country's largest public defender program. </p>
<p id="KX00Zx">Luongo is not alone in her concerns about how <em>Law & Order</em> portrays not only public defenders, but defense attorneys and the criminal justice system in general. A <a href="https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=483078123005000090024091124003003126031069030050059041065104005065110103092125114005006042121044112043011081089072078122084018040006002065003102065028102100015104088054041055115126126026083010102078102091126000118075010118023084094005069122011099090086&EXT=pdf">paper</a> published in <em>Law & Psychology Review </em>in 2013 entitled "Ripped From the Headlines: Juror Perceptions in the <em>Law & Order</em> Era," found that because of <em>Law & Order</em>'s ubiquity and long shelf life, it is likely to have influenced the thinking of everyday Americans and changed how they view the legal system—and how they might serve as jurors, even at a time when our criminal justice apparatus is under more scrutiny than ever. As the paper puts it, "The show suggests that if a suspect is not guilty, he or she is not brought to trial. Law enforcement ends up with the right person. This narrative may lead viewers, and thus potential jurors, to believe this is the way the system actually works." </p>
<p id="tVhs7e">Daniel R. Alonso, formerly the chief assistant district attorney in Manhattan, told me that the show is, to him, a "parallel universe." On the one hand, he says, "It gets a lot of the details right. It gets the courtroom numbers right, for example. Someone will be in Courtroom Part 47, and there really is a Courtroom Part 47. They'll often cite the correct case or the correct statute number. Things like that are kind of neat to see." On the other hand, Luongo says, the substance is askew, from small pieces like having a senior district attorney try every single major case, to larger problems, like clarifying why certain cases are tried at all. </p>
<p id="4P2eQm">Of course, the show's context has changed dramatically. It premiered six months before the Rodney King beating, and suspects are routinely harassed into confessing or giving up witness statements by cops who "just want answers." The context police officers live in has changed as well. In an episode ("Manhood") during <em>Law & Order</em>'s third season, a gay cop is left to die by his fellow officers, and their defense attorney relies on a "gay panic" defense—which leads to an acquittal. (In 2017, D.C. police has a <a href="https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgender-liaison-unit-lgbtlu">unit</a> dedicated just to serving LGBTQ people, and many of those officers themselves are LGBTQ.) The country's relationship with the criminal justice system has changed dramatically since 1990. But <em>Law & Order</em>, to a large extent, hasn't. </p>
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<p id="xDroJ2">Episodes of <em>Law & Order </em>tend to blend into one another. You're not supposed to get to know the eminently replaceable detectives and police captains and assistant district attorneys of <em>Law & Order</em> too well. They're of such relative unimportance that Courtney B. Vance can play a <a href="http://lawandorder.wikia.com/wiki/Benjamin_Greer">Wall Street broker convicted of murder</a> in Season 5 and then become Assistant District Attorney Ron Carver when <em>Criminal Intent</em> premieres in 2001. (And don't forget that in Season 2, Detective <a href="http://uproxx.com/tv/about-the-1991-episode-of-law-order-where-jerry-orbach-played-a-defense-attorney/">Lennie Briscoe is a defense attorney</a>.) The totality of the show's small details—Briscoe's multiple marriages and alcoholism, Detective Mike Logan's issues with the Catholic church, Detective Rey Curtis's wife's struggle with multiple sclerosis, Assistant District Attorney Jamie Ross's contentious divorce—can only be gleaned from having watched literally hundreds of episodes of <em>Law & Order</em>. </p>
<p id="o5kSCt">What does matter is the stories. They're "ripped from the headlines," stories of murder and mayhem that are close enough to real life to require, in at least one instance, a <a href="http://lawandorder.wikia.com/wiki/Indifference">disclaimer</a>. But while the original headlines may have been complex, the stories, when translated to <em>Law & Order</em>, are less so. Guilt is assumed. The episode ends with justice being done and another criminal (most likely) behind bars, their fate never to be mentioned again. </p>
<p id="7PqL67">Defense attorneys just get in the way, most of the time, hectoring our heroic prosecutors with subpoenas and efforts to suppress valuable evidence obtained by police officers we know and trust. There are markedly few episodes in which a verdict is questioned or a conviction is overturned—in fact, in 2004's "Vendetta," a man released after being exonerated for a crime he didn't commit goes on to, of course, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0629485/">commit a murder</a>. <em>Law & Order</em> sees remarkably few shades of gray in the law. </p>
<p id="sUZ0Gg">Then again, so do we. <em>Law & Order</em> fits beliefs that many of us share about how justice should work. Like that no one is arrested who isn't guilty of something, or that district attorneys and prosecutors will go the ends of the earth (even <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0629318/">Los Angeles</a>!) to find the answers. The inherent conservatism of the <em>Law & Order</em> universe is reflective, not of creator–executive producer Dick Wolf's politics, but of our own. </p>
<p id="1fcExW">The consistency and ease by which an episode of <em>Law & Order</em> moves from the discovery of a corpse in an abandoned office building (or a park, or a car, or a bathroom) to the conviction of a most-certainly-guilty suspect is contrary to the actual machinations of our criminal justice system. Most criminal cases end in a <a href="https://www.bja.gov/Publications/PleaBargainingResearchSummary.pdf">plea bargain</a>. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/exonerations-2015_us_56ac0374e4b00b033aaf3da9">Confessions aren't always helpful</a>. And eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Of the more than 270 people exonerated by the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization that helps the wrongfully convicted, <a href="http://theweek.com/articles/480511/eyewitness-testimony-unreliable-trust">roughly 75 percent were sent to prison, in part, by mistaken eyewitnesses</a>. </p>
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<p id="BRvTml">This week, the five existing American series will be joined by <em>Law & Order True Crime</em>, an anthology series that will focus on real crime cases. The first season, <em>Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders</em>, will dramatize the story of Erik and Lyle Menendez, who murdered their parents, Jose and Kitty, in August 1989, either because of <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/1990/10/dunne199010">Jose and Kitty's abusive parenting</a> (their defense attorney's theory) or because they wanted access to their parents’ money and power (<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/12/10/court.archive.menendez7/index.html">the prosecution's initial theory</a>). The case was notoriously complex, so much so that it took <a href="http://time.com/3774669/menendez-brothers/">three juries to convict the brothers</a>. Unlike its <em>Law & Order</em> siblings, the series will largely be centered on the <a href="http://people.com/crime/edie-falco-menendez-brothers-law-order/">Menendez brothers' attorney, Leslie Abramson</a>. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="cyZXRN"><em>Law & Order</em>, in all its simplicity,<em> </em>works almost in spite of itself. It's safe and reliable, rarely too bloody, never too complicated. The police are good. The criminals are bad. And the prosecution is doing its best. It's not great prestige television, but it's not supposed to be. It's the television equivalent of pretty good soup, or a grilled cheese sandwich—comforting and unchallenging. But as the flaws of the systems that adjudicate crimes and put people in prison in this country become more apparent, perhaps a grilled cheese sandwich won't do. <em>Law & Order True Crime </em>will try to find a way to create nuance and complexity. But after nearly 30 years of <em>Law & Order</em>, that would be a first. </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/tv/2017/9/25/16361832/law-and-order-menendez-brothers-legal-systemJane Coaston2017-09-07T08:30:20-04:002017-09-07T08:30:20-04:00Vontaze Burfict Is Football’s Inescapable Past and Future
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<p>The game can change only so much. The same goes for the controversial Cincinnati Bengals linebacker.</p> <p id="ZmnHeT">Consider Vontaze Burfict. I do, often. </p>
<p id="DlNHR7">Vontaze Burfict is an outside linebacker on the precipice of his sixth season in the NFL. In his professional career, he has 502 tackles and seven sacks. In 2013, he was the first Cincinnati Bengals linebacker to make the Pro Bowl in 37 years. He has also been fined more than <a href="http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/cincinnati-bengals/vontaze-burfict-10100/fines/">$1 million over his career</a> for illegal hits and unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, may have <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tfLncD3pGM">cost the Bengals</a> their best chance at a postseason victory in decades (after <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/2016/1/9/10743810/bengals-steelers-turnovers-wild-card-highlights">nearly winning it for them</a>), and will start the season on the bench to serve a suspension for a vicious hit. </p>
<p id="44tleY">But that is Vontaze Burfict’s job, and his identity as a player. As teammate Adam Jones <a href="http://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/218517/bengals-teammates-defend-vontaze-burfict-say-hes-not-a-monster-after-75k-fine">said</a> last year, he’s a “hired hitman.” “There’s only a couple linebackers that play with that type of aggression,” Jones told ESPN. “Those are the great ones. Go back and look at it. I’m not saying Ray Lewis was a dirty player or anything, but him and Vontaze have the same characteristics. Exactly the same.” In short, Vontaze Burfict is often penalized for doing exactly what he is paid roughly $4.75 million a year to do. And he is very, very good at it. </p>
<p id="cojG5M">Vontaze Burfict is, in his own way, symbolic of the continuous, never-ending debate over football. Not its health impacts or its financial impact on players (or cities). Nor is he a symbol of its role in our cultural lexicon, but rather the conversation about the game itself, and whether or not its violence—and it is violence; wonderful, awful violence—is laudable or unforgivable. He was suspended three games (reduced from five) to begin the new season for an illegal hit against a defenseless player on Kansas City Chiefs fullback Anthony Sherman during a preseason game. He, more than any other professional player alive, is the story of the NFL in 2017: undeliberate, uncalibrated, uncontrollable chaos in a sport that is more controlled and more restrained than ever before. Thirty years ago, Vontaze Burfict would be remembered as a football powerhouse, Dick Butkus—a player Burfict deeply admires—but faster. Thirty years from now, Vontaze Burfict might never be permitted to get on a football field. For now, Vontaze Burfict—perhaps my favorite NFL player—is here. He is extremely talented, and extremely unpredictable. He poses innumerable questions about his sport, one that has taken him from a difficult childhood to a professional career in the most popular league in America, a sport that seems less permanent and more ephemeral than it has in decades. And for now, we don’t have answers to any of them, nor for the man at the center who just wants to play the game the way he always has—the way that got him to the NFL. </p>
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<p id="SSyQH6">Tom Brady had to mold himself into a franchise-leading, Super Bowl–winning quarterback. But Vontaze Burfict was almost born to hit people. At a touch over 6 feet and more than 250 pounds, Burfict is perfectly built for playing outside linebacker. His edge-rushing speed is difficult to match. He can play sideline to sideline, matching up against tight ends, wide receivers, and running backs alike, and he can keep a ballcarrier in the backfield by sheer force of will. But that physical perfection comes with a reckless, unceasing violence. </p>
<p id="RiR6Ch">As a child, Burfict <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/21/sports/la-sp-0922-vontaze-burfict-20110922">survived three life-threatening incidents</a>, including a house fire and a near-fatal case of rotavirus; as a teenager, he evaded the gangs that patrolled near his high school. His aggression didn't just win him a state championship and get him to college. His aggression may have saved his life. </p>
<p id="RY2w2o">In 2009, he was the most heavily recruited player to ever choose Arizona State, decommitting from USC to do so, virtually unheard of in the Pete Carroll era. As a high school senior, he had more than 150 tackles in a single season. He once launched himself at quarterback Matt Barkley’s knees during a game between Burfict’s Corona Centennial and rival Mater Dei, a decision Barkley <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/21/sports/la-sp-0922-vontaze-burfict-20110922">never forgot (or forgave)</a>. As a freshman at Arizona State, he was already being compared to Ray Lewis, for both his skill and <a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/news/story?id=4564833">his tendency to commit penalties</a>. And like many young players learning the game in tough environments, his aggression wasn't stymied—it was supported, even while his coaches told the media he needed to limit penalties. “I love his intensity,” his coach, Dennis Erickson, <a href="http://archive.azcentral.com/sports/asu/articles/2009/10/20/20091020asufbburfict1021.html#ixzz4roWvWCvK">told <em>The</em> <em>Arizona Republic</em> in 2009</a>. “I don’t want to slow his intensity down because it’s contagious for the rest of the players, for the fans and for everybody involved in the program. But he’s got to be smart.” That year in a game against Georgia, he committed an offside penalty by shoving a referee. (The penalty was rescinded immediately.) On the next play, he stuffed a fourth-and-1. </p>
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<p id="pQyCPm">College football writer Matt Hinton told me that he compared Burfict at Arizona State not to Ray Lewis, but to Charles Jefferson, Forest Whitaker's character in <em>Fast Times at Ridgemont High</em>, who single-handedly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYV5f0Aqo4w">destroys the opposing football team</a> that totaled his car. “Except Burfict,” Hinton said, “just played that way all the time without being provoked. Like a person who was basically designed for this specific kind of violence and had such enthusiasm for it that it sometimes overwhelmed him.”</p>
<p id="HNzuZl">In 2010, he was named to a few different preseason All-America lists and was Arizona State's leading tackler—and still <a href="http://archive.azcentral.com/sports/asu/articles/2010/10/05/20101005arizona-state-football-burfict-benched.html">got benched</a> that season for committing too many personal foul penalties. In a game against USC his junior year, he <a href="https://arizona.sbnation.com/arizona-st-sun-devils/2011/9/24/2447661/vontaze-burfict-usc-matt-barkley">pointed at his old foe Barkley</a> before the snap and later picked him off. That same year, <em>Sporting News </em>named him “<a href="http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/news/193350-the-meanest-man-in-college-football-vontaze-burfict">The Meanest Man in College Football</a>,” with one NFL scout quoted as saying that Burfict is what would happen if you “kick Ray Lewis's dog.” In 37 games at Arizona State, he had <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/2016/12/18/13351854/vontaze-burfict-history-cincinnati-bengals-asu-personal-fouls">22 personal foul penalties</a>. </p>
<p id="2x6EWi">But that violence, the violence that created the legend of Vontaze Burfict, was also detrimental to Burfict's career. His NFL combine profile <a href="http://www.nfl.com/combine/profiles/vontaze-burfict?id=2533058">noted</a>, “He is capable of being the physical inside presence for an NFL defense, but not many coaches are going to have the patience to deal with personal foul penalties like the coaches did at ASU.” And virtually no coaches did. In fact, only Marvin Lewis (who has never turned down a <a href="http://thebiglead.com/2017/06/03/blame-marvin-lewis-for-pacman-jones-mentoring-joe-mixon/">good reclamation project</a>) was willing to take a chance on him as an undrafted free agent. </p>
<p id="FVLNvz">The complications of Vontaze Burfict are many. At a time when more attention than ever is being focused on the ramifications of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/25/sports/football/nfl-cte.html">football-induced head injuries</a>, Burfict has been fined multiple times for illegal hits, the kind that make you wonder whether or not this game is such a good idea in the first place. There is a <a href="https://www.change.org/p/nfl-commissioner-rodger-goodell-vontaze-burfict-should-be-banned-from-the-nfl">petition on Change.org</a> asking Roger Goodell to ban him from the NFL because he “has proven time and time again that he can not be controlled by coaches or referees.” (The petition has fewer than 2,000 signatures.) His reckless abandon is both why he is an NFL powerhouse, and why he gets fined; why he was a five-star recruit, and why he went undrafted. </p>
<p id="ziAYQv">It is easy to love a quarterback. Quarterbacks are meant to play with precision, not malice. Quarterbacking can be beautiful, throws on third-and-11 that form perfect parabolas and seemingly drop from the sky into the arms of receivers on the opposite end of the field. Wide receivers can be adored for their agility and grace. But linebackers are derided, it seems, for doing their jobs: hitting people with the express intention of preventing those people from moving forward. And Vontaze Burfict, who is faster and stronger and hits people harder than most, is the best of his kind—and also the worst. </p>
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<p id="7Sb7vg">I remember watching Vontaze Burfict play alongside Brock Osweiler at Arizona State in 2010, perhaps the most fascinating 6-6 team I’ve ever seen. In a game against Stanford in early November, he grabbed receiver Doug Baldwin’s face mask and then <a href="http://archive.azcentral.com/sports/asu/articles/2010/11/13/20101113asu-vontaze-burfict-mistakes.html"> complained about the face mask penalty</a>. That gave Stanford first-and-goal from the 7-yard line. The Cardinal scored the winning touchdown two plays later. That was Burfict in college, and Burfict today. He will give defensive coordinators everything he has. Perhaps that's too much. </p>
<p id="6OslRV">Burfict is one of my favorite NFL players not because he hits people. It’s because he is beyond the pretenses the sport attempts to impart. He does not play with grace. He plays with rage. He plays in the way we used to harken back to and long for on <em>NFL Countdown</em> or NFL Films reruns, before the players who played that way decades ago started dying in their 40s and 50s, taking their own lives with notes and text messages left behind <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/sports/football/03duerson.html">asking someone, anyone</a>, to explain what had gone so terribly wrong in their brains. He plays in a way, I suspect, fans wish was more common—a wish those fans don't always want to admit. If Tom Brady is the superego of football, Vontaze Burfict is its inescapable id. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="V9R4i8">Wherever football goes in 2017, or in 2027, it will be forced to contend with Vontaze Burfict, and the Vontaze Burficts still to come. And they are coming—linebackers who are faster and stronger and bigger and meaner and just as determined to punish running backs and wide receivers and quarterbacks by any means necessary. In the college ranks, there are players who will disregard the threat of targeting penalties to get the stop. In high school there are linebackers who will go after quarterbacks, and their knees. And someday, someday soon, most likely, there will be another Vontaze Burfict, and more fines and penalties, but also contract extensions and Pro Bowl invitations. Because Vontaze Burfict is football, its pleasure and terror. And Vontaze Burfict isn’t going anywhere. </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2017/9/7/16262634/vontaze-burfict-cincinnati-bengals-linebacker-suspension-hits-violence-footballJane Coaston