Fictional court cases can be absorbing, especially when there are very strong feelings about the case. But in most countries, even the most heartily disliked defendant is entitled to legal representation. That means that lawyers sometimes have to defend a client that ‘everybody knows’ committed a crime. Those cases can be especially difficult. Cases like that can rankle when the lawyer loses, but they’re especially satisfying when the lawyer wins. It’s little wonder that they can make for such engaging reads. Oh, before I go any further, you’ll notice I’m not going to mention any of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason cases – too easy. It’s the same with John Mortimer’s Horace Rumpole stories…

In Agatha Christie’s Five Little Pigs, Carla Lemarchant hires Hercule Poirot to find out who poisoned her father, famous painter Amyas Crale. At the time of the murder, his wife Caroline was suspected of the crime, and with good reason. There was evidence against her, and she had a motive, as her husband was having a not-very-hidden affair. Caroline Crale was arrested, tried, and convicted in the case, and died in prison. But Carla has always believed her mother was innocent, and now, sixteen years later, she wants Poirot to re-investigate the case. Poirot learns that Caroline was defended by Sir Montague Depleach, a very well-regarded barrister. From the interviews Poirot conducts, it’s clear that Depleach worked hard for his client, and came up with the best strategy he could use. In fact, he managed to get her sentence commuted from execution to life in prison. He faced the proverbial uphill battle, though, as everyone assumed Caroline Crale was guilty. In the end, though, we find out that she wasn’t the only one with a motive for murder.

In John Grisham’s A Time to Kill, Mississippi lawyer Jake Brigance is faced with a very difficult case. His client, Carl Lee Hailey, has been arrested for killing two men, Billy Ray Cobb and James Louis ‘Pete’ Willard. He’s also charged with wounding a deputy sheriff. It doesn’t help matters that Hailey is Black. But the case is much more complicated than it seems on the surface. The two men Hailey shot were responsible for raping his ten-year-old daughter Tonya. They’d been arrested and were in custody when Hailey killed them. On the one hand, there’s a lot of sympathy for Hailey. Plenty of fathers might have done the same thing. There’s no denying that he committed murder, though, and vigilantism can’t be condoned. What’s more, there are people who, for racist reasons, don’t want Hailey acquitted. The case becomes a media sensation and a political tinderbox, and through it all, Brigance has to do everything he can to defend his client.

So does Arthur Beauchamp in William Deverell’s Trial of Passion. Beauchamp has just retired from his law firm and is settling into his new life on Vancouver’s Garibaldi Island. He’s called back to work, though, when Professor Jonathan O’Donnell, acting dean of law at the University of British Columbia, is arrested and charged with rape. His accuser, law student Kimberly Martin, admits that she was at O’Donnell’s home at a party, and that she had had a lot to drink. She claims that O’Donnell took advantage of that and raped her. At first, O’Donnell denies everything, but then finally admits having sex with Kimberly. He says, though, that it was consensual. It’s a major point of controversy, and there are plenty of people who see Kimberly as the victim. Still, Beauchamp has a job to do, and although it doesn’t help that O’Donnell lied to him at first, he wants to do the best he can to defend his client. It’s a difficult case to litigate, and it gets a lot of public attention.

And then there’s Gianrico Carofiglio’s Involuntary Witness, the first in his Guido Guerrieri series. Guerrieri is an attorney based in Bari. One day, he gets a visit from a woman named Abajaje Deheba. Her partner, a Senegalese man named Abdou Thiam, is under arrest on the charge that he abducted and killed nine-year-old Francesco Rubino. Thiam says he is innocent, and his partner believes him. Neither of them is convinced that he can get justice in the Italian system, though. After hearing about the case, Guerrieri decides to take it. He meets with his new client and begins to put his case together. It’s going to be challenging, though. Everyone is very quick to believe that Thiam is a murderer. In part, that’s because there’s a convincing eyewitness account. In part, it’s because Thiam is African – a ‘non-European’ whom many assume is guilty. As the case goes to trial, Guerrieri is going to have do everything he can to bring the prosecution’s case into question, and it will be difficult.

Cases like this, where most people assume a person is guilty, can be especially challenging for defending counsel. But those cases can also make for suspenseful crime fiction (right, fans of Ferdinand von Schirach’s The Collini Case?). These are only a few examples; your turn.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Bob Marley’s I Shot the Sheriff.