‘My Cousin Vinny’ still the winner among criminal defense lawyers
Fourteen years after its release, My Cousin Vinny retains a devoted audience in the criminal defense legal community.
This spring, two presenters at a National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers conference used clips from the movie to teach young lawyers the finer points of voir dire, cross-examination and trial strategy. Several other criminal defense lawyers told Lawyers USA they routinely cite scenes from the movie to illustrate key legal points - both with other attorneys and their clients.
Even Arthur Miller, the world famous Harvard Law School professor, advises his first-year students to check out the film.
Most movies don’t really get into trial procedure, but ‘My Cousin Vinny’ does, Miller said. Movies are great because they dramatize and bring a reality - even when fictional or funny - to law in action in a way that the classroom does not. Even a sensationalized scene like the Cruise-Nicholson confrontation in ‘A Few Good Men,’ tells the student that courtroom drama plays out in real life, although admittedly rarely in the stark form that Hollywood offers.
Miller lists My Cousin Vinny among a handful of great law movies including Twelve Angry Men, Anatomy of a Murder and Judgment at Nuremberg.
But among trial lawyers - especially those who specialize in criminal defense - My Cousin Vinny is the one movie they never tire of watching.
Directed by Jonathan Lynn, the courtroom comedy stars Joe Pesci as Vincent Gambino - a New York attorney who took six tries to pass the bar exam and who has never tried a case. Vinny is summoned to rural Alabama to defend his cousin and a college friend who have been mistakenly identified in the murder of a convenience store clerk.
Although Vinny and his brassy fiance, Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei), initially repel the judge (Fred Gwynne) with their flashy attire and thick New York accents, they eventually decimate the prosecutor’s case and win over the jury.
Cited by Court TV as the best trial movie of all time, My Cousin Vinny is actually an insightful look at courtroom procedure and trial strategy.
Anthony Natale
Federal defenders’ office, Miami
During his presentation on cross-examination at a NACDL seminar in Philadelphia this spring, Natale showed several clips from the movie, including Vinny’s pre-trial research and witness interviews.
The reason I like using it is he’s interviewing people, Natale said. It’s not like he’s shooting from the hip.
Before the trial, Vinny interviews key witnesses in person and tries to envision how each one saw the crime.
Natale also showed Gambini’s cross-examination of several eyewitnesses: one who saw the crime through his grime-covered window; a combative witness whose time estimates are skewered by Gambini’s research on cooking grits; and an elderly woman whose eyes have gotten more and more out of whack.
The scenes, Natale said, really do illustrate how you can create that dissonance between the jury and the eyewitness.
Charles Daniels
Criminal defense, Albuquerque, N.M.
Daniels, who has been practicing and teaching criminal defense for 37 years, has used My Cousin Vinny as a teaching tool for his class in Evidence-Trial Practice at the University of New Mexico School of Law.
Besides being a well-written, well-acted and laugh-out-loud funny movie, this trial movie is one of the best in providing realistic lessons and good and bad trial techniques, he said. [It provides] vivid examples of important points that [students] need to learn.
Like Natale, Daniels uses clips from the movie to emphasize the importance of cross-examination and thorough investigation and preparation.
Other trial tips Daniels extracts from the movie include:
The importance of never going fishing at trial by asking questions on cross when you don’t know what the answer will be.
Look at the pathetic co-counsel’s smugly wading into areas that kept giving the adverse witnesses more opportunities to sink his client, at Vinny’s early floundering on cross, and at the prosecutor’s uninformed attempts to cross Vinny’s girlfriend on her qualifications as an automotive expert, Daniels said.
Proper and improper techniques in presenting and challenging expert testimony, including both expert qualifications and dealing with the opinion itself.
The climactic part of the movie comes with the destruction of the supposed ’smoking gun’ expert testimony of the FBI tire expert by Vinny’s better-informed girlfriend, Daniels noted.
How to dress and not dress for trial. Vinny appears at the arraignment in a leather jacket and without a tie, and is jailed for contempt of court for behaving disrespectfully and failing to enter a plea for his client. When the trial opens, Vinny shows up in an outlandish, vintage Southern suit because his suit fell in the mud.
How not to conduct voir dire. During Vinny’s voir dire of his fiance as an automotive expert, the prosecutor trips himself up by asking her a trick question that ends up - much to his chagrin - proving her automotive knowledge.