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01 July 2009
Law & Order Reflects Real Life
An Interview with Richard Sweren
Law & Order has attracted American TV fans for 19 years by reflecting the sometimes agonizing complexity of the criminal justice system in real life. Filmed entirely on location in New York, each hour-long show examines a crime, usually a murder, from the perspective, first, of the police investigating the case and making an arrest and, then, of the prosecutors trying to arrange a plea bargain or to persuade a jury of the accused person’s guilt. Episodes often depict the arduous work of building a case when, for example, a judge might suppress police evidence over a legal technicality. Richard Sweren had a 15-year career as a criminal lawyer before becoming a writer and producer for Law & Order. He spoke to eJournal USA managing editor Bruce Odessey. This interview appears in the July 2009 issue of eJournal USA, “Anatomy of a Jury Trial.”
Question: Trial scenes are a staple of movies and television. There is a new Russian remake of 12 Angry Men, the classic American film from the 1950s about a murder trial jury. Why are so many films and TV shows focused on trials?
Sweren: It’s a natural place where there is drama, conflict. People’s lives are on the line. It’s just conducive to telling dramatic stories.
Q: Law & Order has run on American TV for 19 years. It’s popular overseas, including in countries without jury trials, maybe even in countries without rule of law. What’s the secret to this show’s appeal?
Sweren: It’s popular because it tells a self-contained story in 45 minutes. You didn’t have to watch the one before, or watch it for a year or five years – you can just get right into it. You don’t need any previous knowledge of the show when you turn it on.
We try to choose interesting crimes, and people are fascinated by crime, by cops and robbers. Crime is something that translates to any language.
Q: As a writer, how do you manage to get a sense of legal authenticity on the screen?
Sweren: I was a practicing criminal lawyer for 15 years before I had this job. There are several lawyers on the staff who are now writers, and we hope to portray things fairly authentically. Obviously, there are creative shortcuts we need to take to make a trial seem like it happens in 10 minutes. For example, sometimes we bring an accused murderer into a judge's chambers for a proceeding that in real life would only happen in a courtroom.
Q: Do you think the creative license you use might distort people’s view of the justice system?
Sweren: No, I don’t think so. I think in a way the show actually educates people to how the criminal justice system works. People talk to me about suppression hearings – when the judge excludes evidence against the accused that has been obtained in violation of the [U.S.] Constitution – things that they heard on Law & Order that they had not been exposed to before. I think it treats the criminal justice system in a more sophisticated way than any show before it that I’m aware of.
Q: As you watch the show over time you get the repeated message that the ethical issues, the moral issues involved in resolving a case are typically complex and require difficult choices. How much is this idea part of the show’s formula?
Sweren: We’d like to say that in the good episodes of Law & Order, the first half where the police are investigating is a crime mystery and the second half is a moral mystery. The first half of the show is usually a “who-done-it,” the second half a “why-done-it,” which will motivate our prosecutors to stake out different viewpoints as to what constitutes justice in the given situation. We like to choose subjects that aren’t slam dunks, that have some moral gray areas so that there can be some interesting positions staked out by our characters.
Q: Sometimes in the show, justice does not triumph in the end. Often there is some sort of compromise. Sometimes the criminal even avoids punishment. Why does the show depart from this pop culture tradition?
Sweren: In the real world, innocent people are convicted, guilty people get off, and the vast majority of cases are resolved through plea bargains. It’s not supposed to make you feel good or satisfied at the end of every episode – justice doesn’t always win, the bad guy doesn’t always go down – but to reflect the reality of life. In the episode “Crimebusters,” the murderer of a baby in an arson fire went unpunished because the prosecution could not prove its case against either of two equally plausible suspects.
Q: As a lawyer yourself, would you say that jury trials reach verdicts that achieve justice most of the time?
Sweren: Meaning more than 50 percent? Yes.
Q: Why don’t juries reach just conclusions more often?
Sweren: I think there is gamesmanship between the parties. I think there is perjury; people do tell lies in court. The rules aren’t perfect, judges and lawyers aren’t perfect, juries aren’t perfect. It’s not a scientific process. It’s only the best we can do. It has shortcomings.
Q: The police and prosecutors are usually shown in a positive light on the show. Are they ever shown in a negative light?
Sweren: Our characters will occasionally do something that is in a gray area. We’ve done shows where other police officers, not our characters who are in the ensemble, have done bad things. We’ve prosecuted police officers. It’s not always about how great the police are. In one episode, “Black, White and Blue,” uniformed officers transported and left a young man in a crime-ridden area as punishment for some minor offense, and he was murdered there.
Q: When you write a show, who is the audience you have in mind, and how much legal knowledge do you assume on the part of the audience?
Sweren: The audience we have in mind is the average adult American television viewer. We try not to dumb down the shows too much. We expect people will be able to follow basic things about criminal justice and trials. We like to think we appeal to people on a fairly high level considering what else there is on television.
Q: What do other lawyers, police, judges say about the show?
Sweren: We get letters from time to time: That would never happen, or this would never happen. We occasionally get letters from lawyers saying, “Wow, that’s a great idea! I can try that in this case that I have.” But I think it’s probably like most professions. If a doctor watches a medical show, it’s easy to pick out the shortcuts and the creative licenses. I think people in criminal justice realize that we try very hard to make things authentic, but there are times when we did take license. And they understand that it’s not a documentary – it’s a television show.
Q: Has the focus of the show changed over the years?
Sweren: Not really. It’s still crimes ripped from the headlines for the most part, shows based in some way on true stories. That’s what we’ve been doing for 19 years.
Q: The entire cast of the show has changed several times. That’s a lot different from most TV shows, which are built around a star performer. How does Law & Order succeed with such a different model?
Sweren: The show is about the story being told, not so much about the characters. It’s all about the crime and the prosecution. You by and large don’t go home with these characters; you don’t know what they do when they’re not at work. The only arena in which you get to know them is how they’re dealing with the specific case that they’re working on that week, and their character is developed from how they react to the case.
Q: This season you have two younger detectives where the earlier shows had older detectives. What is behind that change?
Sweren: Over 19 years the characters are going to age. It’s always nice to have some fresh faces and appeal to a younger audience who may not be as familiar with the show as our long-time fans.
Q: Is the formulaic approach to the show a strength or a weakness?
Sweren: It’s both. Obviously, as a writer I would like to be able to write things that aren’t so formulaic, but it forces a kind of precision that is really difficult to execute. To put one of these shows together is actually very complicated; it’s a skill that has to be mastered.
Q: As a former practicing lawyer and as a writer for the show, what is the message for countries outside the United States that don’t use juries, that perhaps don’t even have rule of law?
Sweren: Our police and prosecutors are sincere in their quest for justice. They’re humans, and they make mistakes, and personal things get in the way. The system isn’t perfect. Maybe other systems work better in other countries, but I believe ours works well in the United States.
The opinions expressed in this interview do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.
