By: Morgan Gold
At the Fordham film festival last week I saw the film “The Confession” starring Ben Kingsley and Alec Baldwin. The film touches upon many of the Law and Literature themes. Alec Baldwin plays Roy Bleakie, a New York attorney hired to defend Harry Fertig (Kingsley), the CFO of a major company who murdered three hospital employees after they refused to treat his son (who ended up dying later that evening from a ruptured appendix). Roy’s defense strategy is to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, hoping Harry will serve a few years in a psychiatric institution instead of prison. To the “reasonable man,” this strategy seems like the best option. The reasonable person test asks what most people would do in a situation given geography, religion, profession, etc. Most people would rather be considered insane than go to jail or get the death penalty. However, Harry, the idiosyncratic man, does not want to plead insanity. He believes that his crime was justified in order to avenge his son’s death and pleading insanity will send the message that the crime was unjustified and groundless. Harry also wants to take responsibility for his crime, an honorable notion that many criminal defendants in the United States try to avoid. Harry is trying to do the right and honorable thing, yet is considered crazy by failing to live up to the mediocre standards set forth in the reasonable person test.
Roy Bleakie views the legal system solely in terms of money or jail time. The best result for his clients means the least amount of jail time. Roy will do whatever it takes to achieve that result, even if the truth and back story are stifled. However, because Harry wants to take responsibility for his crimes, he is a different type of client. Harry was actually disappointed to learn that the prosecutor was not pursuing the death penalty. For the first time in his career Roy experiences an internal, moral battle: go against Harry’s wishes and “win” the case by successfully arguing the insanity defense (which is what Roy would have done in the past without second thoughts) or listen to Harry and strive to achieve the truth and the correct moral result. Roy ends up choosing the moral path because, as Harry told him, once you know what the right thing is, it’s hard not to do it.
