Back in the mid-1990s I spent four years covering criminal courts for Florida's largest newspaper. It was like being handed free tickets to the greatest shows on Broadway-well, not the musicals, but there was plenty of both tragedy and comedy. I wrote about bumbling hit men who got lost on the way to kill their target, a serial killer who was nailed thanks to a dog named Princess Penny Pickles and a bigamist whose defense was "I forgot I was married" (it worked!)
The one downside was that seeing real courtroom drama forever ruined my enjoyment of a lot of fictional courtroom drama. My wife and I would be watching some TV or movie display of dazzling cross-examination and suddenly I would be compelled to blurt out, "That wouldn't happen in real life." (My wife, a patient woman, never objected to my repeated objections.)
