In a repressive time in US history when the erosion and abuse of civil rights of those presumed guilty is nearly as big an issue as the plight of the innocent in an increasingly compromised US judicial system - or lack of it - Sidney Lumet's Find Me Guilty could not be more relevant. In other words, Guantanamo and Abu Grab may not bear the least resemblance to the NYC 1987-88 Lucchese mob family trial that figures in this revelatory courtroom docudrama - the longest criminal trial in US history, spanning two years. But there are certainly parallels to be drawn when it comes to the Guliani and Bush administrations' alarming disregard of the most basic judicial principles.

Find Me Guilty - in a found footage coup akin to last year's likely best supporting actor/villain Senator Joe McCarthy in Good Night And Good Luck - plasters the younger attack dog mug across the screen early on, of then prosecutor Rudy Guliani as he declares all out war against the NY mob. The problem is that Guliani's end justifies the means mentality set the whole city into a nose dive urban police state, from which we're still recovering. Likewise conjuring shades of Arthur Miller's The Crucible and those Salem Witch Trials in selective ways, Find Me Guilty finds fascistic prosecutors strong arming defendants along with friends, family, and low level perps into the new Rico Act's emphasis on conspiracy, double indemnity, and mutual testifying against each other in exchange for dropping serious jail time, a prosecutorial mode later expanded to political activists.

Most of the twenty members of the Lucchese family, facing a total of 76 charges, basically scowl and cringe their way through the trial in response, in a collective state of resentful confusion. But one oddly likeable tough guy, Jackie Dee DiNorscio (Vin Diesel) is not hearing any of it. And despite facing thirty years in jail and the bribe of a sentence reduction - along with prime steak dinner in the prosecutor's office to sweeten the deal if he snitches on fellow associates - Jackie stands up to the court, insisting on being his own lawyer.

Jackie's rationale is simple: He's spent most of his life in prison, so he feels as hip to the legal system as any lawyer. And his unorthodox street savvy methods of defending himself with his earthy sense of humor, create an instant bond between himself and the essentially workingclass jury, not to mention exposing ensuing courtroom hypocrisy. The point here is that the keepers of the criminal justice system have become so far removed from the masses of people, both socially and legally, that Jackie's arguments before the bench evolve into a slam dunk.

Sidney Lumet, who has turned heads for decades with courtroom classics like Twelve Angry Men, Serpico and The Verdict, has not lost any of his briliant knack for keeping audiences captivated and enthralled, even now at the age of eighty. And with Find Me Guilty, he transforms Vin Diesel from Hollywood action hero into a flawed multi-faceted character with depth, rugged charm and surprising sympathy.

But more important, Lumet nearly effortlessly challenges the debased ethics of the criminal justice system, while exposing its foul side to such an extent with his own self-styled theory of relativity, that he pulls off convincing audiences to identify with the perps, no matter how bad they may be. And one does not forget for an instant during these dramatized very local real life proceedings during the last century, the current international accusations against the US, of human rights violations around the world so horrific, that the question of guilt or innocence has nearly been rendered beside the point.

Prairie Miller
WBAI Arts Magazine
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