When The Movies Get It Right: Probable Cause and David Fincher's Zodiac

[Originally published June 1,  2013. Since today is the 10th Anniversary of the release of this classic crime film, I'm re-upping it. Enjoy!]

When Dirty Harry opened in 1971, it became a box office success and critical darling. It solidified Clint Eastwood's rising star and proved that gritty cop dramas like Bullitt, and The French Connection were legitimate sources of entertainment to a world that grew tired of psychedelic, experimental, 60s era musicals and comedies. The film was very loosely based on the real life (and in 1971, still ongoing) Zodiac murders; likewise, Eastwood's character was based on the police officer assigned to track down the Zodiac, San Francisco Police Inspector David Toschi. Dirty Harry ends with Harry Callahan getting the drop on the film's villain, Scorpio, in a San Francisco junkyard where Eastwood delivers his famous "do you feel lucky" speech. Then he blows Scorpio away with his .357 magnum revolver... a gun so powerful it can carve a hole in solid concrete. Of course the real Zodiac never got to be on the receiving end of such rough justice and Dave Toschi retired in 1983 having never arrested the most famous unknown serial killer in American history.

Dirty Harry has many charms: an iconic antihero, one of the great movie quotes of all time, topical relevancy, and a well-staged, taughtly paced finale. But it was a hit precisely because it allowed the American public to get closure on a national terror that would never resolve. For that same reason, the film left me cold. As you already know, I'm a big supporter of verisimilitude in film. I don't believe that filmmakers need to sacrifice reality on the alter of drama. And while I understand why the filmmakers of Dirty Harry killed off Scorpio, I don't have to tell you that gunning down the bad guy - even if he deserves it - is pretty shoddy police work.

That's why David Fincher's epic crime film Zodiac - a richly detailed chronicle of the Zodiac case - is one of my all-time favorite films. It understands to its very core what good police work is and how good policemen investigate crimes. About halfway through the film, Toschi (played in a career-making turn by Mark Ruffalo), exits a policeman's only screening of Dirty Harry, after years of being stymied in his investigation. Toschi is so torn up about his inability to catch the Zodiac and the movie's unabashed twisting of the truth that he can't watch the whole thing... he just paces and smokes in the lobby. When the movie lets out, the police commissioner approaches him and says, "Dave, that Harry Callahan did a hell of a job closing your case!"

Toschi's response: "Yeah, no need for due process, right?" Zing!

You see, everyone gets due process in this country. Everyone. Regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, ethnicity, class, or any other category you can devise. Killers, rapists, thieves, and bad men all still get due process because it's written in the Constitution, the highest law of the land. Due process can mean a lot of things, but in the context of a criminal case, it means that you can't be punished without a fair trial and a proper investigation. And to conduct a proper investigation, police need to investigate clues, gather evidence, and then make arrests based on that evidence. That evidence, if properly gathered, catalogued, and analyzed, results in Probable Cause, a foundational element of criminal investigations that allows an officer to make an arrest based on that evidence. You can't make an arrest without Probable Cause and if you do, the suspect will be freed before you can say "kicked off the force."

To drive that point home, Zodiac shows Toschi and his partner Bill Armstrong investigating Arthur Leigh Allen, a very promising candidate for the Zodiac. Allen had been implicated by a former coworker for saying things that later showed up in the Zodiac letters. Allen had the same glove size, boot size, and general appearance as the Zodiac. He owned the same types of guns, had the same military training, lived nearby one of the Zodiac victims, and even owned a Zodiac brand watch with the infamous crosshairs insignia that the Zodiac killer signed his letters with. But despite eliciting high interest from the police, Allen was never arrested. How can that be, you might ask? Because even though there was an abundance of evidence, it was all circumstantial - in other words, the evidence was  highly inconclusive, no matter how suggestive it was of Allen's guilt. In order to justify a probable cause arrest that would stand up to judicial scrutiny (i.e. not get thrown out of court), they needed something much more concrete to tie Allen to the Zodiac killings. That's why the film kept harping on DNA and handwriting samples (the Zodiac hand wrote nearly all of his letters). And when they got both from Allen, they didn't match the Zodiac.  The film takes great pains to show us Toschi and Armstrong gathering evidence, going through the motions of getting a search warrant to Allen's house. They fail because, according to proper 4th Amendment procedures, the evidence to get a search warrant issued had to be based on probable cause, which the issuing judge didn't believe existed. They do finally get the warrant when Allen moves to a different jurisdiction with a judge who is willing to issue the warrant. The scene where they toss Allen's trailer is one of the creepiest scenes in the film.

Toschi and Armstrong believed in Allen's guilt to such a degree that when they're told that Allen's handwriting isn't a match for the Zodiac, they're visibly destroyed. Toschi's career takes a nosedive (at one point, he's suspended from the force after being implicated in the news as the writer of some of the Zodiac letters. He was later exonerated) and Armstrong transfers out of the department. Without the handwriting match, they don't have probable cause, and without probable cause, there's no arrest, and without the arrest, they can't investigate Allen further. The case hits a dead-end. And rightfully so. Allen may have been the killer, but there just wasn't enough evidence to get him in front of a judge.

Do you know what Toschi and Armstrong didn't do? They didn't follow Allen against their Captain's orders. They didn't bug his phone without a warrant. They didn't catch him in the act and gun him down after a dramatic chase.

One of the things that makes Zodiac a great film is that it eschews a lot of the easy choices that screenwriters make when adapting from real events. Often, screenwriters will eliminate, compress, or invent characters and events to suit the narrative structure rather than be truthful to reality. But that didn't happen with Zodiac. The film takes time to explain what probable cause is, why it's important, and why Toschi's and Armstrong's case against Allen dies on the vine without it. Later in the film, when cartoonist Robert Graysmith picks up the investigation on his own, he's instructed by various law enforcement officials, including Toschi, to stay away from the circumstantial evidence and stick with the DNA and handwriting samples because they're concrete and will hold up in court. The rest is just window dressing.

The film treats police procedure with respect, it treats cops and their investigative methods with respect. It doesn't take the easy way out, and it knows that you can still build drama and tension without twisting reality. More than that, it understands why due process is important and why, sometimes, you have to let the bad guy go if you want to honor the Constitution.

Apple Announces New iPhone, Smartwatch, and The End of Personal Privacy

Last Tuesday, we all sat glued to our twitter feeds and livestreams as Apple wowed us with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and the Apple Watch. But if you paid close attention, you may have noticed that Apple didn’t just grace us with some fancy new baubles. They announced a third big reveal… every iTunes account holder was given a free copy of U2’s new album Songs of Innocence. I think Apple was hoping that everyone would be like “Oh, some free stuff. Free stuff is great. Thanks Apple!”

Instead, everyone freaked the hell out because while it was intended to be a nice gesture, it actually said a lot about how Apple (and every other tech company and even the government) views our right to privacy. Namely, that it doesn’t. The problem, of course, isn’t that Apple gave everyone a free copy of a new U2 album (which I’m sure is perfectly fine). It’s HOW they did it. They could have given iTunes users a link to the free download, but instead they went ahead and automatically downloaded the album onto your iPhone and iPad!

Just to reiterate. Apple downloaded an album onto your phone without your consent. If you haven’t already, go ahead and check your phone. I’ll wait. You should see a screen that looks a lot like this:

If you’re like me, you didn’t put it there. This intrusion concerns me because it's such a brazen statement about the state of privacy in this country. Between Facebook’s repeated privacy grabs and manipulations, and the NSAs long-storied collection of personal data, our individual privacy has been under aggressive assault for some time. This is just the latest - albeit a mostly benign - example.

Americans heavily prize their privacy, which makes it ground zero for parties that view individual privacy as a barrier to financial ascendancy or homeland security. These parties use the contentious legal status of privacy as leverage to intrude into your life without your consent. And believe it or not, privacy is a contentious issue... In fact, the Constitution does not mention privacy as a given right. Our modern understanding of the right to privacy is implied from other rights, specifically the 1st Amendment (right of belief), 3rd Amendment (privacy of the home), 4th Amendment (privacy of person and possessions), 5th Amendment (right against self-incrimination), 9th Amendment (no denial of other implicit rights), and the liberty clause of the 14th Amendment.  These amendments all touch on privacy in their own way, but never address is explicitly. The Supreme Court calls these implications “penumbras” and “emanations.” That is, the right of privacy implicitly emanates from these other rights. And I think that lack of explicitness is why privacy is always a moving target.

And let’s face it, as a society, our sense of privacy (and it’s inextricable little brother, consent) is always shifting. A few weeks ago, the iCloud accounts of Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities were hacked and their private nude photos leaked. When the photos were taken down from various sites, a cry rang out from certain corners of the internet who believed they should have access to those photos even though they were always intended to be private.

So I ask you, is privacy a relic of the 20th century? And if not, what can be done to curtail its utter demise? No one should be forced to own something just because it’s free, but soon enough it may not even be an option.

Don't Throw Out The Baby With The Bathwater: Changing Laws, The "I Have A Dream" Speech, And Copyright Policy

This Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. If you're like me, then you've probably seen snippets of that speech a hundred times, but never seen the full unedited version. That's because the speech is protected under copyright law until 2038, and anyone who copies, distributes, shares, or posts a video of the speech online will be violating copyright law and will legally owe restitution to the video's owner... Sony.* [Like when Sony ordered advocacy group Fight For The Future to remove the video from its website.]

Am I the only who thinks this is terrible? What kind of policy allows a major corporation to sue someone who wants to share with others THE ICONIC CIVIL RIGHTS MOMENT OF OUR TIME? Who is this policy protecting?

You may have noticed that I'm pretty vocal when I think changes should be made to U.S. policy, specifically copyright law. As a result, I've been accused several times of pursuing a "throw out the baby with the bathwater" agenda. But that's not really accurate since I've never called for scrapping laws wholesale. I have, on the other hand, advocated for revising laws that don't work as intended. I personally see advocating for better and smarter laws as my duty, not just as a lawyer, but as an American citizen (which, not so ironically, was kind of the point of Dr. King's speech).

And what's wrong with supporting change anyway? Not to be overly dramatic here, but America was founded on this whole idea of "it's not working out, so let's do something better." We went to war with England because we didn't like the way they governed us. We constructed a republican system of government that permits us to remove and replace politicians we don't like. We gave Congress the power to revise, update, and repeal laws because we recognized that people are imperfect and they will pass imperfect laws. When a law doesn't achieve its goal, it should absolutely be amended. The U.S. Copyright Act alone has been amended at least 10 times since 1790.

I keep saying it, but it bears repeating: copyright law wasn't created solely for the purpose of rewarding the artist. It was also designed to foster originality and ingenuity for the betterment of society (the founding fathers didn't measure capitalist success purely through personal wealth. Community prosperity was also a driving factor) and to shield artists from theft. It wasn't intended to be used as a weapon to attack others. Which is why the problem isn't that Sony owns the copyright to Dr. King's speech; the problem is what it can do to harm individuals who wish to share it. Simply put, Sony has the muscle and will to litigate against anyone who posts the video, regardless of the intent of the individual or their ability to fight back. And I don't think that's right.

In that spirit, here are two ideas that I think will be effective in revamping copyright law to better serve the American people.

1. Shorten the term limits on copyrights. Yeah, I've talked about this a lot. That just shows you how much I care about this issue. Copyright law was not designed to allow copyright owners to make money off a work in perpetuity. In fact, under the Copyright Act of 1790, copyright terms were set by the founders for a mere 14 years, specifically to prevent perpetual ownership. By shortening copyright terms, major corporate copyright owners such as Sony won't be able to bully individuals when they share something as innocuous and educational as Dr. King's speech. You can read a more complete take on that here.
2. Create exemptions in our copyright laws for works that hold special historical significance. The "I Have A Dream" speech literally changed lives and shaped events in the 20th Century. Yet under our current copyright law, it's treated like every other work of artistic expression. A work of such historic stature shouldn't be owned by any one entity. It belongs to all Americans in the same way the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation do and it should be available to everyone, free of charge.

Change is in our national DNA. History has borne that out repeatedly, so why fight it? Dr. King believed that. Who are we to assume differently?

*****

* Dr. King himself owned the copyright and even sued to prevent unlawful reproductions of the speech so that he could distribute profits from it to civil rights causes. After his death, the copyright passed to his family, who sold the copyright to EMI in 2009. EMI was purchased by Sony in 2011.

Death of the Unpaid Internship, Part 2: Black Swan's Revenge

Two weeks ago, my wife and I were driving home from an unsuccessful apartment hunting trip.  In an attempt to get my mind off the stress of looking for a new home, she asked me what I thought about the recent ruling in the Black Swan internship case.

For those who don't know: Eric Glatt and Alexander Footman, two interns who worked on Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan sued the film’s distributor Fox Searchlight, claiming that the company’s unpaid internship program violated minimum wage and overtime laws.  They argue that they were wrongly classified as unpaid interns when they should have been paid employees.  Well about three weeks ago Federal Judge William H. Pauley III ruled in favor of Glatt and Footman, stating the two should have been paid for their work, and the failure to pay them was a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).  In his opinion, Judge Pauley said that Glatt and Footman

worked as paid employees work, providing an immediate advantage to their employer and performing low-level tasks not requiring specialized training. The benefits they may have received - such as knowledge of how a production or accounting office functions or references for future jobs - are the results of simply having worked as any other employee works, not of internships designed to be uniquely educational to the interns and of little utility to the employer. They received nothing approximating the education they would receive in an academic setting or vocational school. 

Which essentially means that Glatt and Footman did not fall under the federal definition of "intern" and should have been paid as employees as a result.  Judge Pauley went on to say that even though Glatt and Footman knew what they were signing on for, the FLSA

does not allow employees to waive their entitlement to wages.... An employer is not to be allowed to gain a competitive advantage by reason of the fact that his employees are more willing to waive [FLSA claims] than are those of his competitor.

You can read the whole decision here if you like.  It's a pretty big deal and I'd be lying if I said I didn't make a celebratory fist-pump when I read the news.  [For the record, I'm only talking about internships taken by non-students, not educational internships, or volunteerism/ pro bono work]. I've made it known in the past that I'm no fan of the unpaid internship for adults who are no longer in college, which is why my wonderful and patient wife didn't bat an eyelash when, stressed out from looking at a string of ugly apartments, I snapped back, "Any company that refuses to pay employees for their work doesn't deserve to exist!"

That's a pretty militant proclamation and having some distance from the heat of the moment, I've decided that I support the content, even if the delivery and word choice don't properly communicate how I truly feel.  I shudder at the idea of being labeled an anti-corporate socialist (although I'm sure someone will accuse me of it), so allow me to clarify my stance.

1. Unpaid internships for non-educational purposes are bad for employees because experience cannot pay the rent.
2. Unpaid internships for non-educational purposes are bad for the market because they force entry-level workers to work for nothing, suppressing wages for everyone up the ladder, and thus reducing taxable and spendable income for workers.
3. Unpaid internships for non-educational purposes are bad for our culture because they perpetuate the [absolutely wrong] belief that being taken advantage of is somehow the same thing as "paying your dues."

When a company elects not to pay an intern while profiting off his or her work, that tells the world that it's okay to get something for nothing, and that's not how capitalism is supposed to work.  I know first-hand what Glatt and Footman have gone through, taken advantage of and then cut loose.  The last time I wrote about this, a friend asked me if it was okay to accept an unpaid internship in the same industry she had already been working in for several years.  She had just moved to a new city and was concerned that she was an unknown commodity in her new location, despite her years of experience.  To her, the unpaid work would be a good way to break into the industry in that city and build a name.  While I understood her thought process, I strongly disagreed with her and told her to hold out for actual paying work.   To me, her willingness to go without pay signaled something rotten about how exclusionary our industries have become (especially the glamour industries like entertainment, publishing, and fashion), even to people who have experience within those industries.  Here is someone with six years of direct expertise in her field, who has skills that are immediately transferable and applicable, yet she felt that her only recourse was to start over from the bottom, as if she were a 19-year old freshman.

The longer I think about it, the less flexible I become on the matter.  Are there ever good reasons to accept unpaid work?  I'm sure someone will argue that building a reputation at the beginning of a career is a worthwhile excuse.  A few months ago I might have even been convinced.  Obviously every free-thinking adult should consider all the options before committing to a potential income drought and weigh those options based on the facts of each individual situation.  But looking at it from the macro view, I find those arguments unconvincing in the light of Judge Pauley's ruling - I personally believe you're better off finding a mentor and/or developing your own projects... you're going to be unpaid anyway, might as well develop some entrepreneurial skills while you're at it.  That's why I align myself behind the FLSA standards (found here) and feel comfortable stating categorically that unpaid internships are only acceptable when done for college credit and in conjunction with a legitimate educational institution.  The rest of the working world is starting to catch up too.  Two weeks ago, three former interns sued Gawker Media for violating the FLSA, and a few weeks before that, a former Condé Nast intern sued the company for paying her $1.00 an hour under its internship program.  Hell, one law firm is specializing in these Fair Labor internship cases by identifying individuals who held unpaid internships and reviewing the conditions of their employment for possible wage-and-hour violations.

So this is all good news right?  Well anything is possible.  It's certainly possible that the Black Swan case and all the subsequent unpaid internship cases might cause a sea change in the way employers run their internship programs.  It's possible that they'll start paying interns for their work.

But I don't really think that's going to happen.  My fear is that the current system will just continue to lurch forward in spite of the Black Swan ruling.  Or worse, companies will strip out any real work or educational opportunities and relegate interns to picking up coffee, dry cleaning, and lunch orders.  Lord knows there are enough people out there willing to bet that an unpaid internship is a lesser evil than complete and utter unemployment... I can understand that.  But the system only changes if we all make the commitment together.  I hope Glatt and Footman's win is the beginning of that change.