Legal opinion of the plot of the movie 'Con Air.'

Look, you and I are approaching this from a totally different perspective. For starters we are arguing about a movie situation as a real life scenario. Now I don't have a problem with that since by nature I am a geek and have spent hundreds of hours on Star Trek, Star Wars, and Comic related reddits and forums arguing the most insignificant fan points.

Where we are having problems is I am trying to keep it simple. Based on standard clues on what we can see in the movies we can discuss the inconsistency with real life situations. Sure some assumptions can be made like the 3 attackers probably knew each other and are friends because they were at the bar together and willing to fight someone together. The problem is you are just pulling thing out of the air. I try to keep it to what most likely happens given what we are shown in the movie like the attacker knowing Poe's wife's full name, Poe's wife saying she knows him and that he is a regular at the bar, other patrons and employees in the bar can serve as witnesses, expectations like the police will try to do their job and following up on Poe's and his wife's claim he was attacked in the parking lot etc... and you bring up what if points like they may have criminal records or may have never even know he died. You might as well say maybe they were abducted by aliens or struck dead by lightning when they ran off because if we play the game of what ifs where you can just make up any point you need and we can never logically see eye to eye. The point is the movie makers left us no clues to assume that happened. For example I could just say everything we say in the movie makes total sense and arguing about witnesses, knives, self defense/man slaughter is useless because the judge is secretly in love with Poe's wife and sentenced him to the long-term because he wanted Poe out of the way so he could pursue her. What am I basing that on??? Nothing beyond the fact he seems to have sentenced Poe unfairly and Poe has a very attractive wife. But the creators left no clues that was an option. In the "what if" world it works. In the "fan speculation world" it is considered pointless because you follow standard expected behavior and go with what the creators give us. I hope you can see why.

Too bad this movie is so old and a one off action flick. If this was a Star Trek, Star Wars, or comic book movie there would probably be a panel at a comic con or some other convention. Fans like you could easily line up and ask the creators question like what happened to the other 2 attackers that ran off? Were they criminals? Is the reason why the cops did not try to talk to them because you believe that is standard police practice or the police just thought it was too much work? Were they simply strangers that came together at that bar on that rainy night? Because no matter how hard we argue they will know the real answer.

The last point I will have to give is a classic example of something that fans have argued to death. Did Han shoot first or did Greedo? Fans have been arguing this since 1977 and they point to the most obscure details with the fan going through frame by frame, analyzing Hans' posture, the way they were sitting etc... They use what the creator have given us. You can use the movie, bring up other areas of canon like the other movies, tv shows, books etc... But you cannot just make stuff up. What you are doing would be adding something like Greedo would never have tried to shoot first because he knew his gun was made out of chocolate and it would be pointless? It could be because we know chocolate candy guns exists in the real world so why not in this case...

 

Well, then we cannot really know for absolute certain whether this would be unrealistic because we cannot know all the details.
I was only trying to speculate within reasonable limits given what was depicted in the film. You seem to believe that still opens up the door for too many possibilities and too much speculation.

(I was not basing my speculation on what "probably" was, but trying to confine it within the limits of what could have been and would not have been too improbable)

 

To speculate within reasonable limits on a film means that you have to be pointing to clues that the film makers gave us in the film. I know that I am repeating myself but to speculate that the 3 attackers were friends is normal because we see them in a bar together and they seem to be willing to back each other up and even attack someone together. We can assume Poe's wife knows the attacker because she says she knows him and he is a bar regular. The movie gave us no clues or hints that they are wanted by the law. The movie gave us no hints they do not even know each other well. The movie gave us no hints the judge was secretly in love with Poe's wife. You can argue those assumption can happen in real life because sure in a world of infinite possibilities anything is possible. To assume that is why we have the outcome we see in the movie is a bit of a stretch.

Another example would be if in another movie you see some people running out of a warehouse on fire and see firetrucks pulling up and in the next scene we hear them talking about it being lucky the fire was put out in time or the whole block could have went up in flames. It is safe to assume the fire fighters put out the fire in time. Someone else could speculate the firemen failed and what happen was a major rain storm started and that put out the fire. Well that is certainly possible but why assume that when the movie creators gave you a more simple plausible answer.

 

But you are conflating together what we see, and what police saw or uncovered from any investigation they did. With the benefit of omnipotent insight as the film audience, it's always easy to question why police did not investigate this, why they did not notice that, why they did not seem to put one thing and another together in their minds and come to a certain conclusion.

This is much like many situations of wrongful conviction in real life. A lot of times it often comes down to certain things police did not investigate or think about.

 

Let's break it down to the bare facts, shall we? The way police would organize what happened in their minds.

There are two witnesses at the scene. One of them is the suspect's girlfriend. She says there were two other men. Was she lying? Would she be willing to lie to help protect her boyfriend who had just killed a man?
The woman also says she pleaded for her boyfriend not to fight them, but he ignored her and walked forwards towards them and engaged in a fight with them.
Then we have another witness who saw Poe standing over the man just after he presumably had knocked him out and killed him. This witness did not see anyone else there. Neither of the two witnesses saw knife at any time, like Poe claims.

Do we believe Poe or anything he says? He killed a man. Of course he has reason to lie, like possibly making up a story that he fought two other men who coincidentally just happened to run away before the other witness arrived at the scene, or lying about the man he killed holding a knife. (Since he killed a man and the other man can't talk, his testimony doesn't really count)

If I were the police, what would I assume? There might have been two other men there he had been fighting, but we do not really know that for sure. It does seem just a little too convenient that those men decided to run off right before the witness who saw Poe standing over the dead victim was able to see them. So I would not accept that as a solid fact.
Then the knife. It is possible there was a knife, but it could just be a lie from Poe for his own defense.

You seem to assume we have to know for certain it was not self defense before we can convict someone. That is not how it works.

What might police think? They might think maybe the drunk man said something inappropriate about the man's girlfriend and then he got into a fight with that man. (Similar to along the lines of what witnesses heard one of the men say in the bar) Perhaps something like that. If he then killed the man, even if it was unintentional, it would have been murder.

 

BUT BUT that is how it works what you debate a film. We get to rely on what we see in the film. We get to see the interaction between Han and Greedo. We do not have to speculate on what the storm troopers may or may not find on their investigation of the body. Whether they were too lazy to look into it.

The only point of debate here is the majority of the people are outraged at the judge's sentencing decision. Most here seem to agree because they are looking at the information the movie gave us. An audience can question what happen and extrapolate information but it has to be based on snippets of the movie. If I can just come to the conclusion that the reason the judge sentenced Poe to the harsh term is because he is in love with his wife and wanted him out of the picture, it is obviously within the realm of possibilities but nothing in the movie hinted at that. Just like your assertion they were wanted for other crimes etc... If the movie makers wanted to defend the judge's bad decision based on something like you were speculating they could have shown us a scene where the police officers were investigated but choose to ignore evidence or secretly hated Poe because one held him responsible for a brother's death in the war or something. Then the audience can say that is why the police never found evidence to support the Poe's claims.

 

Only because they got to see what actually happened, and were prejudiced by the full truth before they saw what the judge's decision was based on his limited perception of what happened.

Instead of looking at what happened in the film, try to imagine what the perception of police and the judge might have been, based on some of the primary facts that would have made it to them.

Have you read Agatha Christie murder mystery stories? How it seems police have arrested the right person, until later in the story when the full truth of what happened emerges, and how elaborate circumstances, or an intentional diabolical plot, wrongly incriminated that person.
If you skip to the ending summary to find out what actually happened, and then read/watch the rest of the story, I bet it will be harder for you to understand why the police couldn't figure it out and get it right.

There are all sorts of things police do not see, or conclusions they do not come to, when they are not sure of the truth in the first place and are suspicious of everyone's account of what happened.

If anything seems inconsistent to them, even if there happens to exist an adequate reason why the testimony might seem inconsistent, they are not going to believe that testimony. It's common for the defense to not bring up these reasons or know what they are. (One of the reasons why a good lawyer can make a difference)

 

For starters it is his wife. She would tell the police there were 2 men and eyewitness in the bar and other employees can attest to the guy being in the bar with "his boys". Also there would be all of the forensic or crime scene evidence around the car. All there probably bled so there could be blood on the clothing or crime scene.

Now you are speculating based on what you saw in the movie. We never saw her tell the police that. She could just as easily say she was dancing with her husband when this bar regular come up and starts hitting on her. Asking her to have a drink with him and his boys. Later as they were about to get into the car the 3 came up and attacked her husband. Her husband did not fight back until the 3 of them knocked him to the ground and started pummeling him.

The other witness was the bartender who has probably been serving the dead guy and his friends all night. They were there before immediately after the person died. Quite possible they could have still seen the other 2 fleeing.

That is where a police investigation comes in. You try to collaborate his story with evidence. You take take the claims of Poe and his wife and you see how those claim match up with the physical evidence at the crime scene. You ask the other servers and employees in the bar that may have seen them together. You find credit card statements if they paid using plastic. You go to the home of the dead person. Try to track down the other 2 to question them. Probably Tricia or others in the bar know their names.

 

That is how film debates work. If a person is outside in the rain and soaking wet and in the next scene they walk in through the door and their clothes are dry it is a plot hole or bad writing like the judge sentencing. You can imagine some reason why this is possible but if there is nothing in the film to suggest it, it is a plot hole and mistake and people watching the film complain just like the judge's bad judgement. I can give you countless examples of this in movies. Marvel even created a short to correct the Madarin representation in the Iron Man movies because the fans hated it so much. The outrage is because the Madarin deviated so much from marvel canon it was awful.

 

You seem to be putting a lot of emphasis on this, when in reality it would not matter very much.
That does not prove those men were actually there during the fight.

You are over-assuming. This is called the "CSI effect" where people assume police will routinely conduct extensive and exhaustive forensic examinations, even for cases that are not first degree murder, or where it seems obvious what happened.

Like I tried to tell you before, whether police will bother to conduct forensic examinations depends on the importance of what they hope or expect or think they have a high probability of finding. Whether two other men were there at the fight might not be seen as too crucial or too important.
Remember the story. Poe had already knocked out and defeated the two others before he took on and killed the third one.
Although it would of course be a relevant factor and not completely unimportant, Poe could easily still be charged even if it was known as a fact two other men had been there.

In addition to that, forensic examination does not always "prove" things. Remember, it was raining heavily. The rain could have easily washed away foot prints, might be hard to determine when those foot prints were made, etc.

 

While the film obviously suggests several factors why Poe may have ended up wrongly convicted, I think it intentionally leaves the exact entirety of the reasoning vague and open. The point is, sometimes injustice does end up happening. There are all sorts of additional reasons it could have happened, that we as the audience don't know and don't need to know. The main point is that, for whatever reason, he was wrongfully convicted, excessively sentenced, and we the audience know it and start off feeling sympathy for him, and are hoping for him to be able to escape.

When the judge says "With your military skills you are a deadly weapon", that is just one more factor why he was convicted and ended up being excessively sentenced, not supposed to be the main or primary reason. It also helps set the stage for the rest of the story and lets the audience know this character has fighting skills.

 

This is why I keep saying we are coming at this from different perspectives. The heart of the problem is in Con Air like many other movies, moved the plot forward with very bad writing. Fan and audiences of the movie complain about Poe's sentence as being unfair but the movie creators needed Poe in prison. Everyone agrees with that because that is the whole point of Con Air. Convicts in a plane.

Everything you say is possible. Just as the story line the judge was in love with Tricia Poe. The problem is the creators never showed the audience this and that is why fans are upset at the sentencing. Fans can only go by what they see in the film or reasonable expect to happen. If you want to show lack of police work or an evil judge have a scene with it for the movie. If you expect the fans to make up your plot holes by filling it in with their imaginations that you probably should not be debating films. Try that on a Trek board and the place will go nuts. Maybe there is a deleted scene that can tie it all together but until then fans will complain.

 

And oftentimes police just do not do a very good investigation. There are all sorts of reasons for this.

It's not always easy to do a good investigation or be able to properly figure everything out. There are lots of police officers who are not the brightest.

Prosecutors, in turn, pretty much rely on the police to figure everything out. They are mostly there for their legal expertise in prosecuting the case.

The judge, well, the judge has a lot of other cases and often doesn't have time to devote too much thought and reflection to each individual case. The judge is certainly not personally carefully digging through the details of the story. He relies on others (mainly the prosecutor and police who filed the report) to portray a representation of what allegedly took place for him. What the judge acts on is actually much more of a summary. If you removed that summary and forced all judges to only look at all the bare raw facts, the justice system as it is today would suddenly grind to a complete halt.

 

I will quote again one of those posts from Reddit:

Con Air was probably not meant to be scrutinized at all, but I will say that they did explicitly mention (whether it's reasonable or not) that Nick Cage's character was not subject to the same leeway normal people are when provoked because he can respond with deadly force; also, they show the knife being scooped up after Cage kills the guy, so he couldn't have reasonably argued his life was in danger.
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I don't think the creators were specifically trying to make it too realistic or focus too much on making it completely understandable why Poe was wrongfully convicted. The point was he was wrongfully convicted and excessively sentenced. They want to get on with the story from there.

Now, I will argue that with some of the basic facts that would have been available to the prosecutor, it would not necessarily have been completely unreasonable to charge Poe with first degree manslaughter.

 

We can debate whether it was bad writing. I don't think it really was.
A few possibilities were obviously hinted at as to why he might have been convicted.

Like the knife being scooped up and the other two men fleeing right before the other witness arrived and saw Poe standing over the dead man. And the way the knife was taken out, in such a way that it could be unlikely Poe's girlfriend would have seen it.

 

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A reddit post is one poster's opinion. I have made 1000s of post on reddit. I will even admit looking back not all opinions were correct.

On this I totally agree. That is the point. Fans can argue plot points in movies but still enjoy the movie. Where I had issues with your theories was you tried to apply scenarios not even hinted at in the movie to fill plot holes.

 

I'm just claiming there are all sorts of possible scenarios that are not at all unlikely.
So this shouldn't be a "How could this possibly happen?" type of scenario. It's not totally unbelievable.

 

Is my judge scenario totally unbelievable?

 

It depends on exactly what you mean.
There are probably some judges who get some sick sadistic delight at issuing excessive sentences.

And it's not abnormal human psychology to not want to consider the possibility someone could be innocent when punishing them.

(Yes, in case you don't know, there are all sorts of situations where punishing someone is the appropriate thing to do even when we cannot be sure that person did the thing for which they deserve to be punished for. It's just usually a good thing not to punish them too much in these situations.)

 

I mean my imagined scenario where the reason Poe got such a unfair sentence was because he was secretly in love with his wife and wanted him out of the picture. You know that standard story of lust and betrayal that dates back to the start of human history.

 

I think that would be a completely different situation, would be unusual, and would not fall under the category of likely types of things we could expect may have factored into the situation.
In other words, you seem to be viewing things out of proportion. The possibilities I suggested are reasonable and likely possible; what you are suggesting is not.

 

No, CSI as in the franchise of US TV shows of the same name, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation; CSI: Miami; CSI: NY etc etc.

The CSI-Effect is why that girl in Florida did not get convicted. Oh, Casey Anthony was her name.

The CSI-Effect is very real (and extensively studied) and annoying to prosecutors and judges alike.

There's video, but jurors won't convict in a shop-lifting case because the county didn't spend $375,000 doing DNA, hair, fiber and plastic packaging analysis.

Pike County, Ohio has 27,000 people. How much money do you think they have for crime scene evidence?

They had 8 murders. In a single day (at night actually.) The State legislature had to pass a funding bill just to prosecute.

It's like Belmont County, Ohio. The assistant coroner was a retired State Highway Trooper with no college education, because that's all they can afford, and the, um, "autopsy" consists of an undertaker getting blood samples in the funeral home right before they embalm the body, because they cannot afford to do a real autopsy on everyone who dies of other than natural causes.

Sure, gunshot, stabbings, those are obvious and get real autopsies, but other subtle mean escape detection.

 

Who, the judge?

 

Oh right! Yeah, you said "CIS Effect!"