August 17, 2007

"And then he ran into my knife. He ran into my knife ten times!"

Remember that line from the song "Cell Block Tango" in the movie "Chicago"? All the women are singing about killing men, with the refrain "He had it coming." The women were singing from their cell block -- the jury didn't believe them. But here we see that a Madison jury acquitted a man who testified that a woman stabbed herself... in the neck.

14 comments:

George M. Spencer said...

What is the Russian murderess saying (in Russian) in that scene?

Gahrie said...

I don't know how this guy got off.

Of course, I'm still busy trying to figure out how Mary Winkler got out after two months after killing her sleeping husband with a shotgun.

Ruth Anne Adams said...

You're blogging about Midwest/Madison news on your first full day in Brooklyn?

That's so sweet.

MadisonMan said...

I wonder if the prosecutor was the same idiot who was prosecuting when I had jury duty last winter. Boy was he bad.

Revenant said...

Spivey: I heard it was a suicide.

Kate: Supervisor Caffrey shot himself?

Spivey: It happens.

Kate: In the back of his head? He wrapped himself in plastic and he locked himself into the back of his car?

Spivey: He'd been depressed.

Adrian said...

George, she's actually speaking hungarian (with a terrible, possibly russian accent). it really is an awful accent, so i can't tell you everything she says, but what i can make out goes like this: "they say i killed my husband, but it's not true, i'm innocent, i don't know what happened, i tried explaining it to them but they didn't understand me." frankly, i barely understand her either, so i'm not surprised!

Adrian said...

and yay for the Angel reference, revenant!
just watched Smile Time last night. good times.

Beldar said...

I adore that song from the movie. I like the whole movie, but I really, really like that song. Very sexy, very disturbing.

Chip Ahoy said...

I recall a routine, but not the source, describing a fight; I slugged him right on the fist with my stomach. Then I stomped his boot with my face.

michael farris said...

I have a dvd of Chicago with Polish subtitles done by an amateur translator who didn't understand half the slang or cultural references in the movie. It's wonderully awful, my favorite example is from Cell block tango:

"Single my ass" became
"Bachelor of my buttocks"

(no, it doesn't make any sense in Polish either).

KCFleming said...

"Bob Ewell fell on his knife. Good night sir."

RHSwan said...

This reminds me of a true story (I think) of an early 20th century lawyer who managed to convince a jury that his client accidentally pulled the trigger of a gun ... six times.

George Grady said...

After reading the article (and it is definitely sympathetic to the woman), I think the man is very probably guilty. However, "very probably" isn't good enough. From the article (and I'm reading between the lines here) it seems the prosecutor didn't do as good a job as the defense. The woman seemed less than truthful about some things, even to the article's writer. What could the jury do?

Ann Althouse said...

Maybe it's difficult when the victim doesn't die and therefore takes the stand. The jury may have disliked her and mistrusted her, and she does seem to have participated in a fight.