The Rupert Graves Project - Law & Order UK
The Rupert Graves Project - Law & Order UK
Series 3 - Episode 3
‘Defence’
Law and Order UK is our own home grown version of the popular US TV show of the same name. The show focuses on the two halves of the criminal justice system - the police investigation of a crime and then the subsequent prosecution of the suspects of that crime.
In this episode an assistant in a retro boutique returning from his lunch finds his colleagues and one of the shops customers brutally murdered and another customer seriously injured. They have all suffered horrific stab wounds.
Initially the police investigation centres on a couple of shop lifters who had been thrown of the boutique earlier in the day and had subsequently been arrested elsewhere. However it is soon clear that they have no connection to the murders although they both gave the same description of a man seen hanging about in an alley near the shop. The police use their descriptions to create an e-fit picture of the possible suspect.
The woman who survived the attack, Joanne Ellis, regains consciousness and is able to positively identify the man in the e-fit picture as the man who attacked her. The continuing investigation reveals that the man had been seen outside a nearby store the day before the fatal attack and the store owner thought he might have been watching one of her customers - Linda Bowers - uniformed officers confirm that Linda had contacted them to say that a man had followed her home and they found him near to her house and removed him from the area.
The police discover that the most likely murder weapon was a 1950 US Army issue bayonet and that a dealer had a bayonet stolen from his stall by a homeless man who fits the e-fit picture. The man had initially tried to pay for the bayonet using vouchers given out by a homeless shelter. The shelter’s organiser identifies the man as ‘John’ but finds it hard to believe he could be a murderer as he never uses drugs or violence and gives the impression of having been well educated.
The investigation leads to a medical centre where the employee recognises the e-fit and names him as John Smith. He says that John hasn’t picked up his medication for 3 months. He is being treated for schizophrenia and not taking his medication could lead to delusions and possibly full blown mania. The clinic says that he uses his library card as a form of ID when he does pick up his medication.
John is at the library when the police arrive and after he produces the bayonet and threatens the police he is wrestled to the ground and arrested. During his medical examination John does appear to be at the very least delusional.
The police set up a video identity parade and Joanne Ellis is able to positively identify John as the man who attacked her. The police discover that John had previously been arrested for stalking a woman. The legal team are worried that when the press find out that the police had previously had Smith in custody and then let him go, for him later to commit mass murder, it will jeopardise their case.
To make matters worse, Smith’s solicitor withdraws from the case because John, now back on his medication and apparently as sane as the next man, and having not only a first class law degree but also a secondary degree and a PHD (smart guy) wants to defend himself. The judge agrees to allow him to do so and his first act is to submit a detailed and well-argued case as to why he believes the case should be dismissed.
The legal team talk to both Joanne Ellis and John’s sister in an attempt to find a possible motive for his actions. His sister believes that the system failed him after his last arrest by not allowing him to be taken into hospital and supervised to ensure that he took his medication.
The Judge in the case dismisses Smith’s application to dismiss the case and so he enters a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The CPS realise that the flaw with accepting this plea is that without a criminal conviction John can only be held in a hospital for as long as there is a mental health issue and if he continues to take his medication he could be free soon.
James Steel of the CPS talks to John to see if he will plead guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility which would lead to a custodial sentence in a secure unit where his mental health problems could be addressed. John is adamant that he should not be punished for a crime that he believes was committed by ‘another’. John would prefer to take his chances with a truncated trial, a jury and his original insanity plea. He wants his one chance to show the court what a brilliant lawyer he could have been.
The trial begins with Joanne Ellis giving evidence and telling how the after effects of the attack on her have affected her life. She was a dancer, a career she can no longer return to. When John questions her he plays on the fact that when he attacked her he looked like a ‘mad man’ and that because of her civil action against the CPS for not holding him when he was arrested for stalking that it was them she should blame for the attack and not him. Joanne, annoyed and frustrated agrees with John and rails at the CPS team.
When the CPS call their ‘expert medical witness’ he tells the court that John knew that stopping his medication might make him susceptible to paranoid delusions and that in the past, those delusions had lead him to try and strangle a girlfriend. The witness claims that the delusions made John think that Linda Bowers was trying to kill him and that Joanne Ellis and the others in the shop were her accomplices. Therefore he had no choice but to kill them all. During his cross examination John gets the witness to agree that there was no way of telling when, or even if, the paranoia would return once he had stopped taking his medication.
The CPS need to get John to admit to what he has done and to the fact that he might do it again. They need to find somebody who has been through these cycles of behaviour with him and so they go to his sister. Steel tells her that she needs to get John to change his plea to manslaughter so that he can be treated in a secure unit because if he doesn’t and he is found guilty of murder he will go into prison and not be helped. Reluctantly she agrees to be a witness for the prosecution because she knows it is the only way to help her brother.
She tells the court that John has stopped taking his medication on several occasions over the past few years and that each time he did she would tell him that he needed to keep taking his pills because without them he might harm himself or others, John just told her that people would just have to stay out of his way. She said that John had rented a fourteenth floor flat solely so that he could kill himself by jumping from the balcony because he was tired of taking his tablets and still not being able to get a job. She pleads with the court that John needs help to look after himself and to make sure he takes his medication.
John takes the stand and Steel asks him about his studying of the Bible when he was younger, before he was ill, and John admits the things he read about became the basis of his delusions when he was older. Steel then asks if when he is not delusional can he remember anything of the times when he was, names, faces words that sort of thing. Pushing him, Steel gets John to admit that he can sometimes remember little things and now he can remember that at the time of the attack he thought the victims were trying to kill him and that he had to stop them.
John now changes his plea to guilty of manslaughter but whilst he is giving a statement to the court he seems to suffer a breakdown and becomes agitated and paranoid again, despite the fact he is taking his medication. John Patrick Smith is a sick man; a man who you feel has been failed by the ‘system’ ever since he became ill. With the right treatment and support who knows what kind a life this obviously very clever man could have lead.
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Law and Order was shown in 2010 a year in which Rupert had both tiny guest starring roles (Lewis) and bigger above the credit roles (Garrow’s Law / Sherlock) and this falls, I feel, neatly between the two.
It does take him a while to appear but after he does the role of John Smith is quite a decent one and he has plenty of screen time. Mental health issues are always going to be tricky area to tackle as there is the potential to upset those parts of society that are affected by the issues raised.
Yes, yet again he is cast in the role of the ‘bad ‘un’ but this time it is with the caveat that he (maybe) doesn’t really know what he is doing. I think that despite what John Smith has done you kind of root for him because of his circumstances.
And as for Rupert…well….to be very shallow (and not for the first time) he looked GREAT, both as the long haired, scruffy homeless man and as the slick sharp suited would be lawyer. I’d be happy to find either of those guys (mental health issues aside) stalking me!!
As for the acting….brilliant as usual….John Smith is a deep but flawed character and gave Rupert the chance to flex a little of his ‘acting muscle’ (to paraphrase the show). There was plenty of opportunity for him to show us his range of acting ability, especially in the final court scenes, where he switches from sane to insane and manages not to overdo the melodrama.
The scene in which he is visited by Steel in prison is just SO EASY ON THE EYE it probably shouldn’t be shown without a health warning! Lots of good close ups and Rupert doing ‘puppy dog’ eyes….need I say more?????
Overall I really enjoyed this show and would say that it is definitely worth a watch.