Deliberate mistake: When Willy's fellow prosecutor, Norman, dropped the Crawford preliminary hearing on him, they said it started at 15:00. Willy is in a rush and the whole ordeal takes him just a few minutes. Still, when Nunally accosts him in the parking lot, the movie sped things up; it's nighttime. (00:27:00)
Fracture (2007)
1 deliberate mistake - chronological order
Directed by: Gregory Hoblit
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling, David Strathairn, Rosamund Pike
Plot hole: *SPOILER* Toward the end of the movie, Ryan Gosling goes to Hopkins' house where Hopkins is tricked into not only confessing again, but giving Gosling the murder weapon, after they are back in court and Gosling is the acting prosecutor. This would be a conflict of interest due to the fact that Gosling is a witness.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: First, the gun that Beachum took from Crowford's house was not the murder weapon. It was Crowford's unfired gun. He only took it out of the fear of his life. Second, Beachum entered Crowford's house with police supervision. If he plays it by the book, Crowford's confession is valid. In that case, supervising officers will stand witness, along with a recording confirming their testimony. Third, Beachum doesn't need the confession anymore. He was amply clear on that matter.
You are on point for the corrections, but they involve just mostly context/details, don't they? The text of the entry should be polished a little, but the core issue is valid, I think; Beachum would never be the acting prosecutor in a case when he is the key witness as well. If it's a case for the "murder," he has to be on the stand for practically everything; even if we exclude him from the confession to the shooting, as you suggest (and even if it should never be litigated to begin with), he still is integral to the pulling the plug phase (he was literally there as it happened and did everything to prevent it). We can just assume that he will be forced to hand the prosecuting role over to someone else later, and he was just there for 5 minutes to gloat before the movie credits run, but it's kind of funny.
Beachum doesn't have to testify, neither for the confession part nor for the "pulling of the plug." I've already covered the former. For the latter, the fact that the woman is now dead is enough. If necessary, the attending doctors could testify that the woman "would have outlived all of them."
Beachum received the confession under "police supervision," as you called it, which still involved him being the only person in the house with the defendant. You mentioned a recording in the earlier comment; are we just to assume he took one, or is there a visual hint I missed? He was also the person who fought for the court order to the point of being physically tackled in front of the victim's deathbed—so doctors and security staff defiant of such an order would be on trial too, I suppose? Since, again, this 'murder' was not even committed by Crawford. So how would Beachum not be a crucial witness, often the only witness to cover that part of the story?
OK. You want to assume Crawford's confession was for the viewer's benefit entirely, and there was no wiretapping? Fine. The police have the gun now, hence proof of the first actus reus. Hospital staff tackled Beachum, but Crawford can't pin the murder on them when he has two counts of actus reus and twice demonstrated mens rea. Courts always hear such nonsense as "I didn't kill him; I shot him. The bullet and the fall killed him" (Collateral, 2006). Shooting someone is actus reus.
I am sure you are right on the Latin, especially since it's hard to imagine the trial going the way it went the first time around to begin with, and I am not getting into the rabbit hole of what exactly could legally be relitigated. But still and again, what does this have to do with the original point being made, that some other guy would be the one leading the trial, since Beachum would be realistically called in as a witness, even a hostile one? I mean, I honestly didn't think it would be much of a point of contention; it's just something there for the audience. I followed the lead about the 'witness' part the OP ended on, but seriously, a conflict of interest would be invoked just because of all the personal first-hand, hands-on involvement in the facts.
I explicitly told you what happens if the court struck the confession from the record. (The gun happens.) And yet, here you are, saying "Beachum would be realistically called in as a witness"! This correction is turning into a confrontation. Also, don't conflate "involvement" with "conflict of interest." The latter means someone has different de facto and de jure motives. Beachum always had one motive: to convict Crawford.
Far from me to be confrontational, and sorry if I came across that way. I guess I simply don't get it; it happens. Specifically, if I stated again the point about the witness, it wasn't because I was blindly disregarding what you said (check the words immediately after the ones you quoted), but it's pointless to delve further into something that goes beyond the original mistake. You just directly addressed the meaning of conflict of interest, which was what the OP talked about. I simply felt the initial correction posted was not doing that; now it does, and I am not disputing your knowledge on the topic, especially not having any of my own. Cheers.
Lt. Robert Nunally: I warned you about him.
Willy Beachum: You warned me he was smart. You didn't warn me you were stupid.
Trivia: The prop department had some fun during the making of the movie; you can see a lot of names of miscellaneous crew slipped in a few spots. There are boxes with case files scattered around the district attorney's offices; the ones behind Willy in his own office (People vs. Bonaventura - Tony Bonaventura being the property master, People vs. Morgenthau - Kramer Morgenthau being the director of photography) get quite a bit of screen time, but there are several others all over the office space, all carrying the name of a crew member. For instance, in a brief sequence when a dejected Willy walks up to Mona's desk to ask for her help before the third act, you can see unique ones. There's also a listing board with judges during the arraignment, and one with doctors when Willy is stopped by the hospital security; both of them are filled with names of production crew members. (01:16:50 - 01:33:20)
Question: I don't understand why the police haven't checked out Hopkins' gun when he was removed from the crime scene. Wouldn't they check the serial number to see where and when he purchased the gun? The movie mentions that the gun was bought a month prior. Since the gun is actually the officer's gun, wouldn't that registration information come up? Then they would know it was not the murder weapon.
Answer: Crowford (Hopkins) shot his wife with the gun that belonged to Nunally (Burke), but switched it with his at a moment of Nunally's distraction. The gun that the police mistakenly collected was not the murder weapon. This was a key plot point. Crowford goes on to gloat about it near the end of the film, saying the one piece of evidence Nunally needed was on his hip the whole time.
Answer: Since he had meticulously planned every detail, Hopkins would have provided all the necessary information (serial number, date/place of purchase, receipt, insurance, etc.) during discovery. The gun was recovered from the scene, so the police and the prosecution, who believed the case to be open-and-shut, simply didn't check this information against the gun itself and just assumed it was Hopkins'. This is exactly what Hopkins was banking on happening, so the revelation that it the gun was not, in fact, the murder weapon would be a surprise during the trial.
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