Italian Law Is Moving Into ‘Perry Mason’ Era

It was standing room only in the largest courtroom at Milan’s Palace of Justice. About five minutes after the trial began, a defense lawyer rose and said, “Mi oppongo, Signor Presidente” -- “Your honor, I object.” At those words, everyone in the court, including the judge, broke into a thunderous round of applause. It might be a moment no one in that courtroom will forget.

It was also the first time that interruption, considered routine in American procedures, had been heard in an Italian court.

The trial last month in Milan was make-believe of the best kind: the rehearsal for a legal revolution to take place on, and forever after, Oct. 24. On that date Italy’s antiquated criminal code will be changed and court procedures replaced by processes modeled on Anglo-American law. Everyone in the courtroom that morning was either a judge or a lawyer, assigned as a member of the audience or reciting a role cast from a script based on a real trial (involving a stolen fur coat).

The change is already being hailed as an American import. Even though U.S. legal procedures are the legitimate offspring of English law, Italy’s new procedures are being referred to as “bringing in Perry Mason”--the lawyer invented by the late novelist Erle Stanley Gardner.

In the early days of black-and-white TV here, the “Perry Mason” series was the best thing on the air. Italian audiences spent a night a week through most of the late 1950s and early ‘60s in an American courtroom, watching justice finally triumph with the aid of Raymond Burr, ably assisted by Barbara Hale. It was entertainment, but also a mind-opener; the TV series created a would-be consumer’s market. But delivery of the new-style justice was slow--Parliament spent 25 years mulling over the reforms.

In general, Italian law--citizens call their country “the cradle of law”--descends from ancient Roman practice. During the Dark Ages, here and throughout Europe, law was at best tribal, at worst subject to the whim of the local landlord. A 12th-Century Pope, Alexander III, institutionalized canonical law, motivated not so much by concern for justice as by wanting to put the papacy above the rule, and thus also the laws, of whichever Teutonic lout was calling himself emperor that year. Italian regions that later fell under papal dominance had their justice meted out by the priest. These were the same chaps who later invented the Inquisition, who went on to imprison Galileo and burned witches, along with other dissidents, at the stake.

Italy’s current court procedures are still somewhat based on the same inquisitional technique. A secret investigation is made of a suspect, who is likely to be imprisoned awaiting the completion of those inquiries. When the case is brought to court some years later, the judge will have read the results of the inquiries and could already have made up his mind. Only the judge may question the accused. The defense lawyer delivers what is called a harangue, but in many cases the judge is thought to be there to ratify the accusations of his teammate, the public prosecu tor.

There is no cross-examination possible, either of defendant or witness. The judge can find the accused guilty, or innocent, or not guilty for lack of sufficient proof--an absurd kind of limbo.

After Oct. 24, cross-examinations will be allowed. The judge will enter his court as nearly ignorant as possible about the case. The prosecution and the defense will be evenly matched. As a Florence public prosecutor, Pier Luigi Vigna, put it, “The defendant no longer will come into court already crushed beneath the weight of evidence collected in secrecy behind his back.” The verdict must be either guilty or innocent. Limbo, itself another ecclesiastical invention, has been banished.

Italian laws and legal procedures have undergone other reforms since the Inquisition started rolling across Europe in the 13th Century. During the Napoleonic occupation, parts of Napoleon’s legal code were imposed on Italians--the most enduring, perhaps, being the introduction of the kilometer to replace the old Roman mile and the raising of an army of concierges to act as police informers on their employers or on other residents.

The last reform was in 1930, when Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator, was at the peak of his power. His laws, still in effect today, were designed to keep the prisons full. They have been, with at least one-third of the inmates at any given time awaiting trial.

One section of Rome’s criminal courts now has 9,740 cases in the investigative phase (which can last for two to three years) and a backlog of 10,842 criminal cases awaiting their turn on the court dockets. By next October, throughout the country, there will be an estimated 200,000 criminal cases, many involving more than one accused person, under secret investigation.

One lawyer says that October is going to be “a cultural revolution--requiring an entirely new way of thinking.” It also may make justice easier for the rich, those who can afford the best lawyers; but the lawyers, too, must realize that they are not hired to deliver one great, show-stopping aria and that they must remain in court throughout the trial. Today, after their solo number, they may move on to another trial, perhaps as many as four in one day.

Another change in procedure will be the institution of pretrial hearings. This could lead to many trumped-up, perhaps politically inspired, cases being thrown out. It will also make possible, for the accused, house arrest rather than imprisonment. The number of years that a person may be detained in “preventive custody” is being reduced from six to four years.

The state of Italian justice, given the bare bones of Anglo-American procedures and with the Italians’ flair for improvisation--and above all, for improving on imported models--is bound to get better in the long run. We can hope “Perry Mason” has another long, triumphant run--not for ratings but for justice.