Law Frames: Historical Truth and Narrative Necessity in a Criminal Case

Abstract

provided invaluable help at the final stage of this essay's preparation. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to Charlie Musser for his early assistance in this project.

A criminal mind? A damaged brain? Narratives of criminality and culpability in the celebrated case of Aaron Hernandez

“…The absences within both become particularly important. They provide gaps for readily available scripts and schemata to fill in seemingly logical ways, as Sherwin (1994) explains, and they also eschew complicated manifestations of violence, including sport, that inform Hernandez’s life and death, which Fallin et al (2018) suggest is symptomatic of neurocriminological explanations. Moreover, both reflect neoliberal cultural tendencies that emphasize individuality in relation to one’s failure or success within capitalistic enterprises, of which professional football is a clear exemplar in the United States.…”

“…Yet, when doing so, McKee commented that while she was not going to "connect the dots with his behavior or difficulties during life," she could confirm that individuals with CTE of the severity found in Hernandez's brain "have difficulty with impulse control, decision-making, inhibition of impulses for aggression, emotional volatility, [and] rage behaviors" (Kounang, 2017). Thus, even with this caveat, her words reinforce an explanatory narrative that follows a causal-linear logic (Sherwin, 1994). Despite journalists' mention of McKee's unwillingness to "connect the dots" between Hernandez's criminalistic behavior and his CTE diagnosis, the framing and tone of the coverage imply strongly that the extent of damage to his brain matched the severity of his crimes.…”

“…This form of storytelling parallels criminological attempts to connect criminal behavior to psychosocial development, with journalists mobilizing narrative devices that draw on larger cultural scripts regarding the origins of deviance. Yet these versions, represented as “factual” accounts of Hernandez’s life, are stories, revealing how “fictional models permeate factual discourse” (Sherwin, 1994: 47). In this instance, tacit beliefs about perilous masculinity are not simply deployed to bolster causal links; they also aid in co-constructing crime and criminals.…”

“…Popular explanations of Hernandez’s behavior, although converging around a unique case, offer a contemporary example of tensions that scholars of crime, law, and popular culture have grappled with for more than 25 years. Richard Sherwin (1994: 47), for instance, states that efforts to narrate truth are not as “easily divorced from fiction” as we might believe; rather, “fictional models permeate factual discourse,” especially when explaining the role of persons implicated in criminalized acts and legal processes. Building criminal cases relies on more than evidence; they harness schemas and referential scripts to structure explanations in the absence of comprehensive knowledge of crime-related events.…”

Digital Lives: Refiguring the recent and distant pasts in new biographical forms

“…This also chimes with the notion that the film is suggesting an intensified nostalgia for the recent past, one newly lost. A similar line of enquiry can be taken to that of Richard Sherwin (1994) in his analysis of the Errol Morris documentary The Thin Blue Line (1988), depicting the conviction and sentencing of an innocent man. Sherwin (1994: 69) suggests that the film presents two plots, one an easy-to-follow narrative (though told in a non-linear fashion), and the second an example of "postmodern skepticism" in which the "acausal" plot is left unresolved, a cultural preference that "denies the possibility of truth, authority, and history."…”