Times where a criminal gets Off on a Technicality in Literature.
- In Alexis Carew: Mutineer Alexis briefly consults an attorney on challenging Dalthan agnatic primogeniture inheritance law, but is informed that she couldn't, yet, due to a problem of standing: as her grandfather is still alive, she has not yet been personally injured by the nationally unconstitutional law and therefore cannot challenge it. In HMS Nightingale it turns out to be even worse than that: Dalthan landholdings are organized as shares of a private corporation rather than as state-backed nobility or the equivalent, and such entities are permitted to set their inheritance law however they like. Ultimately the situation is resolved with a constitutional amendment at the start of Privateer that allows Dalthan holders to designate any child from their family as heir, rather than simply the eldest son or grandson.
- In Artemis Fowl, Mulch Diggums is released from prison after the eponymous character has tampered with the police's records, making it look as if the first search of his home was carried out before it was ordered.
- The district attorney in the book version of Clear and Present Danger takes pride in the fact that he has never lost a case on technical grounds. This is not the same as never losing a case ever, but is still impressive.
- In the same series, Ed Kealty's claim to the Presidency in Executive Orders is finally stamped out when he takes Jack Ryan to court over an emergency order and refers to Jack as the President, which is later used against him when the Acting Attorney General notes that, by refering to Jack as the President in federal court, it gave him the legitimacy needed to be Presidentnote .
- In The Curse of Chalion, death magic is essentially "pray to the right god, and if he grants your prayer, he sends a demon to kill both you and your target". Attempted death magic is treated as attempted murder and punished appropriately. Successful death magic is a miracle of justice, and cannot be treated as a crime, unless you're willing to try arresting the god who sent the demon. (Archdivine Mendenal admits that the distinction was clearer when it was all theoretical, that is, before Cazaril received a death miracle without dying himself.note )
- Invoked in The Dresden Files: Dead Beat. Harry is well aware that the Laws of Magic say that you can't use necromancy on human corpses (the laws are about using Black Magic against other humans), and that the penalty for violating the Laws is beheading. But nobody ever said nuthin' about reanimating a fossil Tyrannosaurus rex.
- One minor character in the Serge Storms novel Florida Roadkill got himself and his friends off on a technicality when they were arrested for drunk driving and possession of alcohol when they were in high school. He found an obscure law that proved that the officer who arrested them didn't have valid grounds to pull them over, and since all further evidence was taken from a technically illegal police stop, it was inadmissible in court. He wins the case and grows up to be a DA.
- Harry Potter:
- In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it was revealed that, when Lord Voldemort murdered his muggle father and his father's parents, the Muggles believed Frank Bryce, the caretaker of the mansion where he lived, committed the murders. Bryce was not charged because the forensics experts failed to establish a cause of death - the Killing Curse doesn't leave signs that can be noticed without magic - but the villagers remained sure Bryce was guilty... somehow.
- Following Harry's trial for a Crime of Self-Defense where he was proven innocent since he was saving his and Dudley's souls by casting a patronus in front of his muggle cousin (who already knows about magic anyway) in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix the Ministry spun the story to make it sound like he got Off on a Technicality. It then turns out that one of their particularly nasty members is secretly responsible for the attack in the first place, precisely to provoke him into using magic so they could prosecute him for it, and she gets away with it.
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince later reveals that Voldemort framed his maternal uncle, a wizard, for the murder of his father and grandparents with Fake Memories, covering him on the magical end too.
- Throughout the series, numerous wealthy and well-connected Death Eaters (most prominently, Lucius Malfoy) evaded conviction after Voldemort's fall by claiming they'd been placed under the Imperius Curse. It's implied that because of their connections, no more than a token effort was made to verify their claims.
- Honor Harrington: In the first book of the series, Captain Lord Pavel Young attempted to set up Honor Harrington for public failure by withdrawing his own ship from their assigned station, leaving her to assume all responsibilities with her single vessel. When Honor subsequently discovers—and foils—a plot by the People's Republic of Haven to conquer the system through a staged native uprising, Captain Young is shamed by the rest of the navy, but is not actually demoted or court-martialed. In The Short Victorious War, Harrington learns that the reason Young was not removed from command after the events in “On Basilisk Station” was because he had covered his withdrawal with a barely justified return to the shipyard for repairs, a legal move, shielding him from retribution. Later he withdraws during a battle without orders and is court-martialed, but his family connections mean he's only dishonorably discharged rather than shot for desertion. Which is itself an example of Off on a Technicality, since the reason given for not shooting him was that he was technically the ranking officer of his squadron and entitled to give the order to retreat, even though he didn't know that. (The commanding admiral had died a few minutes before, but in the confusion of the battle this fact had not been broadcast).
- Not uncommon in The Icelandic Sagas, given how often Medieval Icelandic legal procedure is highlighted in them. For instance, in The Saga of the Confederates Ospak gets away with murdering Odd's kinsman because Odd summoned a last-minute replacement for one of his panel from his home district rather than at the Althing.
- The Cruel Twist Ending of Tana French's novel In the Woods. Main character homicide detective Robb and his partner Cassie have figured out who the killer is but don't have enough evidence to prove it. They set up a trap to get the killer to confess to Cassie. The trap works perfectly, Cassie plays her part brilliantly, even working the Irish equivalent of a Miranda Warning into the conversation, and they get a full confession of the entire plot on tape. Then the twist comes... the killer was the victim's teenage sister, and she's only 17, not 18 as the detectives had initially believed (even more cruelly, they're only a few months shy of being right, which is how the detectives make this whole mistake in the first place; her birth year actually is 18 years ago, and Rob makes the fatal mistake of not double-checking the month and day). This means everything she said outside the presence of her parents is inadmissible. She gets away with the murder, and the case destroys not only Robb and Cassie's careers, but their friendship as well. The book ends with Robb alone and miserable.
- The Indictment by Barry Reed, defense lawyer Dan Sheridan (the protagonist) uses this when defending a man charged with drunk driving. It seems like a slam dunk for the prosecution, but he faces an inexperience assistant DA. Thus, after the prosecution rests (with the case based solely on the testimony from the state policeman who arrested the defendant) he immediately moves for a judgment of acquittal. Why? Since the prosecutor didn't have the officer confirm the defendant was on a public road, or the driver of the car. As a result, the judge grants his motion, and chides the prosecutor, telling him to let it be a lesson in not forgetting the basics. Some of the jurors complain of this trope as they're leaving the courtroom afterward.
- Joe Pickett: The plot of Free Fire centres around a lawyer deliberately committing a felony, knowing that he will get off on a technicality. Clay McCann murders four campers in remote stretch of Yellowstone National Park: knowing that a loophole in the laws makes it impossible to try anyone who commits a crime in the 50 acres of park that sits inside Idaho (known as the 'Yellowstone Zone of Death'). The mystery Joe has to investigate in why McCann committed this seemingly senseless crime, and why he stuck around the district afterward.note
- In the H. Beam Piper story Lone Star Planet, set on New Texas, the new Solar League ambassador, Stephen Silk, has to arrange this for the three men who assassinated the last Ambassador. The logic was that on New Texas, politicians are defined as fair game - you're only punished for killing a politician if the court's opinion is that said pollie didn't have it coming - and this specialized court was the venue for the assassination trial. However, defining ambassadors as practicing politicians would lead to some very awkward precedent, meaning that Silk has to first build a conclusive case around them, then remind everyone that it's the wrong court, and New Texan double jeopardy laws meant there couldn't be a retrial. Of course, since it's a cowboy planet, you can freely carry guns into court unless you're the defendant, and after the verdict of "technically not guilty and it's a damn shame" is handed down, Silk proves that there's no technicality that will get you off a bullet through the head by gunning down all three at once. Quoth the judge: "Court-is-hereby-adjourned-until-0900-tomorrow-hit-the-deck!"
- Mickey Haller is a specialist at defending known criminals. One case in The Lincoln Lawyer unrelated to the novel's main plot had him defending a marijuana grower who had been detected by a DEA flyover. Haller notes that the flyover was at a low enough altitude to constitute an illegal search, and the case is thrown out.
- Njal's Saga: After Njál and his household have been burnt in their farmstead, Njál's friends and relations sue the Burners at the Althing with the purpose of getting them outlawed. Two times a jury passes judgment against the Burners and their leader Flosi, and two times their legal adviser Eyjólf Bolverksson succeeds in declaring the verdict invalid for technical reasons: At the end of the first suit in the Court of the Eastern Quarter, Eyjólf reveals that Flosi has secretly declared himself a thingman (client) of a goði from the Northern Quarter, and so should have been cited before the Court of the Northern Quarter, making the verdict of the Eastern Quarter Court invalid. This leads to another suit before the Fifth Court (the Icelandic court of appeal), in which Flosi (advised by Eyjólf) waives his right to exclude six judges of his choice from the jury; this later allows him to declare the jury`s verdict invalid because the jury contained more than the allowed number of judges.
- A legal technicality is the reason Nancy's murder conviction was overturned in Where Are the Children?; her lawyer got a mistrial declared after it came out two jurors had been overheard discussing the ongoing trial in a bar. Nancy couldn't be re-tried because key prosecution witness Rob Legler had disappeared, while her husband - whose testimony was also important - had committed suicide in the interim; the D.A had little choice but to release her. She is actually innocent, but few people believe that.
