Best Trial Judge Movies & TV Shows

Fast-talker extraordinaire Tracy gives one of his quintessential wiseguy performances as a conniving ambulance chaser who falls in love with Evans, unaware she's a special investigator for a streetcar company he's repeatedly victimized.

The popular Alfred Ollivant novel "Bob, Son of Battle" is the source for this drama about sheep dogs in the Scottish highlands, filmed in mountains in Utah’s Garfield County. Gwenn is a crusty shepherd whose struggling relationship with his son McCallister is complicated by a predatory animal that is attacking the flocks of local shepherds.

A romantic drifter gets caught between a corrupt tycoon and his voluptuous wife.

Wild Bill Hickock and Cannonball help two young people in love and bring the murderer of Cannonball's father to justice.

A young woman is on trial for murder. In flashback, we learn of her struggles to overcome poverty as a teenager -- a mistaken arrest and prison term for shoplifting and lack of employment lead to involvement with gangsters. In a brothel, she meets a young lawyer, scion of a wealthy and prestigious family, who falls for her and helps her turn around her life. But her past catches up with her, and she must face the music rather than cause him scandal.

Only a British cabdriver's (Richard Attenborough) wife (Cathy O'Donnell) and lawyer (Derek Farr) believe him innocent of killing a little girl.

Daisy Kenyon is a Manhattan commercial artist having an affair with an arrogant and overbearing but successful lawyer named Dan O'Mara. O'Mara is married and has children. Daisy meets a single man, a war veteran named Peter Lapham, and after a brief and hesitant courtship decides to marry him, although she is still in love with Dan.

In the underworld of Manhattan, a woman dares to stand up to one of the city's most powerful gangsters.

A wholesome girl believes her new racehorse, October, is the reincarnation of her favorite uncle, Willie.

In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.

Two down-on-their-luck former outlaws volunteer to be Texas Rangers and find themselves assigned to bring in an old friend, now a notorious outlaw.

Bob Ford murders his best friend Jesse James in order to obtain a pardon that will free him to marry his girlfriend Cynthy. The guilt-stricken Ford soon finds himself greeted with derision and open mockery throughout town. He travels to Colorado to try his hand at prospecting in hopes that marriage with Cynthy is still in the cards.

A flirt tries to make her fiancée jealous by hiring a gigolo.

A Capone-like racketeer named Anderson, who after being chased out of one town by the authorities immediately sets up shop in another. Unable to get any tangible evidence against Anderson, DA Wayne orders his assistant Carter to dig up some dirt on the gangster boss. To do this, Carter pretends to turned crooked, joining Anderson's gang in order to accumulate evidence. Alas, Carter's girl friend Patricia knows nothing of her boyfriend's subterfuge, and she suspects the worst.

Amidst a backdrop of growing violence and intimidation, independent cab drivers struggling against a consolidated juggernaut rally around hot-tempered Matt Nolan. Nolan is determined to keep competition alive on the streets, even if it means losing the woman he loves.

An assistant prosecutor and his spunky friend investigate a suddenly hot case.

When a an overly romantic barge captain marries two women, each reminding him of his mother, he finds himself resorting to prison to escape them.

Hoping to bury her criminal past, Jenny Hadley settles into a comfortable existence as Gina, the wife of the politician Clinton Crane. When her former associate Floyd Durant shows up to blackmail Gina, she has no choice but to murder him. Things take a bizarre turn when Barbara Arnold is charged with Durant's murder and Gina is selected to serve on the jury.

A young woman graduates from a New York City law school, returns to her small hometown, and finds her first case is defending a childhood friend accused of murder. Director Lewis Seiler's 1936 courtroom drama stars Claire Trevor, Isabel Jewell, Michael Whalen, Gene Lockhart, Eric Linden, Charles Middleton, Edward Brophy, Kathleen Lockhart, Guinn Williams, El Brendel, Sterling Holloway, Ray Brown, Howard Hickman, Frank McGlynn Sr., Charles Waldron Sr., Spencer Charters and Eily Malyon.

A Death Row inmate uses his prison law studies to fight for his life. Based on a true story.

In this drama, a trucker's business is nearly destroyed after he is wrongfully accused of killing a policeman with whom he recently quarreled.

Jury foreman Edward Weldon's questioning leads to the death sentence for Ethel Saxon. His daughter Stella claims to have killed her lover, the gangster Garboni, just as Saxon was to sit in the electric chair.

A crime writer believes that a man imprisoned for committing the notorious "Flower Shop Murder" is innocent of the crime. He believes he knows who the actual culprit is, and sets out to befriend the man and get enough evidence to prove that he is the real killer.

Jack Brookfield, a gambler with clairvoyant and hypnotic powers, is able to win at cards through his unique gift. But when he inadvertently hypnotizes young Clay Thorne, Thorne kills an enemy of Brookfield's while under a trance. No one believes Brookfield's protestations that Thorne is innocent of any murderous intent, so Brookfield teams up with retired lawyer Martin Prentice in hopes of saving the young man from the gallows.

Showgirl Tony Landers, supported by her friend Flip Daly, fights for the custody of her son during a divorce hearing.

Lady lawyer Portia Merryman (Frieda Inescourt) defends woebegone Elizabeth Manners (Heather Angel), who is on trial for shooting her lover Earle Condon (Neil Hamilton). Ironically, Portia herself had once had a relationship with Earle Condon, but Earle's father, powerful publisher John Condon (Clarence Kolb), forced them apart. She has a pretty good idea of what is going on in Elizabeth's head, since she herself was on the verge of killing Earle Condon when his father ruthlessly took custody of her illegitimate son. As Portia toils and strains to free her client, she carries on a romance with Dan Foster (Walter Abel) -- the attorney for the prosecution. LA Law and The Practice have nothing on this one!

American-International did not invent the juvenile delinquents-jalopies-reckless driving-hot rodders-build it at home-chicken playing genre of movies. PRC and Monogram started churning them out in the mid-forties as part of their let-this-be-a-lesson-to-you genre, preceded by the zoot-suiter and jitter-buggers films, which was better than the social guidance films teen-agers were being overdosed on at school. PRC did at least use card-carrying members of SAG. This one is a sermon against speeding, and Darryl Hickman has it brought straight home to him when he side-swipes a car and causes a collision in which his best friend is killed---the fate of all best friends in juvenile-theme movies including "Rebel Without a Cause"--- and his mother is injured. Lots of lecturing precedes and follows.

A draftswoman, the sister of an aging, alcoholic pilot, secretly uses her brother's ideas to solve design problems for an experimental military plane in an attempt to save the company and salvage her brother's reputation.

A modest country doctor in the antebellum South has to contend with his daughter's upcoming marriage and an affectionate medicine show elephant.

Public Defender Gary Franklin, frustrated by being unable to save criminal Dutch Adams from a death sentence by blaming the slums environment as the cause of Dutch's crimes, enlists the aid of Dutch's sister, Marcia Adams, to get the slum dwellers at appeal for public monies to provide recreational places for the slum kids.

A young man takes a succession of odd jobs in order to save enough money to buy himself and his mother a house. He lands a position in a newspaper office and falls in love with the beautiful society editor, who is secretly having an affair with the married managing editor. She returns the young man's affections in order to make her lover jealous, but finds herself falling for him.

Philandering actor Richard Hardell is murdered at a movie studio. His jealous wife Blanche, his director Rupert Borka, and a girl he mistreated, Helen MacDonald, all have substantial reasons for having wanted him dead.

Claire's number one priority is her family. When her husband Dennis loses his stockbroker job, the couple's traditional family roles switch. As Dennis takes on his new stay-at-home role, Claire's furniture design business takes off. Just as she's beginning to master the art of balancing her home and work life, Dennis serves her with divorce papers and charges her with being an unfit mother. Claire discovers that in a modern courtroom there are still traditional biases unsympathetic to the idea of a woman working three jobs, as a wife, an entrepreneur and a mother.

This Universal programmer was based on a Collier's Magazine story by journalist Quentin Reynolds. This story in turn was ostensibly based on a true incident, in which a gangster "returned from the dead" to save an innocent young man from the electric chair. The nurse of the film's title is Katharine McDonald, who falls in love with her prizefighter-patient Lee Burke as he recovers from a beating received in a fixed prizefight. Katharine must fend off the advances of criminal attorney John Dodge, another patient who also loves her and becomes jealous of Lee. But when Lee is framed for the murder of his disgruntled manager, Slice, by a henchman of the fight-fix leader, Joe Largo, Dodge takes on his defense and works with Katherine to discover the real killer. Convicted and sentenced to death, Burke is about to walk the "last mile", as Katharine encourages mortally wounded Largo to a deathbed confession.

Young reporter accidentially kills his newspaper's editor in a fight over the publisher's mistress, who is also the paper's society editor.

A runaway orphan is befriended by a kind-hearted pet store owner with a criminal past.

A man is tried and convicted for the murder of a man who flirted with his wife., and sentenced to death However, it turns out that he is innocent of the murder and that the real killer has close ties to a powerful politician.

Following in his dad's footsteps, Shefford devotes himself to freeing his community from the grip of a particularly despotic Mormon sect. In so doing, he rescues his foster sister Fay Larkin, who is coveted by lecherous Mormon elder Wagoner. As was the case in Riders of the Purple Sage, the Mormons are villains simply because they are Mormons.

A silent romantic love triangle crime melodrama about a man who gets out of prison after ten years and discovers that his wife has divorced him and married the man who sent him to prison. Worse yet, she fears he will want to exact revenge, so she sets up her new husband to frame her first husband, so he will be sent back to prison!

Down-on-his-luck lawyer Warren Blackburn defends wealthy Texan Johnnie Faye Boudreau, who is accused of murdering her husband.

A man is put on trial for the murder of his best friend. A young attorney wants to become successful and decides to defend him. However, he is very inexperienced.

An accused killer is granted a reprieve when his victim returns to town in the flesh after an eight-year absence.

After being convicted of stealing some jewels, Annette Eldrige is sent to a reformatory administered by a sadistic and corrupt female warder. However, one of the board of trustees takes an interest in the new arrival and begins to investigate the management of the institution.

A down-and-out lawyer gets back on his feet with help from a singer who later retains him to defend her on a murder charge.

Talkie about a maid who is accused of killing the lady of the house

A retired surgeon starts giving away money to religious causes and his family tries to file suit, claiming that he's incompetent.

In the fine tradition of And Sudden Death, Columbia's The Devil is Driving tabulates the dangers of drunken driving in an exciting, unabashedly melodramatic fashion. In his first true portrayal of a "little creep," Elisha Cook Jr. stars as Tony, the spoiled-rotten son of the wealthy and influential Mr. Stevens.

Evelyn Vail (Florence Rice) is a nurse convicted of poisoning a patient. Out on parole, Evelyn decides to fly to Sing-Sing and confront death row inmate who accused her of the deed in the first place. On board the airliner, Evelyn makes the acquaintance of John Robinson Gordon (Nagel), who is transporting a revolutionary munitions formula to Washington, D.C. Another passenger, Baker (Robert Allen), complains of having been poisoned and leaves the plane during a stopover in Dallas. Back in the air, Gordon's bodyguard, Lieutenant O'Brien (Fred Kelsey), suffers the same fate, but this time the poison proves fatal. The plane returns to Dallas, where Police Captain Barrie (William B. Davidson) accused poor Evelyn of the crime. Happily, Gordon can prove otherwise and the real culprit is unmasked.