Crime, Television

Criminally Yours: What One NYC Criminal Defense Attorney Liked About 'The Night Of'

Columnist Toni Messina, a criminal defense lawyer in New York, shares her thoughts on the acclaimed HBO show.

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justice-handcuffs-e1372182679824-300x286I started watching The Night Of, the new miniseries from HBO, with great trepidation. (Spoiler alert: I will discuss the plot and ending.) After all, it’s about my work, criminal defense, in the exact building (100 Centre Street, Manhattan) where I do it. I was prepared to be critical because so few dramatizations get it right.

To my pleasant surprise, however, The Night Of is a nuanced portrayal of what happens when a basically good kid from a good family gets busted and thrown into Riker’s Island. While the story touches on how the crime and its aftermath affect his family and his community (the Muslim community in NYC), it most significantly depicts how a stint in a tough prison — where you need to pal up with somebody for protection — damages your own morality and destroys your ability to ever go back to being the person you once were, even if you are acquitted. The Night Of aptly dramatizes the post-traumatic shock syndrome of spending time in jail. Once stained, never again clean.

The story itself, a police procedural, follows the brutal stabbing of a young and beautiful but troubled woman during or just after kinky sex. The murder is never shown, just the run-up to it and the aftermath. (If you don’t know what mumblety-peg is, you’ll get a graphic introduction here.)

The plot’s a tad formulaic. The main character, Nasir “Naz” Khan (Riz Ahmed), runs from the victim’s apartment, bloody knife in pocket, leaving fingerprints, semen, and DNA all over the joint. He’s not even sure himself whether he committed the murder, so high was he on a combination of amphetamines, ketamine, and who knows what else.

We assume at first this guy didn’t do it. It’s just too obvious. But kudos to the writers, because the longer the show goes on and the deeper Naz’s morals sink into the toilet at Riker’s Island, the easier it is to believe he did do it.

Interestingly (and unusual for a TV series), the writers also get the criminal defense attorney spot on. The conversations between Jack Stone (John Turturro) and Naz ring true — particularly the first one they have, when Stone is trolling for business at the police precinct and tells Naz something to the effect of, “I don’t want to know the truth. Gives me less to work with.”

He also gives Naz the advice I’ve been putting in this column almost on a weekly basis — never talk to the cops. Never believe what they tell you when they say, it’s only going to help. I cheered for Naz when he followed this advice in a subsequent scene.

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The depiction of lead prosecutor Helen Weiss (Jeannie Berlin) was also nuanced. So natural was she in her raspy-voiced, down-to-earthiness, I had to check if she was an actual actress. (She is, although it’s been a while since her best-known work, The Heartbreak Kid.) Neither a villain nor a hero, she initially goes after Naz with gusto, even nudging her witnesses to change their answers to better suit her case. By the end, however, doubt creeps in and she does the right thing. (I won’t ruin that surprise.)

Then there is the detective, Dennis Box (Bill Camp), world-weary and edging toward retirement, with this last case to put to bed. Even though his gut tells him Naz might not be the right guy, he suppresses the thought and goes after him like a bulldog. I loved how he tried to wheedle a confession from Naz while in the holding cell in the precinct, handing him his asthma inhaler as a peace offering. (Naz holds out. See above. Good for him!)

The other “suspects,” which the defense attorney, and not the police, have to ferret out, are straight out of central casting — the evil-looking street dude who stares at Naz in a way that spells murder when Naz walks into the murder victim’s apartment; the murder victim’s sleaze of a stepfather, who stands to gain the most from her death; the creepy hearse driver who lingers too long at the gas station speaking to the victim. These were clever red herrings necessary for the plot, but unnecessary for the character buildup.

I could write a whole piece on why the trial scenes should not be used as a blueprint of trial practice. For starters, lawyers are generally not allowed to ask questions while standing just inches from the witness’s face. Neither are they allowed to ask questions then answer them themselves. (Q: Did you know the gate was broken? A: No. Q: Well it was.) Nor are jurors allowed to have an open dialogue about their deliberations with the judge, and generally the defense does not call other potential suspects in a murder to the witness stand and expect them to show up, at least without being represented.

Another pet peeve is the depiction of the young, pretty defense attorney as a complete nut job who not only passionately kisses her client in the jail cell, but then smuggles drugs in her bra for his use. While I know this can happen (see Criminal That I Am, the true story of a young attorney who does exactly this for Michael Douglas’s son), it’s so rare and so stupid, it’s like depicting a doctor who goes to work sloppy drunk then operates on the wrong patient. First, the attorney in this case just didn’t seem unmoored enough to do what the writers have her do. Next, I didn’t buy her gaga attraction to Naz. He may be appealing in a hard-boiled, steely, cipher kind of way, but not so irresistible that an attorney, even a neophyte, would dump all ethics and bring him drugs.

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There are lots of lingering camera moments at the end of scenes which, I guess, are attempts to be arty, but make no sense. The series could have been cut by a full episode. Far too much time, also, is spent on John Turturro’s diseased feet.

But in the end, the story is as much about Naz’s transformation at Riker’s Island as about his crime and trial. By the time Naz leaves jail, he’s become a criminal, having committed a number of crimes as heinous as aiding and abetting a jailhouse murder and beating a fellow inmate nearly to death. He has also become addicted to heroin. For him, nothing outside will ever be the same.

The tragedy of the tale is even after having beaten the murder rap, the struggle for Naz is just beginning. Now, that’s honesty.

Earlier: Standard Of Review: The Night Before The Week Starts, Watch HBO Miniseries ‘The Night Of’
Standard Of Review: Evaluating The Attorneys Of ‘The Night Of’
Standard Of Review: Liking, But Not Loving, ‘The Night Of’
Beyond Biglaw: Lessons From ‘The Night Of’ (Part 1)
Beyond Biglaw: Lessons From ‘The Night Of’ (Part 2)
When A Lawyer Becomes A Criminal

Toni Messina has been practicing criminal defense law since 1990, although during law school she spent one summer as an intern in a large Boston law firm and realized quickly it wasn’t for her. Prior to attending law school, she worked as a journalist from Rome, Italy, reporting stories of international interest for CBS News and NPR. She keeps sane by balancing her law practice with a family of three children, playing in a BossaNova band, and dancing flamenco. She can be reached by email at tonimessinalw@gmail.com or tonimessinalaw.com, and you can also follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.

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