ABSTRACT
Postmodern storytellers can fashion narratives that convey many different, yet equally convincing, visions of reality. Although these stories replicate our experience of the quick-cut image sequences that define contemporary popular culture, they can have only limited persuasive force in the legal arena when they prevent their audience from reaching articulable, justifiable conclusions. This chapter is about the murder of a Dallas police officer named Robert Wood and the different kinds of stories that were subsequently told about that crime. Then there was the story told by filmmaker Errol Morris in The Thin Blue Line. The chapter explores how it happens that law's demand for truth and justice can clash with the modern mind's demand for closure and certainty. It argues in favor of complexity, insinuating ambivalence about the kind of order legal stories typically create. The chapter approaches the disorder that lurks beyond the bounds of these well-told tales.
