Crossing Lines Is Back! (And Actually Better Than Ever)

I stopped watching Crossing Lines about five episodes into Season 2 – about the time the ICC started investigating a series of home invasions. (Yes, really.) I had no intention of watching again, but I decided to give the show one more try at the urging of my friend Mel O’Brien. So a couple of nights ago I watched the double episode that kicks off Season 3, which features an almost entirely new cast, including the excellent Elizabeth Mitchell and Goran Višnjić (who is Croatian, a nice touch).

To be sure, the show still has its fair share of minor annoyances. Our protagonists remain, inanely, the “cross-border team.” The magic hologram machine has yet to make an appearance, but the team does have a virtual chalkboard that would be at home in Minority Report. Donald Sutherland’s barrister robe has these weird little stubs that make it look like it came from an S&M dungeon. The South African judge is a little too gleeful when he pronounces the defendant guilty (which annoyed Mel) – and why are there approximately 10 other judges sitting around him?

There are still substantive problems, as well. The double episode revolves around the team trying to establish the reliability of documents before they are excluded by the judges – which, of course, would never happen at the ICC, given its civil-law-oriented “free proof” evidentiary regime. The judges would simply admit the documents and then take reliability issues into account when determining their probative value. And the defendant appears to be formally charged with “ethnic cleansing” – which is, of course, a non-technical term. The correct charge would have been, given the facts of the case, forcible transfer.

That said, I have to admit the double episode was pretty darn good. The defendant was a Congolese warlord accused of massacring an entire village in the eastern part of the DRC. An actual international crime – and one that didn’t even cross a border! Better, the warlord was acting on behalf of an American corporation that needed to ensure the continued supply of coltan, a rare metal necessary for its telecommunications products. The village was sitting on a particular valuable deposit of the metal, so the warlord killed its inhabitants to open the area to mining.

That is a quite sophisticated story line – and one that is very realistic. It was also particularly enjoyable to see the ICC bring the sleazy American CEO to justice – in a US court, another nice touch. (Although the substantive international criminal lawyer in me would have liked to see Donald Sutherland litigate the jurisdictional issues involved in prosecuting a national of a non-State-Party for aiding and abetting an international crime that was committed on the territory of a State Party.) If only the real ICC would go after a multinational corporation!

All in all, a job well done by the show’s writers. We’ll see if the progress lasts…