A Kangaroo Court is a sham legal proceeding or trial that denies due process and fairness in the name of expediency and authoritarian rule, undertaken usually by orders from the Powers That Be, with the express purpose of punishing a particular individual regardless of whether he or she actually broke the law, in a specific way as to make it more difficult to prove that it was a gratuitous act of authoritarianism and to give the sadistic authorities a chance to gloat at the defendant's misery.
In a proper court of law, what happens is that there is a dispute between two different parties—in civil courts it's between individuals or corporations, in criminal courts it's individuals versus the State—and this dispute must be settled according to standing law in an orderly and structured way. A court requires a minimum of three parties: a plaintiff complaining about an injury that was done to themself (in criminal courts the plaintiff is the State or the country as a whole, represented by a prosecutor or attorney general); a defendant, who is the person being accused of wrongdoing; and the judge (and jury, if the country uses it), whose job is to evaluate the evidence and testimonials presented by both parties, determine whether the plaintiff's complaint is true, and, if the injury was actually done, determine how the defendant should pay for their wrongdoings. A trial, therefore, is inherently a non-deterministic procedure with an unknown outcome; theoretically, even the most cynical and shameless Serial Killer can end up being cleared from all charges if the evidence for them is solid enough. In addition, most trial processes throughout the world have been painstakingly designed to respect at all times the defendant's human rights, by always giving even the most horrible and unforgivable offenders a chance to defend themselves, always listening to everyone's claims, and by applying special rules such as always providing a state-sponsored lawyer if the defendant can't hire their own, or assuming the defendant's innocence until proven guilty.
In a corrupt or authoritarian state, none of this happens. What happens instead is that a powerful person—the President, the Glorious Leader, a sufficiently powerful Corrupt Politician, a person with enough wealth and political connections, a secret authority operating from the shadows, or maybe the people who just overthrew the previous government and are now sending everyone to jail—wants to punish or get rid of someone in particular, has managed to arrest or kidnap that person, and has a corrupt law enforcement system completely ready to lock that person into jail; if the authority wants to, they can send the victim to death row, or have them commit suicide by three gunshots to the back of the neck. But doing so would immediately raise suspicions among the population that this person was actually innocent and wrongfully convicted, which would greatly undermine the legitimacy of the powers that be, and potentially end up with an armed revolution if the convicted person was sufficiently popular. Also, if the dictator or the people in charge are sadistic enough, they may not find it enough to just punish someone; they're going to want to taste every single one of the victim's tears, gloat at their misery, and laugh in their face as they are sent to their inevitable doom.
Enter the Kangaroo Court: the defendant technically is given a trial, but the trial is actually just a show, and going through the motions of procedure is only done to make it "official"; unlike a proper trial, which inherently has an unknown outcome, this fake trial's outcome has already been decided, and the defendant will be punished, no matter what happens or how the trial develops. The defendant will likely be allowed no defense, nor be allowed to call witnesses, present evidence or make objections. If they are allowed, they will be summarily overruled by the Hanging Judge that usually presides over the trial in question. Especially nasty versions may even slap the accused with "contempt of court" penalties for even trying to mount a defense. If the trial results in a death sentence, some people will use the term "judicial murder" to describe it.
An alternate version is the Reverse Kangaroo Court, in which the defendant will be judged innocent and cleared from one or more charges. In this case, the accused person is let off by a court biased in their favor. This may be due to them having connections, the alleged victim(s) being unpopular or prejudiced against, bribery/threats that gain them acquittal or dismissal of the charge(s), or maybe the defendant is a government official in a corrupt jurisdiction that feigns having a due procedure to address abuses of authority but in reality has the entire system rigged in favor of the rulers and bureaucrats.
This one is unfortunately Truth in Television, especially in countries ruled by dictators, who are fond of putting people through "show trials" as a prelude to execution; the victims are usually dissidents, people designated by the authorities as enemies, or random people used as scapegoats to prominently declare a high profile crime as solved. The etymology is unknown,
though many (mostly wrong) suggestions have been made; one of the better theories is that it's a combination of "kangaroo" being an Inherently Funny Word and the idea of the court "jumping over" exculpatory evidence like a kangaroo.
Very rarely, the court's victim is a particularly despicable villain. Seeing them getting their just deserts at the hands of the corrupt system they themselves may have set up can be incredibly therapeutic both for the protagonists and the audience.
Compare Joker Jury (which a Kangaroo Court may well have), Jury of the Damned, Trial of the Mystical Jury, and Decoy Trial. If it's the litigants who are making a mockery of the court system rather than those running the proceedings, that involves the use of Unconventional Courtroom Tactics. Not descriptive of Australia's legal system, though many confuse it with Sentenced to Down Under. If the Kangaroo Court occurs in the military, it's called a Drumhead Court-Martial. The name comes from the hasty and haphazard nature of this type of justice; instead of a proper table and/or notes, a makeshift board or writing medium, such as a drumhead, can be used, especially on the battlefield. The inevitable outcome is the defendant getting Shot at Dawn.
See also The Scapegoat, Guilty Until Someone Else Is Guilty, Miscarriage of Justice and Penultimate Outburst. Not to be confused with Decadent Court, which is about a corrupt royal court, although naturally they have been known to overlap.
A No Recent Examples rule applies to Real Life examples of this trope. Real life examples shouldn't be added until 50 years after the case ends.
Example subpages:
- Anime & Manga
- Comic Books
- Fan Works
- Films — Live-Action
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Music
- Theatre
- Video Games
- Webcomics
- Web Original
- Western Animation
- Real Life
Other examples:
- Alice's trial in Disney's Alice in Wonderland, as well as the trial of the Knave of Hearts in the original book. The Queen of Hearts, of course, just wants to behead Alice right away, but the King of Hearts advises she should get a trial first. It begins with the sentence and works backward to conviction from there.
Queen: (to Alice) Are you ready for your sentence?
Alice: Sentence? But there must be a verdict first.
Queen: Sentence first, verdict afterwards!
Alice: But that just isn't the way!
Queen: (roaring) ALL WAYS ARE--
Alice: (hastily) Your ways, Your Majesty. (curtsies to her) - Batman: The Killing Joke has a scene where Commissioner Gordon is brought into a room designed to look like a courtroom. The jury box is filled with kangaroo statues while the Joker acts as prosecutor.
- The Hunchback Of Notre Dame has Clopin parodying the whole trope in critique of Judge Claude Frollo in the song "The Court of Miracles", creating a skit of a speedy trial (with protests being overruled and silenced) and then mockingly claiming that Quasimodo and Phoebus are guilty of being "totally innocent". However, the sham trial itself is taken seriously as Clopin truly believes that Quasimodo and Phoebus are spies for Frollo, only relenting when Esmeralda speaks on behalf for the defendants.
- Pamela and Ash are submitted to an unofficial one in The Tarot Cafe. Both are kidnapped by an insane group of religious fanatics who claim that the two are minions of the Devil. They first ask Ash if he believes in wizards. When he says he does not, they twist his words to mean that he admitted to not believing in God (according to them, wizards are a sign of the Devil, thus denying the existence of wizards is to deny the Devil and denying the existence of the Devil is thus to deny the existence of God). When they ask Pamela the same question, she simply says "What if I do?", which they take to mean that she does believe in wizards and is thus an agent of the Devil. Partway through, Pamela is crushed by a giant statue, which the fanatics believe is a sign that God judged her...and then believe that she's evil because she survived (really, she's immortal).
- The Bible: Both of Jesus' trials play with it:
- The Sanhedrin (high court of ancient Judea) that tries Jesus in The Four Gospels. Not only do the judges violate every single Jewish law governing trials, but they put on clearly perjured witnesses to convict him. It got to the point the Sanhedrin was about to acquit Jesus due how farcical things had become until Caiaphas asks him if he's the Messiah, using his assent as proof of blasphemy committed in the court.
- The conduct of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who approves his death sentence (the Romans required it) also plays with it, as even he acknowledges that no Roman (or Jewish) laws were broken by Jesus... But he had also obtained what Roman law counted as a guilty plea: his question of "Are you the King of the Jews?" was him asking if he pled guilty or innocent of the treason he was being accused by the Sanhedrin, and when Jesus sarcastically replied "You have said so" he got the equivalent of no plea at all, which in Roman law is the same as a guilty plea. What followed was Pilate taking this sassy accidental guilty plea and running with it, up to hanging the sign "Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaerum" (Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews) on his cross to announce why he was being executed, annoying the Sanhedrin in the process.
- Roman magistrates had the power to have non-Romans crucified at will, however, making the whole Roman "justice" system essentially this for them. Trials of Roman citizens often went this way, as the magistrate was free to admit or ignore any evidence they pleased. Later on Paul, a Roman citizen, was given a trial, but the outcome isn't in doubt. The only real privilege they had was that citizens couldn't be crucified (and the trial had to be in Rome). Paul was put under house arrest and later beheaded, while they crucified non-citizen Peter (upside down, as he didn't want it to resemble Jesus' death; legend has it Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross instead of a normal one for that reason as well, hence the St. Andrew's Cross with this shape that still is used, e.g. for the Scottish flag, due to St. Andrew being the patron saint for Scotland).
- The Book of Mormon:
- The Nephites find the chief judge dead, and five men unconscious nearby. They conclude that those five must be the murderers, and that God has smitten them down to stop them from fleeing, proceeding to throw the men in prison and make a widespread proclamation of their guilt — all without actually trying or questioning them.
- When it's later discovered that the five men were not guilty, but were sent there to investigate Nephi's prophetic warning of the murder, Nephi gets arrested and tried, which starts with the judges declaring him guilty and trying to bribe him to reveal his conspirators.
- According to the apocryphal "Acts of Peter" and "Acts of Peter and Paul", Peter and Paul were actually rightly executed for their crime: Simon Magus had been having demons support him as he was flying in public to prove himself a god only for Peter to exorcise the demon and make him fall to his death, something that under Roman law counts as using magic to cause harm and is punished by death, thus giving plenty of witnesses to have Peter executed for a capital crime and Paul as an accomplice. Still counts for this trope, as Nero didn't even bother with a trial, he just ordered Peter executed on the witnesses' report ("Acts of Peter") or ordered them both executed for making Simon Magus fall in his presence.
- In the Old Testament, Naboth the Jezreelite was given a sham trial by order of Queen Jezebel who had false witnesses accusing him of cursing both God and the king and then having him executed soon afterward so that her husband King Ahab could legally own Naboth's vineyard.
- There is a Polish legend that once, in Lublin, a court judged unfairly in favor of a rich magnate against a poor widow. Then, depending on the variant, either the widow stated Satan would have judged more fairly, or the magnate stated the guy would have been forced to agree with them. In either case, next night, devils show up and force the court to review the case.
- In the fifth episode of DuckTales podcast This Duckburg Life, "The Framing of Flintheart Glomgold", Glomgold is quickly found guilty because everyone in Duckburg automatically assumed—knowing him—that he was responsible for dropping leopard sharks on Scrooge's new water park. No one, not even his own lawyer, would try to defend him. When he calls it a kangaroo court, the judge tells him it's a duck court and the kangaroo one is two doors away.
- Episode 319 of Mission to Zyxx features "Pump Up the Justice", an in-universe justice reality show where defendants are governed by dramatic reveals and commercial breaks and verdicts are rendered by phone-in audience voting.
- In the first season finale of Wooden Overcoats, Rudyard is put on trial for the alleged murder of Eric Chapman. Eric's popularity within the town, Rudyard's unpopularity, a boatload of circumstantial evidence, and the town's general stupidity means that everyone (except Antigone and Georgie) is convinced Rudyard is guilty, and doesn't see the point in giving him a fair chance to prove otherwise. His "defense attorney" openly believes he did it, and is asked to "just go through the motions." Rudyard also isn't allowed to speak for himself, nor is he allowed any time to prepare a defense — he's arrested and dragged straight into the courtroom. Even when Georgie attempts to vouch for him, saying she's the last person to see Eric, no one believes her, since her story (which happens to be the truth) rides on the fact that she wasn't interested in him, which no one else in town can fathom. Rudyard very quickly resigns himself to his fate.
Rudyard: I'll just show myself to my cell, then.
- Bleak Expectations has one in the final episode of Series 1, where Pip is accused of stealing the bin design from American Harlan J. Trashcan. Judge Hardthrasher blames Pip for killing his four brothers and sister, he personally hangs Pip's lawyer because his name is too long and he freezes Pip's financial assets so he can't hire another lawyer. Trashcan is obviously Benevolent in disguise, showing the evidence of a newspaper with the ink still wet, and Hardthrasher even calls him Mr. Benevolent. When he finds Pip guilty after saying this verdict is in no way caused by his sibling's death, he says 'Yes! Got him!' He sentences him to death deciding the verdict himself under the accordance 'Innocent until proven dead.'
- One of the sketches from the Monty Python radio programme was a man being put on trial in an utterly bizarre court— the judge cares more about catching his train than the trial, the court reporter is Ambiguously Gay, the Crown's lawyer is sleeping with the defense attorney's wife, and the jury is made up of Pepperpots who are very vocal in their impartiality. The defendant ends up stabbing himself in the back out of frustration.
- At least two controversial and unauthorized cases happened in Dino Attack RPG:
- Elite Agent Rotor arrested and threatened to execute an entire helicopter crew because the pilot disobeyed his orders. He was almost arrested but a mutant dinosaur rampage allowed him to get off scot-free.
- In an homage to Blackadder, Elite Agent French Fries organized an over-the-top trial in which he planned to execute Rotor and George for conflicting charges. note Let's just say it didn't go over well with the rest of the team.
- The Mayfair Batman RPG had a sample adventure where Joker puts Batman on trial for supposedly killing a man during one of their fights. It's clearly one of these (complete with a "jury of his peers" — twelve mannequins in Batman costumes), but unless the players can prove Batman's innocence, he'll willingly turn himself over to the police.
- Exalted: The Roseblack is under advisement to find excuses to extend her campaign in the Threshold as long as possible, as her enemies in the Deliberative are planning to have her executed on trumped up charges of treason the moment she sets foot back on the Blessed Isle (the fact that she actually is planning to commit treason is merely because she objects to this kind of thing being able to fly).
- In Quest Gamer:
- Inverted in their proposed "Kangaroo Court" variant of Magic: The Gathering, in which players can try to apply some semblance of real-world logic to the game; for example, using the Pacify card on an Angry Mob destroys it outright, since the mob is no longer angry.
- The card Twisted Justice is styled after creating such a situation, and the flavor text is from the perspective of the judge as he's being manipulated to send an innocent man to his death.
- Inverted in their proposed "Kangaroo Court" variant of Magic: The Gathering, in which players can try to apply some semblance of real-world logic to the game; for example, using the Pacify card on an Angry Mob
- Nobilis: the Locust Court, during the first two editions, which existed mainly to a) permit Lord Entropy to arbitrarily punish anyone he wanted, and b) see who could afford the biggest bribe for Meon. 3e dialed it back a bit, making the Court as just as any other court that tries people for breaking laws one guy made up.
- In Planescape, if you commit a crime in Sigil, you may have to appear in the Court of Woe, presided over by the demonic Judge Gabberslug. There's not much legal structure there, with one attorney arguing for both the prosecution and the defense (unless "Sly" Nye is defending) and Gabberslug usually rules how he feels like, though he usually embodies the "Chaotic" part of his alignment more than the "Evil" part.
- In Stars Without Number, the supplements Skyward Steel and Starvation Cheap discuss military justice. In general, don't ask for a court-martial. It's not supposed to be fair, because any effective military justice system prioritizes maintaining order and the chain of command over the rights of individual soldiers. Just take your summary administrative punishment with good grace.
- A hallmark of Inquisitor courts of the Imperium in Warhammer 40,000. Assuming the accused managed to avoid being killed already by over-eager Inquisitors seeking out any hint of heresy (which in and of itself is already a miracle 99% of the time), actually being brought to a trial means facing down a bunch of Imperial zealots who in most cases have probably already made up their mind about the guilt (real or imagined) of the defendant in question. Some, like Lord Inquisitor Fyodor Karamazov, take this to the extreme to the point even other Inquisitors balk in shock, such as killing an innocent priest who managed to take back his planet for the Imperium...under the impression that there was even a hint of Chaos corruption about him and not allowing any members of the Ecclesiarchy to actually come and test him until after he was long since dead. His quote says it best.
"There is no such thing as a plea of innocence in my court, a plea of innocence is guilty of wasting my time. Guilty."
- Depending on the Commissar, a Commissarial tribunal can be just as bad, albeit on a more limited scope than what an Inquisitor is capable of.
- In the Ace Attorney franchise, you can debunk every piece of evidence pointing towards your client (which is considered sufficient in real life, as the defense has nothing to prove), but they're still not off the hook until you can actually prove their innocence by catching the real killer.note The incompetence of the games' current court system becomes more apparent as the series goes on and reaches a head in the third case of the fourth game, and Phoenix actually is so frustrated with this — especially since it cost him his career — that he begins a quiet crusade to reinstate the jury system and succeeds in getting a test run in the same game's fourth case. When Ron Delite confesses he was the thief when Phoenix already proved him innocent, the judge outright says, "What kind of a kangaroo court do you think this is?"note
- Exaggerated in Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney, where the Judge is not just biased towards the prosecution - he is impatiently looking forward to calling your client guilty as soon as you make one wrong turn, so he can gladly condemn them to burn alive and watch them reduced into ashes. Meanwhile, the audience cheers for the prosecution even while you are destroying their arguments and the witnesses will change their testimony a hundred times and make up any lies necessary to prove that the defendant is an evil despicable witch who deserves to be burnt alive. Witch Trial, indeed.
- It gets even worse in Spirit of Justice. In Khura'in, defense attorneys are culturally considered to be evil, lying demons, the decisions are almost entirely based on the word of a 14-year old and her powers to view the victim's last memories, the accused actually contesting the charges is considered blasphemy, and the defense is made to share in any punishment a convicted defendant receives. At least in Labyrinthia, you're still guaranteed counsel and "Magic A" Is "Magic A". It eventually turns out that the whole thing is a political construct- the Queen was a former prosecutor and the Rebel Leader was once a defense attorney, and she didn't want him to ever be able to prove that she had assassinated her own sister to become queen and then pinned the blame on him. The whole 'defense lawyers are evil' was just an excuse to persecute Dhurke and his allies. When she takes over as prosecutor in the final case, she proceeds to do things like trying to declare a guilty verdict on her own without allowing an argument and rewriting the law on the spot whenever it looks like things might go against her. Apollo ultimately wins the case not by proving her guilty, but by proving that she didn't really have a claim to the throne and so didn't have authority over the court.
- The Great Ace Attorney:
- In general, the game takes a step back from this, instead making Ryunosuke's main challenges Locked Room Mysteries, the historical absence of exonerating forensic evidence, and a Victorian jury that reacts poorly to some foreigner accusing respected members of London society and law enforcement. However, the duology is bookended by bench trials where the judges themselves are in on the crime, both of which are noted as more than a little suspicious by the accused and their counsel.
- From the backstory, we have the trial of Genshin Asogi, who was accused of being the notorious killer known as "The Professor". Unfortunately, his trial was little more than this, as Mael Stronghart did not want the public to know that Klint van Zieks, a highly-regarded prosecutor, had been the Professor. The prosecutor was the little brother of one of the victims, and the confession they used was coerced under the promise that they'd fake his execution and return him home to Japan. Interestingly enough, the victim did commit the crime that originally got him put on trial (killing Klint van Zieks), but not the others he was accused of and in an entirely different context.
- The third game of Sunrider has Kryska turn herself over to the Solar Alliance after helping the titular crew stop them from destroying Cera with a Planet Killer weapon following the Liberation Day Massacre. Icari protests that it will turn out like this, while Kryska believes they will listen since such an atrocity would never be accepted. Turns out both were right, with Icari being Right for the Wrong Reasons: Kryska ended up acquitted because the prosecution witness turned face and shifted the blame on the crew onboard the Machiavelli Actual by claiming that they were acting without orders. This contradicts how Grey outright ordered his flagship to launch the Tactical Paradox Warhead, with Kryska being ordered to silence Shields and Ava. The Lieutenant is enraged by how she not only obtained no punishment but her acquittal was out of politics than showing the truth.
- The trial at the end of Episode 5 of Umineko: When They Cry is this. Natsuhi is being accused of being the true culprit in the games by Erika and Bernkastel. Lambadelta, the Game Master and judge, happens to be in a relationship with Bernkastel. All of the evidence was rigged entirely in favor of showing Natsuhi as the culprit (without even considering that anyone else could have possibly done it), her defense is a Piece version of Beatrice who is far more limited than the real deal, and Battler isn't allowed to speak until the very end because he left the game early and only came back at the end. The real kicker is that when Battler is given a Red Truth that states that Natsuhi isn't the culprit and tries using it, it's denied outright by Dlanor because he doesn't have any evidence even in spite of the Red Truth being the absolute truth. Even after Natsuhi lost the trial, they were planning on proving that she was the culprit in every game up to now.
- GoAnimate:
- Justice in the world of the grounded videos is usually rendered by very partial judges and a Joker Jury who shrug off the defendant's side of the story (consisting in most cases of the troublemaker's family, teachers and friends, who are biased against them anyway) and give them cruel and unusual punishments, even for small fine-earning offenses such as littering. Often though, GoAnimate justice never gets to the courtroom as the patrolman (usually rendered as ill-tempered with fire coming out of his head) will render a life prison sentence for the accused right on the scene. Trillion-dollar fines the size of the national debt of several G8 nations combined are also assessed to parents, and they will be executed if payment is not immediately given.
- It can also apply that in the world of grounded videos, the justice system doesn't even bother with doing anything with offenders. While most of the illegal activities troublemakers get into would assure them juvenile detention (this isn't even considering any murders in the videos), cops will just give the child back to the parents and merely demand they give the child a long grounding period and allow any corporal punishment without law enforcement action they desire. Also, because of the continuing loop nature of grounding videos, children can go back to school and rack up multiple expulsions (an usually permanent end to a child's education given once) because actually enforcing them would mean a user would have to change their character sets with each new video.
- Subverted in this video, in which Boris accuses the court of being this trope, but it actually turns out to be a positive outcome for Caillou, as Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs big time for Boris and he is declared mentally insane for having a "grounding fetish", all while Boris attempts to paint Caillou as the most obnoxious brat in history, and himself as the only sane person in his family, even going as far as to try and ground the courtroom when the sentencing is handed down.