The Artful Jurist

Longtime character actor Harry Morgan died on December 7th, and that passing marks the end of a career that included some iconic roles -- among them, half of the all-business, "just the facts" duo who patroled the 1960s' TV series, Dragnet.  Mr. Morgan was droll Officer Bill Gannon to Jack Webb's deadpan Sgt. Joe Friday.

Although the show might seem more than a bit laconic by contemporary cop show standards, it was the TV show that helped introduce many Americans to the Miranda rights ("You have the right to remain silent."), something that was established only a year before the show began in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Miranda v. Arizona.  Mr. Morgan and Mr. Webb did their share of reciting those rights to the "perps" they arrested.

Mr. Morgan's career (which he began under the name Henry Morgan) also included a number of other highly regarded projects that involved the law, among them, The Ox-bow Incident (about the dangers of lynch mob justice), High Noon (about the failures of the judicial system and society's sometimes willingness to support the people charged with enforcing the law), and Inherit the Wind (in which Mr. Morgan played the judge in a story based on the famed Scopes Monkey Trial of the 1920s).