Was Fidelius Charm, Questions about the wizengamot/Crouch Trial/Fudge

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 90897

Carol:
<snip> Another thought. If he'd had a trial, would the chains on 
that chair have bound him as they did the Lestranges and Barty Crouch,
Jr.? The chair seems to sense magically whether a person is guilty or
not, rather like the Sorting Hat seeing into students' minds to
determine which house they belong in based on their thoughts or
feelings and memories.
Maybe that's why Crouch, Sr. was so certain that his son was
guilty--because he really was and the behavior of the chair proved 
it.
If Sirius had sat in that chair and it hadn't bound him, the
Wizengamot might not have needed Priori Incantatem or witnesses or
anything else. The chair would have known that he was innocent and
Crouch would have had to drop the charges--or at least conduct an
investigation, including a cross-examination using good old
veritaserum. Given all the magical methods of accessing a person's
memory magically, from legilmency to Pensieves, there's really no
excuse for sending an innocent witch or wizard to prison.
 
LizVega:
> 
> What an interesting idea! About the chair being able to distinguish 
> between guilty and innocent suspects! I have two questions: Does 
> anyone remember if it's mentioned that ALL of the people brought in 
> with Bella and Crouch, jr. were magically bound by the chairs? I'm 
> still speculating about the 'man brought in who stared blankly'- I 
> wonder if he wasn't under the Imperius Curse. 

Carol:
That man was one of the Lestranges, either Bellatrix's husband,
Rodolphus, or his brother, Rabastan. I'm not sure why I think it's
Rabastan, but in any case, there's no question of his guilt. He
escapes from Azkaban and participates in the DoM raid along with his
sister-in-law and brother. Sirius identifies him in somewhere in OoP,
(I can find the page reference if you want it), and Lucius Malfoy
calls both Rodolphus and Rabastan by their first names in the DoM
scene, probably to distinguish them from one another.

As for the chains, they bind Karkaroff (GoF Am. ed. 587) and they
clink ominously as Ludo Bagman sits down but don't bind him (GoF
591-92) Oddly, the scene of the Lestrange/Crouch trial is so vaguely
depicted that it's hard to tell whether the chains bind the prisoners
or not. They're led to "the chairs with chained arms," but it appears
to be the chairs, not the prisoners, whose "arms" are chained, and
Bellatrix "sits in the chained chair as if it were a throne," but
there's no indication that she herself is chained (594). The adults
stand up when they're sentenced, which again seems to suggest that
they're not chained (or maybe the chains fall away?)(595). Yet there's
a clear reference on the same page to "the boy in chains," which
indicates the opposite--that he, at least, is chained--and if the boy
is chained, wouldn't the older prisoners be chained as well,
especially given the heinous crime they're charged with? Maybe at that
point, since this is the last of the trial scenes, JKR just expects us
to understand that the prisoners chained. Bellatrix's guilt is obvious
in the scene; the boy's isn't. But we find out from his subsequent
conduct as Crouch!Moody that he was indeed a die-hard Death Eater, and
it seems that the chair knew that. If so, all his screaming and
pleading would have been for nothing if the jury knew it, too, based
on earlier testimony and the action of the chair.

Anyway, even if I'm wrong about the chained chairs sensing guilt
rather than being at the command of the judge to bind or not bind the
prisoner, I still think that with Priori Incantatem, veritaserum,
Legilimency, and Pensieves, the WW should be able to establish guilt
or innocence a lot more accurately and efficiently than they evidently do.

Carol, who wishes the Lestrange/Crouch trial weren't so ambigously
depicted