#i think this was submitted anonymously which is why i'm getting credited somehow

[distort-opia]

So I was re-reading Devil's Advocate yesterday and I was thinking to myself like, man that Bruce sure has a convenient excuse to Do All That, if he knows that joker happens to be innocent of the specific crime he's being sentenced for. I've read your post about this story and I was wondering how you think Bruce would act if Joker ever were to be sentenced to death for a crime he 100% did commit. Perhaps he'd suddenly take issue with the concept of the death penalty in general? I'm curious to know if you have thoughts about this. (also anonymous bc of side blog, but this is badnewbie)

Hey, @badnewbie! A very good question, actually, and one I’ve more jokingly discussed as a fic premise in the past. It was kinda funny to imagine that Bruce would break Joker out of jail or something, but if I were to seriously contemplate his reaction to something like this happening... I do think you’re right, and that he’d most likely attempt something against the legal system itself.

My money is on him trying to overturn the assumption Joker is sane and in control of his actions. In Devil's Advocate, the prosecution manipulated Joker's ego in such a way that he took credit for all his previous crimes in front of the jury, and made it clear he was fully calculated and premeditated in doing them. Joker was found guilty, and could not plead the insanity defense anymore, because he couldn’t stand not being credited properly and didn’t shut up about it. He tries to go with the insanity defense later, but it's too late -- and after that, he does have an attempt to manipulate Batman into finding evidence towards his innocence. But then he gets carried away by the attention he's showered with, like a dumbass. On death row, Gotham's eyes are fully focused on him, and he likes it so much he refuses to even help Bruce in clearing his name.

So, if Joker got put on trial for crimes he did commit, and perhaps someone managed to manipulate him into taking credit for it, enough that he got found guilty... the first thing Bruce might do is try to challenge that somehow. Submit evidence towards Joker's insanity and/or inability to control himself, in a similar way he challenged Spectre's attempt at judging Joker for his crimes, in The Spectre (1991) #51:

He argues a very similar thing to Etrigan, in Batman (1940) #546:

And, even to Jim Gordon, in Batman: Cacophony #3:

If Bruce argued against Spectre and Etrigan that Joker is a sociopath, a kind of "unholy innocent" who is incapable of telling right from wrong, I feel that he might try something similar if Joker got sentenced to death in the context of a trial. He couldn't let freaking supernatural entities that judge the souls of sinners kill Joker, so I'm figuring the government is nowhere near as big of an obstacle.

However, to be entirely fair, I have to mention that I think it’s more complicated than that. I obviously got long in talking about why, so I’ll put the rest of my thoughts under the cut.

I think the above applies the most to Bruce in his earlier years. He had a lot more hope back then for Joker's rehabilitation, and for his villains in general. But now, after decades of fighting Joker, he’s more frequently referring to Joker as a force of nature, a curse, the personification of chaos. He’s got a hard time reminding himself that Joker is just a man, as Batman: Death of the Family extensively shows. In Batman: Endgame, he even tells Eric Border that Joker isn’t crazy, he’s “just evil”:

So, I do personally believe the timing would matter; the when of Joker being found guilty for a crime he did commit. If it's similar to Devil's Advocate, and the instances I mentioned -- which are all around his first decade as Batman -- I do think Bruce would try to save Joker's life with the argument of Joker's insanity. He might pull strings as Bruce Wayne to get Joker the legal help required to appeal the decision to put Joker on death row, and likely succeed. But if it happened in current continuity, with a much more jaded Bruce who’s given up on thinking of Joker as reedemable... trying to do this would be a lot more complicated, especially because of the pervasive presence of the Family. In the past he had excuses, even if flimsy, to save Joker’s life; and Barbara might’ve understood Bruce being law-abiding and not letting Joker die for a crime he didn’t commit, but it’d be a big reach to think she’d condone Bruce trying to stop Joker’s execution for a crime he did commit. And can you imagine how Jason would react? I’m pretty sure Bruce would have to do it in secret.

No matter how you look at it, Bruce doing something like that now would require so much hypocrisy and selfishness and lying to himself... because after all this time and the things Joker has proven himself capable of, he knows Joker can control himself. But there are things about Joker he cannot admit to, without admitting the same about himself. King alluded to this a lot in Batman/Catwoman (2021). The identities of “Batman” and “Joker” aren’t their pain given shape; they’re what eight-years-old Bruce and the unnamed man who fell into the vat of chemicals chose to make of themselves, to deal with the pain. Joker pretty much spells it out in Batman: The Killing Joke too, that he took the emergency exit of madness -- that he consciously did so.

But that isn’t how it works for most people. You don’t choose your response to trauma, you don’t choose mental illness. In Selina’s own words, in #9:

But Joker himself cannot believe that... and neither can Bruce. Neither of them can accept they have a choice. So they both believe it about the other, too; Joker thinks the only valuable thing about Bruce is Batman, and Bruce thinks there’s nothing more to Joker other than evil. They reject the other’s humanity and in the process reinforce and validate each other’s delusions. They help the other believe what they want to believe of themselves.

This is a whole other can of worms though, and a big paranthesis. What I mean by it is that Bruce’s capacity to rationalize his own and Joker’s behavior has been heavily tested by the passing years; and that I would much more prefer a story with an older Bruce having to deal with the reality of Joker lawfully sentenced to death. It’d be so difficult for him, because choosing to save Joker’s life would have to come with some heavy admissions and revelations on his part -- about himself, and about his feelings regarding Joker.

If he does choose to save him, that is. I can’t help but be reminded of the short story The Last Smile from The Joker’s 80th Anniversary comic. Joker recounts his one nightmare to Harley, and it’s literally the scenario we’re discussing: the insanity plea stops working and Joker is in Blackgate, on death row. At no point does he even mention Batman trying to stop it, or attempting to save him, so clearly it doesn’t occur to him Bruce would try. Just like in Devil’s Advocate, Joker is rejoicing in the attention he’s getting. He’s seeing it as one last gag, an amazing exit to his own show, because Gotham condemning him to death will always be a form of winning for him. Either Batman or Gotham killing him is proving Joker’s point, so why would he try to stop it from happening? He delights in the way he’s driven Gotham to be just as hateful and monstrous as him. The reason why the dream is a nightmare, is only its ending:

Joker is pleasantly surprised that Batman would even show up... and the worst thing he can imagine is Batman laughing. Laughing as he dies. Otherwise, it’s clear Joker himself doesn’t believe Batman would do anything to intervene if he rightfully got the death penalty, and this does seem to indicate he wouldn’t even try to get Bruce on his side or save himself.

And perhaps Joker is right; perhaps in the absence of any excuse to hide behind, Bruce would have to let Joker die. Bruce needs even the flimsiest of justifications to act on -- this stands true for all the other times he’s saved Joker’s life, too. But tragically enough, Joker would likely not give Bruce a reason to save him... I can entirely see Bruce visiting him in prison and trying to get anything out of him that could stand as a reason for not letting him die, and not getting it. Bruce would then have two choices: allowing for it to happen, or facing the fact he personally wants Joker to live, and save him for his own selfish reasons. Bruce would have to admit he cares and do something very drastic that’d inevitably alienate him from so many of his friends and Family members... which is a tall order for his level of repression.

To conclude and not make this even longer, I think it’d depend a lot on the story being told. There’s a younger, more hopeful version of Bruce who’d more eagerly believe his own justifications when trying to save Joker’s life from the electric chair, despite his more seflish, real motivations. But an older version of him would undergo some very heavy conflict... and the tragic reality is that, in the absence of the narrative or Joker himself giving Bruce a reason to save him, it’s more likely he’d let Joker die. (And it’d haunt him.)

But anyway, thank you for the ask, and I hope you enjoyed the ramblings! This is all speculation since it’s clearly hard to tell what Bruce would do, so I’d love to hear your thoughts as well.

[dirtypolygonconfessions]

pizza_suplex pondering his pizza_orb

[ID: a painting of a wizard with a lengthy beard sitting at a table. The wizard’s face has been edited to be Patrick’s face. On the table in front of him is a glowing pizza in place of a crystal ball. /END ID]