****MAJOR SPOILERS*** You've got to see this Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, episode to see just how far it's script writers would go to get their star Perry Mason into a disastrous mess and have him, with their help, somehow get out of it and at the same time end up smelling like a rose. The whole story makes no sense at all with the alleged murderer Duane Jefferson, Alan Marshal, that Perry is defending making no attempt at all to save himself in the name of chivalry. That by not revealing the name the woman, who's married to someone else, he loves who can prove his innocent! Jefferson had been spotted by fisherman Jack Gilly, Hank Paterson, dumping diamond merchant George Baxter's, Jack Raine, body with a cement block tied around it into L.A Bay. It's that mysterious woman who can prove that at the time he was supposedly spotted by Gilly dumping Baxter's body into the drink that he was having drinks with her at a swanky L.A restaurant 10 miles away.
Perry who wasn't all that eager to take Jefferson's case soon realizes what a mistake he made in how his client acted, like he could't care less about his fate, at his trial. In that in Jefferson's getting convicted and facing the death penalty was about as uninteresting to him as the daily weather report on the planet Pluto. Is this guy crazy or does he want to be convicted of first degree murder just to see, before the lights are turned out on him, the inside of the infamous San Quentin gas chamber before he checked out for good! As we and Perry Mason soon find out Jefferson's actions are even more bizarre then we could have ever imagined. And they lead to Perry losing the case in defending Jefferson who, when found guilty and now possible execution, seem relived of the entire matter! Did Jefferson expect to get a reduced sentences by being found too incompetent or crazy to stand trial as well as being criminally insane? And thus end up being given a life stay in a local mental institution?
****SPOILERS*** In appealing his what seems like mentally unbalanced and suicidal client's guilty decision Perry finally realizes that he's been had all along by this Jefferson guy who, I can only assume from his actions, was trying to take the fall for Baxter's murder in order to have his partners in crime, in stealing $500,000.00 in diamonds off Baxter, to get away Scot-free. And all this was brought out by Perry Mason at the appeals trial by proving just who this Duane Jefferson really is and introducing the person played by Steve Carruthers who for some strange reason never utters a word or even grunt, during his few minutes on screen, whom Jefferson was impersonating!
Perry who wasn't all that eager to take Jefferson's case soon realizes what a mistake he made in how his client acted, like he could't care less about his fate, at his trial. In that in Jefferson's getting convicted and facing the death penalty was about as uninteresting to him as the daily weather report on the planet Pluto. Is this guy crazy or does he want to be convicted of first degree murder just to see, before the lights are turned out on him, the inside of the infamous San Quentin gas chamber before he checked out for good! As we and Perry Mason soon find out Jefferson's actions are even more bizarre then we could have ever imagined. And they lead to Perry losing the case in defending Jefferson who, when found guilty and now possible execution, seem relived of the entire matter! Did Jefferson expect to get a reduced sentences by being found too incompetent or crazy to stand trial as well as being criminally insane? And thus end up being given a life stay in a local mental institution?
****SPOILERS*** In appealing his what seems like mentally unbalanced and suicidal client's guilty decision Perry finally realizes that he's been had all along by this Jefferson guy who, I can only assume from his actions, was trying to take the fall for Baxter's murder in order to have his partners in crime, in stealing $500,000.00 in diamonds off Baxter, to get away Scot-free. And all this was brought out by Perry Mason at the appeals trial by proving just who this Duane Jefferson really is and introducing the person played by Steve Carruthers who for some strange reason never utters a word or even grunt, during his few minutes on screen, whom Jefferson was impersonating!