...Perry Mason finally loses a murder case to prosecutor Hamilton Burger.
You never see the trial. The episode opens after the guilty verdict as the penalty phase is being debated by the jury. And then the jury returns with its decision - the penalty will be death. As Perry's team gathers in a local bar to discuss what to do next, Perry is seemingly nonplussed as always, even as Della and Paul say that perhaps, since defendant Janice Barton lied about where she was at the time of the murder and got caught in that lie, she really is guilty. But Perry remains convinced of her innocence as he goes over what happened at the trial with a fine-tooth comb. I said that Perry is seemingly unplussed, but you can tell that inside that this case is eating at him.
The motive in the defendant's case was a half a million dollar (about five million dollars in 2023) inheritance from the victim. People who would have had a motive to frame the defendant - the other relatives of the deceased who would inherit in her place.
I'm not going to say much more about the case than I have. There are some interesting themes of the 60s going on here. For example, nine years before the Supreme Court temporarily overturns the death penalty at least partially because by 1972 it had become a freak occurrence, you see the cast echo the exact same sentiment - that it is unlikely that the condemned will actually ever go to the gas chamber. Also, there is an inconvenient pregnancy thrown into all of this. But the pregnancy never results in a baby. What happened to that pregnancy? Or can the show dare say what probably happened ten years before the Roe V Wade decision? Finally, some left over ideas that die hard with a very subtle message about the perceived frame of mind of gay persons. Those ideas will die hard over the next thirty years.
Well plotted, well acted by the entire cast, with some interesting and timely topics, this has to be among the top episodes of this stellar show.