Erle Gardner - The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe

“How soon will they come to trial?” Drake asked.

“Perhaps within a week,” Mason told him, “as soon as they can get Mrs. Breel into court in a wheel chair”

“I can dig up a lot in a week, Perry.”

Mason grinned with his lips. His eyes showed the strain under which he was working. “Get plenty ,” he said, “because I may need it.”

Larry Sampson, the deputy district attorney who was selected to try the case of the People vs. Sarah Breel, looked across his desk at the somewhat apprehensive features of Harry Diggers. “Now, all I want you to do,” Sampson said, “is to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but I don’t want you to lean over backwards. Do you understand?” Diggers nodded.

“Perry Mason is a clever lawyer. He has all sorts of tricks for breaking people down on cross-examination. You’ve got to watch out for him.” Again Diggers nodded.

“Now, I want you to remember one thing,” Larry Sampson went on. “When the district attorney of this county goes into court and asks for a verdict of first-degree murder, the defendant is guilty. The district attorney’s office would never ask for a first-degree verdict against a defendant about whose guilt there was the slightest doubt. Unfortunately, murderers are able to secure tricky criminal lawyers to represent them. The percentage of acquittals in this country is a national disgrace. Now, I want you to remember that when you get on the witness stand, you’re engaging in a public duty; you cease to be an individual, you become a witness in a murder trial; you become a person who is testifying to certain facts, and it becomes your duty to see that the jury understands those facts, and comprehends them. Now, we have a perfect case against Mrs. Breel. She’s committed cold-blooded deliberate murder. We can prove that she committed that murder, and bring her to justice, if you keep your head. If you get rattled on cross-examination, we can’t do it. Now, let me run over the facts, briefly, as I understand them. You were going along about twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, weren’t you?”

“Well, I wasn’t looking at the speedometer.”

“But,” Sampson said, “you were in a twenty-five-mile-an-hour zone. You’re a law-abiding citizen, aren’t you, Mr. Diggers?”

“Well, yes.”

“And you’re not a speeder?”

“No.”

“Therefore, you would assume that you were keeping within the legal speed limit, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, I guess it is.”

“All right, remember that,” Sampson said. “You don’t need to give the process of reasoning by which you arrive at that conclusion. Simply state positively that you were going not faster than twenty-five miles an hour, and stay with that statement. Now then, the defendant stepped out right in front of your headlights, didn’t she?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Diggers said positively.

“And before you could bring your car to a stop, you’d struck her. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And, as you struck her, she fell to the pavement?”

“I swerved my car, and pretty near missed her,” Diggers said. “I couldn’t quite make it. The edge of one of the fenders brushed against her, and she went down.”

“I understand,” Sampson said. “Now, let’s pay particular attention to what happened after that. You stopped your car almost instantly, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I’d started to stop, of course, before I hit her.”

“And you jumped out of your car, and ran around to where she was lying?”

“Yes.”

“And she was lying face down on the pavement?”

“Well, sort of on one side — more face down, I guess, than on the side.”

“She was carrying this bag when you struck her, wasn’t she?”

“Well... I guess...”

Larry Sampson interrupted positively, “Now that’s just the thing I want to warn you against, Mr. Diggers. I know that you’re an honest man, I know that you’re trying to be fair; I know that whenever you hesitate in answering a question, you’re trying to reconstruct in your mind the sequence of events but, a jury won’t understand that. The minute you start hesitating on the witness stand, the jury will say, ‘Here’s a man who doesn’t remember very clearly what happened.’ You see, Mr. Diggers, all witnesses that get on the stand know that they’re going to be subjected to cross-examination. Therefore, they think things out pretty carefully, so the attorney on the other side can’t make fools out of them. Jurors are accustomed to hearing witnesses speak right up. Now, you know whether she was carrying that bag. You don’t want Perry Mason to get you out in public and make you look ridiculous, do you?”

“No, I don’t, but I...”

“And you don’t want to appear in the position of being a careless driver?”

“I wasn’t careless,” Diggers said. “There was nothing any human being could do. She ran out right in front of the headlights and...”

“Yes, but you don’t want the public to think you didn’t see her when she ran out in front of the car, do you?”

“Why, of course not, I saw her. I saw her the minute she stepped off the curb, but it was too late to do anything about it.”

“And how far did she run from the curb before she got in front of your car?”

“I don’t know, four or five steps, probably.”

“And you saw her all of that time?”

“Yes.”

“You saw her face, you saw her hands, you saw her feet, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes, if you put it that way.”

“Now, she must have been carrying that bag in her hand. She certainly didn’t stand on the curb and throw it out in the middle of the road, did she?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then she must have been carrying it in her hand?”

“Yes, I guess that’s right.”

“Don’t guess,” Sampson said. “Of course, I know that’s just a figure of speech, Mr. Diggers, but you can see what would happen if you got on the witness stand and made a statement like that. Perry Mason would level his forehead at you, and say, ‘Oh, you’re guessing, are you?’ And then he’d have you on the defensive, and the first thing you knew everybody in the courtroom would be laughing at you.”

Diggers fidgeted uneasily, and said, “I don’t see why I just can’t tell what I saw, and let it go at that.”

“You can,” Sampson said. “That’s exactly what I want you to do, Mr. Diggers. But injustice to you, and injustice to me, and injustice to the people of this State, I want you to be sure to tell what you saw in such a clear-cut, positive manner, that you can’t be trapped, on cross-examination, into being made to appear foolish. Now, do you see what I’m driving at?”

Diggers nodded.

“Now, then,” Sampson went on, “if you saw her hands, you must have seen her bag, because she must have been carrying the bag in her hand. Perhaps you’ve never thought of it in exactly that way before. Perhaps you haven’t reconstructed the scene in all of its details, but after you leave the office I want you to go over the thing in your mind’s eye, so that you can see exactly what happened, in just the way it happened. Now, in regard to the contents of that bag — you had the ambulance driver check on the contents, didn’t you?”

“I certainly did,” Diggers said, “and it’s a good thing I did, too, with all those diamonds in the bag, she might have claimed there was a shortage she might have claimed; I not only hit her, but swiped a diamond or two...”

“Exactly,” Sampson said, “that’s just the point I’m going to make in front of the jury, that your action in having the inventory of that bag made, was the action of a careful man, it was the action of a thoughtful man; it was the action of a law-abiding citizen; it was the action of a man who doesn’t lose his head in an emergency. It shows that you were cool, that you were calm and collected; that you saw exactly what was taking place, and that your testimony is to be trusted... Now, you found the gun in the bag, didn’t you?”