Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Fenced-In Woman

“Now, I can’t prove that irrefutably and beyond all reasonable doubt because I am but one man; I am an attorney; I do not have the organization of the police, I do not have their facilities, I do not have their numbers, I cannot as an individual count on the cooperation of the Las Vegas police.

“However, if I can’t prove it beyond all reasonable doubt, I can prove it to you to your satisfaction so that it will at least raise a reasonable doubt in your minds, and once I do that you must acquit the defendants. That is the law.

“You will notice in the exhibits in this case, exhibits of the briefcase containing certain latent fingerprints which the police say they were not able to identify. You will notice the photographic record of the fingerprints on the steel receptacle and on the lid of that receptacle that there are circled fingerprints which the police have determined, or at least they say they have determined, were the fingerprints of my clients.

“I am now going to ask you to take this fingerprint exhibit containing the known fingerprints of Nadine Palmer, fingerprints which have been testified to by the prosecution’s expert as being her fingerprints, take those exhibits to the jury room and there compare the recorded fingerprints of Nadine Palmer with the fingerprints shown on those photographs which the police have not been able to identify; fingerprints which they say were badly smudged on the one hand, or could not be identified on the other.

“You don’t need to be fingerprint experts to make this comparison. It is simply a question of looking for points of similarity. The police have shown you how this was done on the charts which were introduced showing the fingerprints of the defendants which were found on the lip of the tile — and of course the fingerprints of the defendants were found there. Why shouldn’t they be? This was a house that was owned by the two defendants. Vivian Carson owned one-half, Morley Eden owned the other. What would you do if you returned to your house and suddenly found a tile in the swimming pool was actually the lid of a hidden receptacle? Wouldn’t you wonder what had been put in there? Wouldn’t you go and bend over it and inspect it?

“The prosecution has claimed to show you that those were the fingerprints of the defendants on that receptacle, but they can’t show you when they were made .”

Mason paused dramatically. “They can’t show you whether they were made before the murder or afterward. They can’t show you whether they were made before Loring Carson came to that house or not. They can’t show you whether those fingerprints weren’t made the night before when the defendants first discovered the hiding place of those securities and then waited to bait a trap for Loring Carson. By that simple act when Loring Carson came to that receptacle he could be apprehended and brought into court and forced to account for this fraudulently concealed community property, and be judged guilty of contempt because of the concealment of assets.

“Let’s assume they tried that. Let’s assume that something went wrong with their plan and suddenly, and to their consternation, they found Loring Carson murdered.

“Now then, ladies and gentlemen, I have here twelve magnifying glasses. I am going to leave these with the clerk of the court. The Court will instruct you that you are entitled to take the exhibits in this case with you and consider them in your deliberations. All I ask you to do is to take these photographs and the undisputed fingerprints of the witness Nadine Palmer and—”

“Just a moment, just a moment,” Ormsby shouted. “I assign these remarks as misconduct. The jurors can’t constitute themselves as fingerprint experts. Fingerprinting is a science. It is something which only a competent observer can do.

“Now then, if there’s any question about it we’ll reopen the case and let the sheriff’s fingerprint expert demonstrate that the fingerprints which the police couldn’t identify are not identifiable; that they don’t have enough points of similarity to identify them with the prints of anyone. We can’t have these jurors going in and making a hit-and-miss comparison. Why, even a fingerprint expert can’t tell from only a limited number of points of similarity whether—”

“Now, just a minute,” Judge Fisk interrupted. “You’ve made your objection and your assignment of misconduct. The Court is inclined to think the situation is somewhat irregular, but the Court realizes that Mr. Mason is right, the jurors have the right to take these exhibits with them and I don’t know that we can place any limitation on what the jurors do with those exhibits.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Mason said, and he turned to the jurors and bowed. “You will remember that the prosecutor himself has told you in his opening argument that all you need to compare fingerprints is good eyesight and good judgment.

“The Court will instruct you that if, after you have studied all of the evidence, there is a reasonable doubt in your mind as to the guilt of the defendants, you must acquit. I thank you.”

Mason sat down.

Ormsby, on his feet, throwing caution and discretion to the winds, angry and enraged, shouted and bellowed at the jurors, pounded the table, pointed a finger of scorn at Mason, accused him of unprofessional practice, stated that he hadn’t called a fingerprint expert to show that the fingerprints which hadn’t been identified by the police were those of Nadine Palmer because he was afraid to.

Mason sat and smiled, first at Ormsby, then at the jurors. It was the smile of a man who can afford to be magnanimous in victory; a man who is watching the hysterical rantings of a person going down to defeat and knowing it.

The jurors were out two hours and a half, then returned a verdict finding both defendants not guilty.

Perry Mason and Della Street sat with Morley Eden and Vivian Carson in the lawyer’s private office.

“Now then,” Mason said, “there’s no one here except your lawyer, his secretary and the four walls of this office. You people are going to tell me what happened. You’ve been acquitted of the murder. You can never be prosecuted for it again.

“In order to get you acquitted I had to throw suspicion on the principal witness for the prosecution. That was a part of my legitimate duties as an attorney representing you. I had to create a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors.

“However, I am not certain that Nadine Palmer murdered Loring Carson, and by George, you’re going to help me find out who did. If she did, we’re going to have her prosecuted and if she didn’t we’re going to see that her name, which has been batted around plenty as it is, is not going to be besmirched any further.

“Now then, you two, start talking.”

Eden looked at Vivian Carson.

She hung her head. “You tell him,” she said.

“All right,” Eden said, “here’s what actually happened. And if you had known the facts, or if the police had found out the facts, we would have been convicted of first-degree murder without so much as a chance.”

“All right,” Mason said, “what happened?”

“From the first moment I saw Vivian Carson,” Morley Eden said, “I was strongly attracted to her.”

“It was mutual,” Vivian Carson said. “This is a horrible confession for a woman to make, but I trembled like a leaf when I was around him.”

Morley Eden put his arm around her, patted her shoulder.

“Go on,” Mason said, “we’ll start from there. It was love at first sight.”

“Well, almost at first sight,” Morley Eden said.

“In a bikini,” Mason commented dryly.

“All right,” she said, “I planned that deliberately. I wanted to arouse his attention. I wanted to get him — well, I wanted to get him to make some overt act so I could cite him for contempt and make him simply furious against Loring.”