Perry Mason - part 2

In 2016 I posted an article entitled "Perry Mason - part 1".  Here's a link to it:   http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2014/10/perry-mason-part-1.html.  In it I argued that the "Perry Mason" stories are second only in their influence to the "Sherlock Holmes" stories.  I think that statement still stands up.  I also argued that, while the Mason stories did a lot of good, they also did a lot of harm.

For this post I want to expand on that latter conclusion, that they did a lot of harm.  I will do so by examining a single Mason story in some detail.  I have chosen "The Case of the Counterfeit Eye".  The story was published in 1935, two years after Erle Stanley Gardner published his first Mason story, and well before Mason reached the peak of his popularity and influence.  It is also the first story to feature District Attorney Hamilton Burger, Mason's most frequent courtroom adversary.

I am going to start by laying out a great deal of the plot and highlighting many of Mason's actions.  I will then analyze these actions and indicate why I think this has caused a lot of harm.  Here goes.

***** Start of the Summary of "The Case of the Counterfeit Eye"

A new client, Peter Brunold, appears in the office of Los Angeles based lawyer Perry Mason.  He has a very fishy sounding story.  He owns a set of high-quality glass eyes.  One of them has been replaced by a cheap knockoff.  He is worried that the theft will end up wrongly involving him in a crime.  This is because the high-quality eye can be traced back to him.

He pays Mason a retainer of $1,500.  In 1935 that represents the annual salary of an ordinary person, so it would be equivalent to $50,000 in today’s money.  He has that much on his person in cash.

Perry offers to fix his problem by introducing two or more low quality glass eyes into the investigation in such a way as to confuse things and mislead the police.  In other words, he offers to interfere with a legitimate police investigation.

In service of that he instructs Paul Drake, owner of the Drake Detective Agency, and for the entire series, Mason’s “go to” guy for investigative work and much else, to hire a hotel room under a false name and buy some cheap glass eyes in a manner that can’t be traced back to either Drake or Mason.  Drake does so.

Brother and sister Harry and Bertha McLane next enter Mason’s office requesting his assistance.  Their request at first seems completely unrelated but, as is common in Mason books, everything will end up all connected together by the end.  They (they often operate as a tag team) request Mason’s assistance.  They accuse another person, who we later learn is Hartley Basset, of blackmail, extortion, usury, and financing a smuggling operation.  We later learn that the accusations are true.

Harry then confesses to the embezzlement of over $3,000 (we later learn the exact amount is just under $4,000) from Hartley (later murder victim number one).  Harry also implicitly admits to gambling, then completely illegal.  (This was before Las Vegas, for instance.)

Mason initially advises them to go to the authorities but changes his mind and decides “I’m going out . . . and compound a felony”.

Later Silvia Basset (wife of Hartley) asks Mason to assist her in committing bigamy.  She also asks for help in suborning perjury in furtherance of the bigamy scheme.

Along the way Mason is threatened with assault, I believe by Dick Basset, son of Sylvia (but not by Hartley).

Still later Sylvia tells Mason over the phone that someone has been assaulted in her house.  When that fails to get Mason to come running, she says that a murder is about to take place.  If not stopped, Dick will murder Hartley.  Mason comes running.

Mason breaks many traffic laws on the way to her house.

Upon his arrival a “38” revolver is brandished.  The gun turns out to be unloaded but shells, including one that has been fired, are produced.  Mason confiscates the gun and ammunition, but Sylvia eventually ends up with them.

The fact of the assault is confirmed.  Hazel Fenwick, secretly the wife of Dick, has been assaulted by a “person unknown”.  Mason phones the police asking them to send some officers.  He identifies himself as “Richard Basset”, supposedly in an effort to speed up their response.

Before the police arrive the death of Hartley is discovered.  There are indications that it is a suicide, but we later learn otherwise.  There is a “confession” in support of the suicide hypothesis.  But it is the usual (in murder mysteries, at least) typewritten and unsigned confession.

Subsequent investigation turns up a second gun which has also been fired.  Additionally, it turns out that Hartley is wearing a third gun, which has not been fired.

Fenwick indicates that the man who assaulted her was wearing a hastily constructed carbon paper mask.  The mask had two eyeholes and one of the eyeholes showed a socket rather than an eye.  She was also able to tear the mask away, so she got a good look at her assailant, but the assailant did not get a good look at her.

Mason instructs Fenwick, a material witness, to leave the scene of the crime using his car and to go to his office.  He arranges for Della Street, his personal secretary throughout the entire series, to be waiting there for her.  We subsequently learn Fenwick never arrived.

Mason is present when Sylvia plants the first gun, now loaded, at the scene of the crime.

Mason then instructs Sylvia to lie to the police in a scheme to thwart their efforts to interview her.

Mason refuses to disclose the name of his client (Brunold) on the theory that it is not required in a case where the only crime is assault.

When the police determine that Hartley was murdered, Mason then discloses that he sent Fenwick to his office.

Drake finds out that Sylvia is staying in a specific room at a specific hotel under a specific fake name.

They both go there but determine that the police have an extensive surveillance operation in place.  They find a way to talk to Sylvia anyway.  The police eventually identify Mason.  But Mason and Drake, using a variety of schemes, get away cleanly.  Part of this process involves Drake picking the lock of a hotel room.

Drake’s subsequent investigation of Fenwick determines that she is actually a “black widow” who marries then murders men.  He also determines a number of the names she has used in the past.

Mason instructs Drake to hire a ringer to impersonate Fenwick.  She must be “hungry enough so she won’t argue” with whatever Mason asks of her.  This might include illegal activities, but she is actually asked only to do legal things.  Mason never makes it clear to her that she will only be asked to do legal but perhaps sketchy things.  She agrees before knowing exactly what she will be asked to do and ultimately holds up her end of the deal.

The ringer is instructed to fly to Reno and register under her real name.  If asked, she is instructed to deny being any of the aliases Drake has uncovered for Fenwick.  But she is instructed to “accept service” of divorce papers intended for Fenwick and listing a number of her aliases.  She is also instructed to “clam up” under police and press questioning and to fight extradition from Nevada to California.

Drake is also told to slip a “newspaper friend” $50 to take some pictures.  The photographer is instructed to misrepresent who he is working for and say the pictures are for a newspaper story.  The pictures are to be taken of a specific group of people in a very specific way.

Mason disguises the actual reason for the pictures to everyone.  He wants to determine if any of the photographed people has a glass eye.  Mason’s primary client, Brunold, is missing an eye.  Brunold’s missing glass eye was found clutched in the hand of the murdered Hartley.

Harry calls Mason and discloses that he is staying in a specific room of a specific hotel under a specific fake name.  Harry orders Mason to come, which he does.  There he finds Harry murdered.

Mason plants one of the glass eyes Drake procured earlier in Harry’s dead hand.  He then determines that the police have another surveillance operation under way.  So, he engages in an elaborate ruse so that he appears to have a legitimate reason to be at the hotel.  The ruse is also supposed to fool the police into believing he didn’t get to the murder scene first.  The ruse succeeds so the police think they got to the murder scene before Mason did.

We then skip forward to the preliminary court hearing.  Mason has arranged for the authorities to catch up with his Fenwick ringer just as the court proceedings are reaching a critical stage.  Drake serves the divorce papers on her in Reno, but he thinks he has screwed up because the press and the authorities are lying in wait when he gets to her hotel room.  He also appears to not recognize the ringer he found in the first place.  (My best guess is that Drake’s failure to recognize her is just a continuity mistake on Gardner’s part.)

Burger accuses Mason of witness tampering and other unprofessional and perhaps illegal behavior.  For instance, Mason has repeatedly instructed his fake Fenwick to “take the fifth”, which she does.  Burger serves a subpoena to Mason in open court in the middle of the preliminary hearing on Harley’s murder.  The subpoena directs Mason to appear before a Grand Jury and explain himself.  Of course, things never get that far because everything is straightened out before the Grand Jury hearing can even be scheduled.

But this behavior gives Mason an opening to discourse in open court on his theory of the case.  This permits him to get critical material introduced into the record that he might not otherwise have been able to.

A short time later in the presiding Judge’s quarters Mason is able to name the real murderer, James Overton.  He has a military and police background and was hired by Hartley ostensibly as the chauffeur.  He was actually there to spy on Hartley’s wife.  In the course of his spying he learned and did things he shouldn’t have.  He also has a glass eye.

He is killed in a shootout as he is trying to flee.

Overton was involved with Harry in the embezzlement scheme.  So, all three bad guys, Hartley, Harry, and Overton end up dead.  Justice triumphs and everything ends up tied up neatly into a bow.

***** End of the Summary of "The Case of the Counterfeit Eye"

I will not pretend this covers every development in the book.  But it gives you enough to loosely follow the story.  And it includes all of the Mason activities I find problematic.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Mason has a near-infallible lie detector.  This gets a lot of use in this (and pretty much all the other) Mason stories.  The story starts with his primary client telling what is obviously a lie.  Mason must separate truth from fiction.  Why would he even want such a client (other than the obvious reason that he is rich and is willing to pay Mason well)?

And what's Mason's proposed solution?  To interfere with a legitimate investigation by planting false evidence.  And he brings Drake onboard as an accomplice.

The second set of clients (the McLane siblings) fall into a similar category.   They are up front about the fact that they want assistance in getting away with various crimes.  And along the way they indicate that a third party, Hartley the soon to be murder victim, is up to his neck in criminality.  And Mason's response is to promise to compound a felony.  Compounding a felony is a crime and constitutes the highest level of unethical behavior by a lawyer.

And then there is the conflict of interest.  Mason originally agrees to represent Brunold.  Then he agrees to undertake legal duties for the McLanes, one of which is both a bad guy and gets murdered.  But conveniently by this time Mason mostly confines himself to being in the sister's corner.  And Mason is providing legal assistance to Sylvia and, at least to a modest extent, to Fenwick,  Fenwick is eventually exposed as a "black widow" and a murderer.  Fortunately (?), she doesn't murder any of the characters in this book.

Will the crimes ever cease?  Nope!  Traffic laws are broken.  Since no one was harmed and Mason wasn't caught I suppose they don't count.  But Mason is an accessory to the planting of evidence.  He spirits a material witness away from the authorities.  He councils someone to lie when being questioned.  He is an accomplice to Drake using lock picks to "break and enter" a hotel room.  He personally plants evidence at the scene of a crime after going to elaborate efforts to be in a position to do so.  Specifically, he has Drake use deception to procure a cheap glass eye.

He seeks out and hires a woman so desperate she is willing to engage in unspecified illegal behavior.  The fact that ultimately she does not have to do anything illegal doesn't mitigate the fact that Mason went out of his way to find someone so desperate that she was willing to do something illegal simply for the promise of a generous payoff.  It was the middle of the Great Depression and lots of people were truly desperate.  Mason has no compunction about taking advantage of this.

Everybody lies.  Everybody schemes.  No one seems to feel they are bound by the laws or the canons of ethics, judicial or otherwise.  Everyone from a desperate woman to a newspaper photographer can be bought.  In other Mason stories cops are "tipped" $20 for a favor and expensive cigars are delivered to the Office of the District Attorney in exchange for other favors.

Mason happily plays in this "law of the jungle" world.  He is happy to do what it takes to get his client off.  The final justification is that his client is innocent.  The problem is that this kind of behavior on one side justifies similar behavior on the other side.

And in reading this or other Mason books it is startlingly obvious that all this activity takes place in a small club whose members consist of the entitled, their associates, and their employees.  Mason couldn't do what he does if he didn't have a lot of money to throw around.  The Fenwick ringer is paid $500, a fantastic amount of money at the time.  Drake at one time says he has 20 operatives investigating something Mason is interested in.  People fly back and forth to Reno, on one occasion in a chartered plane that is the "fastest one available".  Air travel at that time was extremely expensive.  And so it goes.

This can only happen if there is a small club of the rich and powerful who play by one set of rules while everyone else plays by different rules.  Mason calls the cops and expects them to show up quickly, which they do.  Why?  Because he is calling from a rich man's house.  The rich man employs a maid, secretary, and chauffeur that we know of.  There are likely three or four full time staff around that fail to make an appearance.  This is not "lifestyles of average folk".  At this time most people didn't even own a car.  Della Street, Mason's private secretary owns a fur coat but no car.

Only rich (and white) people have the time and resources with which to engage in as much bad behavior as we see on display here.  One "rich adjacent" person manages to run up gambling debts amounting to almost $4,000.  As I commented above, at the time this was roughly three times the annual salary of an ordinary person.  (One person in the story is earning $70 per month and another person is earning $100 per month.)

All of Mason's actions are ultimately justified because his client actually is innocent and, therefore, being unjustly accused.  That, and because Mason ultimately does expose what truly happened and who is truly guilty.  And if in the real world everybody was rich and the government had nearly unlimited resources with which to investigate each crime (in this story two different surveillance operations are mounted with teams that in each case amounted to several people) then the kinds of rules on display here might possibly be appropriate.

But, as I indicated previously, that is rarely the case in the real world.  In reality both sides are severely resource constrained.  The cops would like to investigate more crimes and more thoroughly investigate the crimes they do investigate.  The same is true of District Attorney's offices.  They would like to throw more resources at more cases but they have a finite budget.  So in both cases priorities are imposed that mean many cases are not investigated or are only superficially investigated.  And most District Attorney's offices tend to focus on "slam dunk" cases while only occasionally taking on a complicated high profile case that might not be a slam dunk.

And the practical result is that complicated cases get short shrift.  A potential defendant can make any case look complicated if he has the power and/or wealth to throw a lot of resources at it.  So poor people get prosecuted because they don't have the resources to put up a serious fight.  They may not even have bail money or money to pay traffic tickets on time.

Going after some poor schmuck who ran into a piece of bad luck is easy.  Going after a rich SOB who will "fight you all the way to the Supreme Court" only rarely happens.  It doesn't matter that the poor person's crime may amount to nothing and the rich person's crime may have horrific consequences.

This plays out all the time.  People are still routinely jailed over small amounts of pot.  Even in jurisdictions like the one I live in(Seattle) where pot is now legal, poor people are hassled for things like broken tail lights or parking in the wrong place or whatever.  They committed the crime.

But pretty much no one involved in the Mortgage meltdown of several years ago went to jail.  Yet banks foreclosed on mortgagors who were actually current on their payments.  People were sold mortgages with terrible terms when they qualified for ones with much better terms.  Bank fraud was uncovered.  Junk securities were sold as investment grade when they weren't.  And on and on and on.  These crimes had awful consequences.  But they were complicated and the cases were hard to win.  The result in almost all cases was a decision to not bother prosecuting.

People like Michael Cohen make a very good living by using pit bull tactics against people of lesser means.  The fact that people like Cohen routinely engage in illegal or unethical behavior normally results in no investigation and almost certainly in no sanctions.  The rich and powerful look out for the rich and powerful.  The rest of us are on our own.

And Mason definitely operated in the world of the rich and powerful.  And he popularized many of the pit bull tactics that people like Michael Cohen used several generations later.  In Mason's world these tactics were used against other members of the club.  In the real world that never happens.  People like Cohen and the people who employ people like Cohen don't go after other people like themselves.  They go after people who are not sufficiently resourced to fight back.  They know they will almost always win because the system is rigged to make sure they almost always win.

But if you want to see a Mason-like fight that is happening in the real world I do have a suggestion for you.  Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and multibillionaire, is going after the extremely well connected and very powerful millionaire David Pecker and the company he runs, AMI.  Bezos has The Washington Post in his corner.  Pecker has The National Inquirer in his corner.  Now that's a contest where the fighters are much more evenly matched.