The creator of Perry Mason's Edgar Award-winning account of
miscarriages of justice, wrongful convictions, legal battles, and
landmark reversals.
In 1945, Erle Stanley Gardner, noted attorney and author of the popular
Perry Mason mysteries, was contacted by an overwhelmed California public
defender who believed his doomed client was innocent. William Marvin
Lindley had been convicted of the rape and murder of a young girl along
the banks of the Yuba River, and was awaiting execution at San Quentin.
After reviewing the case, Gardner agreed to help--it seemed the fate of
the "Red-Headed Killer" hinged on the testimony of a colorblind witness.
Gardner's intervention sparked the Court of Last Resort. The Innocence
Project of its day, this ambitious and ultimately successful undertaking
was devoted to investigating, reviewing, and reversing wrongful
convictions owing to poor legal representation, prosecutorial abuses,
biased police activity, bench corruption, unreliable witnesses, and
careless forensic-evidence testimony. The crimes: rape, murder,
kidnapping, and manslaughter. The prisoners: underprivileged and
vulnerable men wrongly convicted and condemned to life sentences or
death row with only one hope--the devotion of Erle Stanley Gardner and
the Court of Last Resort.
Featuring Gardner's most damning cases of injustice from across the
country, The Court of Last Resort won the Edgar Award for Best Fact
Crime. Originating as a monthly column in Argosy magazine, it was
produced as a dramatized court TV show for NBC.
