Larry Sampson scented a trap. One didn’t take chances with Perry Mason. Somehow he felt that if he departed from the orderly course of routine trial work, he’d find himself sailing uncharted seas, with dangerous reefs ahead. “No,” he said, “I wouldn’t care to make that stipulation.” Then suddenly realizing that to the ears of the prospective jurors this sounded as though he failed to share Mason’s opinion as to their integrity and fairness, he raised his voice and said, “Not that I doubt the intelligence or honesty of any of these men or women, but I want to find out... that is, I mean, I want to question them.”
Mason turned to face the jury impanelment. “Go ahead and question,” he said. “That’s your privilege. I won’t ask any questions.”
Mason sat down, and then, for the first time since the judge had taken the bench, turned to confer with Mrs. Breel. “Do you,” Mason asked, “feel as though the evidence might recall what happened to your mind?”
“My mind is a blank,” she said, “from Monday noon until I regained consciousness in the hospital.”
The lawyer said, “This is going to be an ordeal. You’ll have to steel yourself to the idea of having the district attorney’s office sketch you as a scheming criminal. There’ll be sarcasm, shouting, a lot of sneering references to your loss of memory.”
She smiled serenely. “I can take it,” she said.
The clerk called the names of twelve jurors. Sampson advised the prospective jurors of the nature of the case. The judge asked a few routine questions, then turned to the attorneys. “Proceed, gentlemen, with such questions as you have touching upon the Qualifications of prospective jurors.”
Mason, on his feet, scrutinized the jurors as though searching for something in each face. Then he smiled and said, “Your Honor, the defendant has no questions to ask of these jurors. We have no challenges for cause.”
Sampson sighed and settled down to an examination of the jurors, realizing with each question that he had been forced into a position of seeming to distrust these men and women. Yet, once having embarked upon such a policy, he dared not change. And, since the defense had given him no lead by its questions, he was forced to plug along, doggedly determined to bring out the facts, whether they knew the defendant or counsel for the defendant, whether they had read of the facts, or purported facts, in the newspapers, whether they had formed or expressed any opinion. Once, to his embarrassment, he disclosed that one of the jurors, having read the newspapers, had concluded Mrs. Breel was guilty. But that juror, meeting Perry Mason’s disarming smile, promptly asserted that he could and would lay aside such opinion if he was actually sworn to act as a juror, and would try the case solely and impartially upon the evidence introduced.
Sampson knew, of course, that Perry Mason would excuse this juror on a peremptory challenge, and the other members of the panel would understand the exercise of that challenge. But Sampson felt, somehow, as though he were doing Mason’s work for him.