Perry Mason: novels, a radio show, the TV series that presented 271 episodes between September, 1957 and May, 1966. The show was syndicated in fifty countries, can still be seen in reruns.

Week after week, lawyer Perry Mason's clients were accused of murder or other vile crimes and looked guilty. Mason believed his client to be innocent and proved it just before the final commercial, often eliciting a confession from the true culprit. His clients were really innocent: no clever tricks where the guilty party is found not guilty on a technicality and goes off to Acapulco or the Riviera. When Perry Mason was present the innocent went free and the guilty were convicted. Justice.

Years ago it occurred to me that without Perry Mason for the defense the innocent person would unquestionably have been convicted. Prosecutor Hamilton Burger would have sent him or her to jail without remorse, maybe even believing the unfortunate person guilty.

If you have to retain Perry Mason to stay out of jail, the system is in trouble.

Such thoughts brought on a recurring (non-clinical) depression and a profound pessimism about the U.S. criminal justice system.

In United States judicial tradition, innocence is supposed to be assumed until guilt is proven; this is based, among other things, on the clause in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, "No person shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." But in a 1999 nationwide survey on the U. S. Justice system, the American Bar Association revealed that two thirds of the people interviewed believe an American citizen accused of a crime bears the burden of proof of innocence. Two-thirds! They watched Perry Mason, why don't they understand?

Or do they, indeed, understand?

Humanitarianists agree with law&orderists that the system is in bad shape, different though their respective takes on the matter may be. Each blames the other for the alleged calamity. The former cry out that innocent persons are convicted; the latter, that guilty persons go free or are insufficiently punished. Both complaints may well be justified.

The routine plea bargain. The immunity from prosecution--one guilty guy agrees to rat out another guilty guy; the former goes home or to wherever he pleases or gets a lighter sentence, the latter to the slammer and perhaps to the chair. The star millionaire defense lawyer who always wins. The hungry prosecutor on the way up who will do anything to get a conviction. The jailhouse snitch. The exculpatory evidence not shared with the defense. The corrupt judge. Planted drugs, planted guns. Being Black, Hispanic, Native American, Muslim. The inept defense--a public defender in Texas slept through his client's trial and the client was convicted of murder. The media circus. The technicality that frees the murderer. The country club prison for convicted CEOs, CFOs and other wealthy criminals. The guilty CEOs and CFOs who are unconvicted because unarrested, uncharged and unindicted.

The innocent people convicted of crimes.

From 1973 to 2009, 133 death row prisoners were proved innocent and released.  God knows how many people jailed for lesser offenses are innocent of the crime they were convicted of. And what about those at whose cases nobody was able or willing to throw money? The freed innocent people reported in the news logically cannot be the only innocent people in prison; they are only the fortunate ones. "Fortunate" is not an altogether appropriate word, if you think about it.

There's more to it than the imprisonment of innocents, troubling as that surely is. Why are there so many people in prison? "As of June 30, 2008, state and federal correctional authorities had jurisdiction or legal authority over 1,610,584 prisoners. Additionally, 785,556 inmates were held in custody in local jails... over 2.3 million inmates, or one in every 131 U.S. residents [0.76%], were held in custody in state or federal prisons or in local jails, regardless of sentence length or conviction status... One in 21 black males [4.76%!] was incarcerated at midyear 2008, compared to one in 138 white males. At midyear 2008, black males (846,000) outnumbered white males (712,500) and Hispanic males (427,000) among inmates in prisons and jails. About 37 percent of all male inmates at midyear 2008 were black...."

A few years ago, just when the system seemed to be bottoming out, we lost Communism, and Terrorism became the ism that persons regarded as unsatisfactory are accused of practicing, supporting, funding, or being soft on. Politicians are terrified they will not seem to be sufficiently against it. The evidence, if any, against persons accused of terrorism is often classified and can't be divulged, not even to the accused or his or her lawyers, if any. Middle Easterners, especially Muslims, and minorities are particularly good targets. (On the other hand, selected accused terrorists are treated differently. Think for example of Luis Posada Carriles.) People have disappeared--no conviction, no arraignment, no lawyer, no trial, no rights, indefinite incarceration without being charged. Recent legislation seems to extend these dangers to U.S. citizens.

Perry Mason, where are you when we need you?

But Perry is happy not to exist in the allegedly real world, where he would have to take part in a system he sees as an incompetently written series loosely based on stories by Franz Kafka, so unsatisfactory as entertainment and so lacking in redeeming social value that it can't possibly continue in prime time.