***SPOILERS*** You just don't quite know what to expect at the beginning of this Perry Mason,Raymond Burr, episode with a jury verdict being handed down within the first few minutes of it's running. Did I miss something by my watch being too slow or did I turn the TV on 55 minutes too late? No it's as I expected it to be the start of the episode, But the biggest shock is soon to come. Perry's client Janice Barton, Julie Adams, has not only been convicted of first degree murder but she's now sentenced to death in San Quentin's infamous gas chamber as her punishment! Knowing that there's far more to come since Perry Mason feels that the doomed and soon to be executed Janice is hiding something he, despite the verdict, goes on his own investigating Janice's Aunt Amnanda's murder. That in order not only to get her death sentence not only overturned but, with new evidence, thrown out altogether!
Highly complicated murder case with so many different bottles of medication being involved in it that you have to be a licensed pharmacist to figure what exactly is happening. It turns out that Aunt Amanda was given knock out drops to put her to sleep and then pushed off her mansion patio to her death. And it's Janice who gives Aunt Amanda her medication every evening that's arrested tried and convicted in her murder. What bothers Perry is that Janice had a air tight alibi in where she was when her Aunt Amanda was murdered but kept it from him in order to get herself convicted. Why did Janie do it and what are her reasons for doing it.
We soon find out that first Aunt Amanda was to leave her money to her immediate relatives which Janice was one of them. And if Janice is convicted in murdering her, like she was, the money would be split up four instead of five ways with her being disqualified, by murdering Aunt Amanda,in getting any of it. Perry deduces that it had to be one of the other four relatives who murdered Aunt Amanda and framed Janice for the crime. But what puzzles Perry more then anything else is why Janice is so freely taking the rap for it.
****SPOILERS*** The reasons for Janice's strange actions to get herself convicted are far more interesting as well as shocking then who murdered her Aunt Amanda! We also find out later that Janice's attempt to get herself convicted was for a better good that turned out to be a misguided reason on her part. The person or persons she was protecting didn't need any protecting at all! In Janice mistaking them for lovers which they weren't. Which had the person who in fact did murder Aunt Amanda come out of the shadows and fall into the trap that Perry Mason set for him or her!