Public defender Matthews (Reed Hadley) has made a speech in front of
some commitee that made several of his friends including police chief Paul
Carter (Russ Conway) angry, a speech that claims that 8 out of a hundred
arrests the police makes are innocents. So when Matthews has yet another
case he works on, chief Carter refuses to cooperate - and yet this time
around, the accused party, a young girl, Bertha (Lisa Montell), who is
said to have stolen some jewellery from her mother's (Celia Lovsky)
employer Wilmar (Tol Avery) really seems to be innocent. Questioned by
Matthews, she claims that Wilmar sexually harrassed her, and when she
refused him, he made up the claims about her stealing his deceased wife's
jewellery. The girl only didn't state that sooner because otherwise she
claims her mum would have killed Wilmar. Bertha undergoes a lie-detector
test, which proves she is innocent, but that's not enough for the court,
so Matthews investigates further and finds out that Wilmar has not claimed
the missing jewellery with his insurance company and returned to the bank
locker where the jewellery was usually kept the day after the jewellery
was supposed to be stolen. But it's only when Bertha's mum, who has
somehow found out that Wilmar improberly douched her girl tries to kill
him and he is saved by Matthews and chief Carter that he finally confesses
he only made up the whole story to punish the girl. Rather
boring piece of crime television, but by the standards of the sometimes
atrocious series Public Defender, this is one of the better
episodes - which doesn't mean it's anywhere near good by more objective
standards though.
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