The Court of Last Resort

Having had the opportunity of seeing a few episodes of this show, which I had previously been unaware of, I have to disagree with the previous poster. Of the four or five episodes I saw, one had the CoLR finding the suspect guilty of the crime he had been accused of. I don't think one needs to make everything a matter of present-day politics, especially an inconsequential and probably largely forgotten (despite the participation of Erle Stanley Gardner) show from the 1950s.

Watching the episodes I thought this show would still work today. I have to say that I like the one-half hour format for dramas. So many shows today are padded with fat. The half hour format really forces the writers to be economic in their storytelling.

I saw this in Mill Creek Entertainment's 150 episode "Best of TV Detectives" pack. This has a number of obscure mystery series from the 1950s and early sixties on 12 DVDs. Well worth the $20 price tag.

This series was played against the backdrop of shows like Dragnet where the suspect was proven guilty -- if necessary he was given opportunity to confess. The court of last resort played upon police errors and the sympathy of the public.

Convicts ready to be executed were investigated. ALWAYS, the police were wrong, they were wrongfully accused and they were freed in 30 minutes. I believe this was one of the beginning shots in the war of social engineering of Hollywood.

We have today as the result, Miranda, and police and prosecutors that are handcuffed in protecting us from those who would break the law...

I had read about this show in TV history books but also saw this program for the first time as part of Mill Creek Entertainment's "Best of TV Detectives" DVD box set. This collection features a lot of obscure and a few well-known TV detective shows, and is highly recommended for lovers of classic TV.

Court of Last Resort was very entertaining and compacted a lot of action and plot development into a half hour. Perhaps the idea of freeing the wrongly accused is where Barry Scheck & Co. got their idea for their Innocence Project? (Even though DNA testing didn't come into its own until the last 10 years.) Too bad Court of Last Resort didn't last very long, despite the cachet of creator Erle Stanley Gardner, whose more successful Perry Mason was on the air the same time. A good way to spend a half-hour.