Perry Mason: The Case of the Maligned Mobster (1991)

Television has never seen a more ethical attorney than Perry Mason, as is well known he never takes on a really guilty client. But this particular Mason television film really plays it close to the edge in the realm of lawyer/client privilege.

If I'm wrong some lawyers or law student will no doubt write and correct me, but in this particular film Raymond Burr is defending mobster Michael Nader who is charged with murdering his wife. Nader is one of the darker characters that Mason has ever defended either in the two hour films or the one hour television series from the Ffities and Sixties.

Nader's wife Gwynyth Walsh is killed when someone fires a bullet into a speeding car Walsh is driving causing her to lose control and the car hurtle over a cliff. Of course there's no lack of suspects as usual.

But in order to get at the truth, Burr actually let's it come out that his client actually did another murder some time earlier. The two crimes are indirectly linked. Maybe I'm wrong but the fact that he got his own client nailed for another murder to acquit him of the one he's defending him for seems to be stretching the lawyer/client privilege issue out of shape. I think the Bar Association might have had something to say on the issue.

Still it ends as all Perry Mason stories do with the guilty part unmasked. Not someone you would have suspected given the kind of parts this individual normally plays.