In court proceedings in the United States, a Perry Mason moment is a dramatic, unexpected revelation during a legal trial, usually from a witness's testimony; sometimes it is new evidence. It takes its name from Perry Mason, the fictional lawyer in the works of Erle Stanley Gardner, where such dramatic reversals occurred, often when witnesses confess to crimes that others were accused of in response to the sudden exposure of an inconsistency in their alibi.
Modern discovery rules make Perry Mason moments rare in actual American court proceedings. Both sides are largely aware of what the other plans to introduce as evidence, and judges usually stay or continue proceedings when a party informs the court it has uncovered new evidence, in order that the opposing party be sufficiently prepared. Lawyers, too, prefer not to ask witnesses questions when they do not have a good idea what the response will be. Perry Mason moments that do occur, such as those on live television during the first Menendez brothers trial and the O. J. Simpson trial, are often the result of careful planning by the lawyers. Gambles by lawyers have also resulted in Perry Mason moments, sometimes not for their side, and some have occurred completely spontaneously.
Judicial attitude
The judicial system tries to avoid Perry Mason moments to keep trials fair. In 2001, the federal court for the Northern District of Iowa granted a drug defendant a new trial over prosecutorial misconduct. Among the misdeeds that it cited to support the motion was the testimony elicited from one government cooperating witness who had agreed to take the stand in return for plea agreements or immunity. The witness, visibly nervous, was asked after being sworn in why this was so. She told the prosecutor that another driver had given her the finger and attempted to run her off the road on the way to court that morning; after being asked if she recognized that person, she identified him by name and also as the defendant's sister's boyfriend. The court found that level of detail completely unnecessary, as there were other possible causes of her condition, including a medical diagnosis of anxiety, and it was only when the prosecutor asked that the jury and the defense became aware the driver was connected to the defendant. "Moreover," wrote the district's chief judge, Mark W. Bennett, who had presided over the trial, "this type of a 'Perry Mason' moment, replete with the elements of surprise and prejudice, is precisely the type of matter that should be taken up with the court outside the presence of the jury."
Courts have sometimes cited the unlikelihood of a Perry Mason moment in real life as a justification for their rulings. In 2005, Kent A. Jordan, then sitting on the federal District of Delaware, denied a defense request to grant immunity to a real estate broker the defendant believed had actually been the one to forge a lease rather than the defendants themselves, as the government alleged, so the broker would have no fear of self-incrimination and be compelled to testify. "[I]t is not at all clear that the real estate broker's testimony would be exculpatory", he wrote. "On the contrary, it appears that Leary merely hopes that his counsel will be able to break the broker down on cross-examination. A prayer for a Perry Mason moment does not constitute the kind of 'clearly exculpatory' evidence contemplated in [a precedent].
Five years later, the Seventh Circuit heard the appeal of two bank robbers who argued that the trial judge had, by disallowing a line of questioning on cross-examination over one key witness's motivations for testifying, violated their Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel. The court agreed but held the violation harmless error given the overwhelming evidence against the defendants, who also could not have been certain as to whether the witness would testify as they had hoped. "It is unlikely that counsel expected Simmons to break down on the stand and admit that his perjury was part of an elaborate scheme to frame the defendants", wrote Judge Daniel A. Manion. "Only Perry Mason enjoyed such moments."
"Defendants' argument seems to assume the existence of a Perry Mason-like world in which prosecution witnesses readily give up impeaching information when interviewed or questioned by defense counsel", wrote Judge Matthew Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois in 2011 when holding for a plaintiff suing the Chicago police over malicious prosecution after he was cleared of a 1993 murder. The police had argued possibly exculpatory material did not have to be turned over because witnesses examined by the defense at trial were aware of the information and could have testified to it. "Real life does not work that way, or at least the governing legal rule cannot realistically be premised on the assumption that it always works that way."
In 2014, the federal court for the Eastern District of Louisiana granted a defense motion to disqualify plaintiff's counsel on the grounds that the lawyer would be an essential witness for the case and none of the exceptions in the state bar's code of conduct that would allow a lawyer to be both witness and advocate in a case applied. The attorney had argued that he might not have to testify if the defendant, upon taking the stand, completely corroborated his client's version of events. Judge Jane Triche Milazzo described this argument as "[depending] on the occurrence of a 'Perry Mason' moment in the courtroom." In denying it, she noted that "in the Court's experience, such moments are usually confined to fictional courtrooms."
More generally, a federal bankruptcy judge once noted that "[i]t is a truism (Perry Mason aside) that parties virtually never admit at trial that they acted with an intent to deceive or defraud the opposing party." "From time to time the new evidence surfaces à la Perry Mason during trial and there is a dismissal", wrote Minnesota Court of Appeals judge Robert A. Randall, a veteran criminal defense lawyer, in 1994. "But I suggest Perry Mason endings tend only to happen on late night TV if your station carries reruns." Judge D. Michael Fisher of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, dissenting from the majority's grant of habeas corpus relief over, among other things, evidence not shared with the defense in the case that could likely have exculpated the petitioner, wrote that "a dramatic courtroom reversal is more likely in a Matlock or Perry Mason script than in reality."
Both appellate and trial judges have sometimes recognized Perry Mason moments when they believe they occurred in the trial and were decisive. In the late 2010s, defense counsel for an Arkansas man on trial for robbery who asserted mistaken identity and poor police work found, shortly before cross-examining a police officer who had testified to thoroughly examining and inventorying the contents of the defendant's jacket, a plastic straw in one of the pockets that was not mentioned in the inventory. During cross-examination, after eliciting a reiteration of the officer's testimony, the lawyer asked the officer to check the jacket again, whereupon he discovered the straw. "The defense had its Perry Mason moment", wrote state Supreme Court Justice Josephine L. Hart, dissenting from her colleagues' denial of review after the court declared a mistrial afterwards when the prosecution accused the defense of planting it. "[S]hoddy police work was exposed." In deciding a 2003 patent infringement case, Wayne Andersen of the Northern District of Illinois wrote of a "a very rare Perry Mason-esque moment" when the plaintiff patentee conceded on the stand that the defendant's pool cover was not topped with a dark material like his patent had described his own, resulting in "the least difficult infringement analysis this Court has ever been required to perform" and summary judgement for defendants.
History In his 2010 book I Love It When You Talk Retro, author Ralph Keyes connects the term to the Perry Mason TV series, which ran from 1957 to 1966. "As played by portly Raymond Burr", he wrote, "Perry Mason was a resourceful lawyer who generally pulled his client's chestnuts out of the fire at the last minute with some deftly posed question or just-discovered piece of evidence. The many times this happened inspired common references to a Perry Mason moment, a dramatic denouement during legal proceedings when everything becomes clear."
The earliest instance of life imitating art to have been called a Perry Mason moment in retrospect occurred in a 1983 Maryland trial. Harlow Brian Sails was accused of murdering an off-duty Prince George's County police officer while robbing a jewelry store a year earlier with three accomplices. All of them had been sentenced to life for both crimes when Sails' trial began. Conflicting eyewitness testimony cast what could have been reasonable doubt on Sails' role in the crime. He denied the charges, but recanted on cross-examination and confessed to the murder while on the witness stand. "I was lying to you before," he admitted to the prosecutor. "I want to let you know that I am guilty. I killed him."
First Menendez brothers trial The term did not get used in news coverage of trials until the early 1990s. It occurred during a highly publicized trial broadcast live on television, when a prosecutor's question to a defendant undermined a key aspect of his defense and increased popular perception of his guilt.
In 1993, Lyle and Erik Menendez went on trial in Los Angeles for the murder of their parents four years earlier. They admitted to the killings, but claimed they were a reaction to years of abuse. Since their father, José Menendez, was a wealthy studio executive, the case attracted considerable media attention. The trial was televised live on Court TV, where many viewers found its narratives akin to a soap opera.
On direct examination, both claimed that the brothers went to a nearby Big 5 store to buy handguns, ostensibly to protect themselves from their parents, only to find out that there was a mandatory waiting period of seven days before they could take possession of the weapons. So, they drove to San Diego where they bought the shotguns they eventually used on their parents, for which no wait was required. When cross-examining Erik, prosecutor Lester Kuriyama focused on that aspect of his testimony, asking him to clarify whether he and Lyle had looked at revolvers or more modern "automatic" handguns, and what caliber they had considered. Then he asked Erik "Mr. Menendez, did you know that Big 5 stopped selling handguns in March of 1986?"
Although Erik responded, after a long pause, that he did not know that and that he and his brother had indeed looked at handguns when they visited the store, in the opinion of many watching he was caught in a lie. It now seemed as if, as the prosecution alleged, the killings were premeditated efforts by the brothers to claim their parents' fortune. Writer Dominick Dunne, who covered the trial for Vanity Fair, described the aftermath in the courtroom:
The tip that led to the question was phoned into the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office by a Court TV viewer. Kuriyama received death threats afterward, and wore a bulletproof vest to work for a few days. At the end of the year humorist Paul Slansky described the whole incident as a "'Perry Mason' moment" in a multiple-choice quiz on the trial in Newsweek, one of the earliest uses of the term in a major national publication. Despite the high drama the question created and the increased perception of the brothers' guilt, the separate juries deadlocked on the charges, resulting in a mistrial. At their second trial, in 1996, which had one jury and was not televised, the two were convicted and are now serving life sentences.
O. J. Simpson trial