Excerpt from Defender's Triumph
This is a book about four murder trials, in each of which the prisoner was acquitted. I do not suggest that any of them should have been convicted. I do suggest that all of them would have been convicted had they not been shielded by remarkable defenders.

There are those who believe that innocence is enough. All my experience teaches me the contrary. The machinery of the law is by no means infallible, and circumstances may conspire to such evil effect that only a great advocate can hope to challenge them.

The cases that follow seem to fall into this class. If Adelaide Bartlett, Robert Wood, Elvira Barney and Tony Mancini had been defended by barristers of merely average talent, I do not believe there would have been the same result. Only the exceptional brilliance of their counsel gained for them the verdict to which they were entitled.

It is not, perhaps, a very comforting reflection. But one cannot ignore disquieting phenomena that are liable to recur in any year of our own lives.