Trial and Terror (#147)

Trial and Terror is an awful title. First, there’s no real terror in this book. Secondly, Cliché-Bot’s brother, Mystery Cliché-Bot, suggested “Trial and Terror” for every single Simon & Simon and Murder, She Wrote episode in the ‘80s, and it’s still bitter about every rejection. I mean, I can see why Pocket Books gave in on this one — half of all robot uprisings start when Mystery Cliché-Bot gets frustrated and starts trying to kill humans — but that doesn’t make it less of an awful title.

Trial and Terror is set during Christmas break, that most terrible time of the year; for the Hardy Boys, Christmas means crime. (That would have been a better cover tagline — not a good one, but still better than what the book ended up with.) Trial and Terror begins with Frank touring New York’s criminal courts for a civics class, with Joe tagging along because, well, it’s not like he’s got any ideas about what to do with himself. The idea that Frank needs to learn how the justice system works is offensive on many levels: after 147 books, we know the Hardys are justice, Fenton must have drilled the legal system’s basics into his boys, and Frank should have testified in dozens of trials.

(Later in the book, Frank has to explain to Joe what Sing Sing is, which is so wrong — Frank and Joe have probably sent dozens of men there. The brothers should be getting fan mail from Ossining on a daily basis. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gertrude even had a penpal there!)

I mean, I get it: This Dixon portrays the Hardy brothers as beginners to the justice system to make the writer’s exposition less awkward. I understand. But everyone in the Hardys’ orbit, from their closest friends to their high-school principal and part-time employers, should at least have testified in a trial and probably should have been involved enough to want to watch one from beginning to end.

But I shouldn’t criticize the book too harshly. Trial and Terror has some ambitions past showing school-age kids the rough workings of justice in America, and it needs all its subtlety for that. Because what Trial and Terror wants to show readers is what happens when the justice system has something rotten inside it; can justice be found then?

Nick Rodriguez is accused of the attempted murder of his girlfriend, soap ingénue Karen Lee, and Frank and Joe just wander into his trial. (It’s hard to believe there would be any open seats for random lookie-loos, but I suppose we must suspend our disbelief somewhere.) Joe deals with the case entirely on a surface level; seeing the nattily groomed defendant, he says Nick “doesn’t look like a murderer” (2), but after the prosecution’s first witness, he’s sure Nick did it. (Although, as Sideshow Bob reminds us, attempted murder is barely a crime.)

Frank isn’t so sure, and to make sure Nick gets a robust defense, he offers the brothers’ services (for free!) to Nick’s twin sister, Nellie, and Nick’s defense attorney. Nellie says she has “nothing to lose” (16), but that’s not true: If the Hardys destroy or confuse forensic evidence, it could hamper Nick’s defense or appeals, and if the Hardys harass witnesses or commit crimes in their investigations, the judge could censor the defense, putting them in a hole. Myers, the defense attorney, accepts them on the strength of their first day’s work, but he doesn’t bother to ask for references. Perhaps he’s not the sharpest lawyer; his entire defense of Nick includes only character witnesses, which, uh, isn’t the strongest of evidence.

Frank realizes that finding another suspect would be the best way to inspire reasonable doubt in the jury — although Frank, expert in civics, thinks the threshold is “some doubt” (18). So he and Joe rustle up a Reprobate Roll Call!

• Nick himself. Although it would be unexpected if the Hardys’ client were guilty — it blew my juvenile mind when Frank and Joe’s client was the guilty one in The Masked Monkey (#51) — Nick is not above reproach. After Karen breaks off their engagement and relationship, he can’t let it go; he persists in trying to re-establish their relationship for months afterwards. After he confesses his continued love of Karen to the Hardys with a flourish of fist pounding, Joe (again) thinks Nick is guilty, and the prosecutor forces Nellie to admit that a month before the attempted murder, Nick said to Karen, “Sometimes you make me so mad I want to kill you” (76).
  
  
• Alex Steel, the super in Karen Lee’s building and owner of an awesome name. Frank and Joe suspect he might have attacked Lee on behalf of the building’s owner, who is trying to get elderly residents of the building’s rent-controlled apartments to leave so he can renovate and charge more for the apartments. Karen, who used to work in the prosecutor’s office, organized the resistance to the owner’s tactics. Also, Steel is an unpublished writer who writes murder mysteries, and his bloody titles make the stars of Trial and Terror suspicious. Fortunately, Frank and Joe don’t try anything so stupid as to try to find scenes similar to Karen’s attack in Steel’s writings.
  
  
• Fred Garfein, the owner of Karen’s building. If he didn’t get Alex to attack Karen, he could have hired someone else. He’s rich, and he doesn’t believe in rent control. It’s unfair to building owners! He’s obviously not a supporter of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party.
  
  
• John Q., an obsessed fan of Karen’s. He sends her fan mail that insists they are “fated to be together” (46), he talks to his TV when Karen is onscreen as if she can hear him, and he attends the trial incognito. At least he doesn’t call himself her number one fan.
  
  
• “Lunatic” Lucy Velloni, a reporter who has an exclusive in with Karen. Her tabloid colleagues denigrate her, which Velloni believes is because she doesn’t restrict herself to traditionally feminine topics. (Given that her “crazy” actions tend to be non-feminine, action-junkie pursuits like running into a burning building and jockeying her car through New York traffic like a taxi driver, I’d say she has a point.) After she attempts to save a girl from that burning building, Frank and Joe mostly drop her as a suspect — even though Frank and Joe have to complete the rescue, and she did attempt to murder Frank by pushing him off the top of a building. (She later protests she didn’t realize the edge of the building was there.)
  
  
• Mystery suspect!

The first helpful item that Frank and Joe discover is that prosecutor Patricia Daggett withheld exculpatory evidence — evidence uncovered by the police or prosecution that might tend to exonerate the defendant — from the defense. In this case, it’s that Karen had a key to Nick’s apartment with Nick’s name on it, which disappeared around the time of the attack. This might have allowed another person to plant evidence in Nick’s apartment. (Although this is the Hardy Boys universe, and a key isn’t necessary; lockpicking isn’t an uncommon skill.) Trial and Terror tries to sell the idea that this kind of misconduct could get a prosecutor imprisoned, but that’s extremely unlikely, even for a prosecutor who, like Daggett, makes a habit of withholding exculpatory evidence.

Just like in the last book I recapped, Frank and Joe get a lot of mileage out the excuse that they’re working on a school assignment; they even use that excuse to see busy developer Fred Garfein. (He doesn’t really listen to them, to be fair.) Other investigative tactics used include Joe picking the lock on a suspect’s apartment to get access while he’s gone (illegal methods that would be a good reason why the defense might not want to hire the brothers) and Frank using Fenton’s name to get some carpet fibers tested by the police. (The evidence room officer admits Fenton got him out of some “jams” (83) — and we know what that means. *Wiiiiiiink*.)

Since this is Christmas time, Frank stops into a New York jewelry store and purchases a cheap enamel ring with a butterfly on it for Callie. Joe doesn’t make a purchase; ostensibly, he has already acquired a present for Iola, as he says, “If you mess up with a girlfriend's present, it’s not a pretty sight” (62).

(Joe, if Iola is violent around you, it’s not your fault — even if she says you’re making her do it. Just … reach out and get help, man. This is not a joke.)

While rifling through Karen’s letters, the brothers come across a letter from an inmate at Sing Sing. The brothers head upstate and learn that Daggett withheld exculpatory evidence in his case, and Karen overheard an argument about that between Daggett and an investigator. (The inmate wanted Karen’s help in his plea to Daggett’s boss — a less confrontational way of attempting to get justice than the traditional lawsuit / appeal, and one that is not likely to succeed. But he might as well try all avenues, I suppose.) From this bit of evidence, Frank and Joe decide Daggett is guilty of the attempted murder of Karen. Daggett sends an arrested criminal to threaten the boys, promising him leniency for thuggery against the brothers, but it backfires, because no one can intimidate the Hardys. In a bit of courtroom drama, Frank tries to produce a Perry Mason moment from the witness box, claiming that an unidentified piece of evidence is part of Daggett’s crappy enamel ring — just like the one that Frank bought Callie! — which broke during Daggett’s attack.

The gallery goes wild. The judge dismisses the case, which would be unusual if this were the real world, and Nick is freed to keep foisting his emotional neediness upon Karen; Karen apologizes for thinking this guy who just couldn’t let their relationship go might have attacked her. Apologizes! And then she’s forced to celebrate with Nick, Nellie, and their lawyer! Poor Karen.

Now, there are a few problems with the justice system that this Dixon glosses over. The prosecutor introduces information that an objection overrules; the jury is supposed to forget the information, but that’s impossible for a human to do. Also, a crime-lab technician identifies the hairs found in a ski mask found Nick’s apartment and testifies they are Nick’s; although he initially prefaces his testimony with “in my opinion,” he later says hair samples “can be matched with almost as much accuracy as fingerprints” (10) and that the odds that the samples aren’t Nick’s are “a million to one” (11). Although DNA can be found in some hair samples, that’s not what the lab technician is saying; he’s saying when he looks at the hair in a microscope, he can visually compare and match them with precision accuracy, and that’s just not true. (To be fair to these fictional lawyers and the fictional lab tech, that sort of forensic overstatement goes on all the time in courtrooms, and it passes unchallenged.)

The important thing, in the end, is that Joe realizes how important it is that everyone gets “the best possible defense” (118). Why is this? Because at different points during their investigation, Joe thought every suspect was guilty, and their investigation proved not everyone wanted to kill Karen Lee.

But remember: In Joe’s eyes, they are all guilty of something. We are all guilty in his eyes. Someday, Joe won’t be satisfied with punishing the guilty in just Bayport. He will convince more and more citizens to outsource the dispensing of justice to him, until the entire country — the entire world — will be forced to grovel and pray for a merciful Joe.