FROM GUN TO GAVEL The Courtroom Recollections of James Mathers of Oklahoma

Hardback. When James Mathers began practising as a county attorney, he inherited 322 murder cases. Before his fabulous career was over he had tried more than 1000 cases involving the death penalty - and during all those dramatically crowded years he never dared to enter court without a gun. The life of an attorney - especially one such as Mathers, whose standards of justice were never lowered - was dangerous and exacting. The many extraordinary cases he recalls read like the wildest flights of detective and Wild West fiction: the defendant who brought his whole clan to court, ready to shoot it out with judge, prosecution and jury - the vital evidence of the blood-stained mattress, unwrapped in court to emerge as white as the driven snow - the jinxed jury - the blacksmith who got clean away with bigamy. This is Mathers' own story as told to Marshall Houts, himself a former FBI investigator. With Map eps. 230pp. 8vo. h/back. Vg+ in sl. chipped Vg. dw. which has small notch to back cover.