5529. Final Verdict, by Adela Rogers St. John (read 3 Feb 2018) This book is called a biography of Earl Rogers, flamboyant California lawyer, and is written by his daughter. I usually avoid biographies by the subject's relative since we can be sure the relative will slant the story to show the subject in the best light. This biography does that but I have a greater quarrel with it in that it contains not a single mention of a year. So we have to guess as to the time of the various events told about in the often grandiloquent but stirring prose. So I went to Wikipedia to get the facts which enable one to place in time the events related in the book.. Earl Rogers was born in Los Angeles on 18 Nov 1869 and was admitted to the bar in 1897. He had many stirring and high profile case, only about a dozen of which are told about in the book. And the account of those cases is of high quality and of great interest. Maybe his daughter, who was with him in many of the cases as fervent onlooker, hypes his performance but the many favorable results of the trials show that he was a lawyer of daring and great skill. (Supposedly Erle Stanley Gardner modelled his creation, Perry Mason, on Rogers.) But the book also tells of the tragic personal life of Rogers--his hellish life with the author's mother, who Rogers divorced three times, his struggle with alcoholism, the death of his second wife from the flu, apparently in 1918 (no year is ever mentioned in the book, of course) and Rogers's wasteful spending habits which apparently ended with him dying in poverty on 22 Feb 1922. Rogers defended Clarence Darrow when Darrow was charged with jury tampering and despite the efforts of Darrow to seek to justify the McNamaras's horrendous 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building in which 21 were killed Rogers managed to get Darrow acquitted, the jury being out only 28 minutes. Since Darrow also made a closing argument in the case (lasting apparently 3 days!) Darrow claimed he won the case whereas he apparently almost lost it. The author of the book has nothing good to say for Darrow and the book paints a very unflattering picture of him. I greatly enjoyed reading this book, even though it has the flaws I mention. ( )

Earl Rogers was a ground-breaking criminal lawyer in the early 1900s in California. He was the first to use ballistics to prove his clients' innocence, the first to use re-enactments in court and is generally credited with being one of the best trial lawyers in America.

This biography is written by his daughter, Adela (whom he called Nora), some years after his death. Adela was a constant companion to her father while growing up, seldom attending formal school and never leaving with her mother through three divorces and several separations. Her love for her father shines through the book, but she has made a real attempt to be truthful, showing her father's weaknesses as well as his strengths. Well written...it often reads like a crime novel...this book provides a historical perspective on the law as we know it today. ( )