Adam Graham (31:11)
Welcome back. This is one of those stories that now that I'm a dad, it just hits really differently, really hard. What these two people did. I don't have words. At least not edifying words. The suicide pact story was bad enough, but what actually happened was just horrific. The outcome speak to the reluctance of juries to give women the death penalty and that's the only explanation for why she would not have been executed. On the production side, the opening light hearted scene I'm sure I've heard before, I'm just not sure where I thought that it was the big pair, but I went and listened to that and it had a different wedding Related opener. The one odd part of this episode was where Joe Friday's narration told us the woman spoke with a heavy accent. That's one of those things that you shouldn't have to include in narration that should be obvious in an audio production and kind of irrelevant if you were doing the Dragnet TV thing where they occasionally did, where you'll just show them talking but not actually show the sound. And have Friday summarize what said the accent that she used is actually kind of vaguely European than anything I can specifically identify. Maybe it was out of some sensitivity to issues with making it too specific given the nature of the crime. You had many displaced persons in the world and many who had immigrated to the United States or wanted to immigrate to the United States, so highlighting a specific nationality may have been something they wanted to avoid. Listener Comments and Feedback Now Christopher writes, Love not Beat. Been listening since 1985. And now to your podcast. Thank you Adam. Well, thank you Christopher. Really appreciate your support and your listening to the podcast. And we have some comments regarding the episode the Big Run. Dawn writes, it may just be my point of view, but 58 isn't elderly in regards to the age of one of the victims. Come on Joe and Naomi Jo says Dawn, you beat me to it. I had to rewind to check I'd heard it correctly. Mechanic 66 pointed out, maybe not, but Jack Webb died at 61. People tend to live longer now, although lifespan for Americans is on a downward trajectory. I think it's an interesting point and always want to be careful and sensitive to my audience. A lot of people, you know, you hear your own age described as elderly and you kind of go, hey. I do think that to expand on what Mechanic66 said, Life was harder in the past. The further you go back and you don't have to go back to this era. There have been many points about how actors used to look older. You can go as recent as the first season of Seinfeld. Jason Alexander was 29 when he filmed that first season. Does not look 29. Apologies to Mr. Alexander, but he does it at least not, you know, like modern 29 year old. And it's even more stark. One I saw compared Carroll o' Connor at the age he started doing all in the Family to Paul Rudd, much older than o' Connor was then. And while there might be some Hollywood magic involved, even looking at non celebrity photos, you know, through the family albums, people just looked older and I think life took more of a toll. It tended to you tended to have more people who were involved in hard physical labor and there were so many things about diet and the way we took care of ourselves and then just the things that people had been through. If you were a 58 year old woman in 1951, you were born in 1893, you'd been through two world wars and a Great depression and who knows what other hardships and that will age a body. And we actually had a really good episode of the old Time Radio Snack Wagon we did with a couple couple of commentaries and stories by that great storyteller John Nesbit, about how life had become far more easy and convenient and healthy in the time between when he'd been a boy back towards the turn of the century and the 1940s. And it's been an even more dramatic turn since then. And you know, people will say things like the your 40s are the new 30s or the six your 60s or the new 40s. Well, there had to be an old 30s and an old 40s. And I will say that whether 58 would be considered elderly or not. I remember growing up in the 80s and into the 90s that there were restaurants where the senior menu was something you got when you were 55. And I actually figured out and told my dad how many years until he could get the senior discount. He was not pleased at the prospect, but it was a different time. And whether he was technically correct or not, even then, I think that it was something that could have had some merit. Also on Spotify, Mechanic66 writes, Once again, Joe Friday makes an arrest that any competent defense attorney would have been able to get thrown out for an illegal search. If you have to clean the window to see inside the garage, it's not in plain sight. And we know they would never have lied about that in court. Well, I appreciate the comment. The thing is, when it comes to questioning the legality of Friday's actions, they're often based on modern interpretations of the case law. The criminal case law in regards to criminal procedure, arrest, due process, and the interpretation of the fourth Amendment is something that has evolved over time. And we also have to keep in mind, while the Dragnet episodes were released in 1951, the cases they were based on could have occurred many years prior to prior. At the time of Dragnet in 1951, the controlling case regarding the exclusion of illegally obtained evidence was the 1949 case Wolf vs Colorado, in which they found the exclusionary rule, which they had applied to the Federal Government since 1914, was only adopted by 17 states, 30 others had rejected it and that it was not a departure from the basic Standards of due process to allow states to introduce illegally obtained evidence in state trials. This would not be overturned until 1961 or 10 years after this episode aired. So if this story happened in 1961 rather than 1951 or proposed before, yeah, it would get thrown out in state court. But it didn't. Now, Dragnet did acknowledge when laws changed, although not often in a supportive manner. One of the last radio episodes of Dragnet, the Big Ruling, has Friday none too happy with evidence being thrown out as a result of a new ruling he hadn't kept up on. And subsequent Dragnet seasons when the series returned in the 1960s showed how criminals were able to take advantage of loopholes. In the 1966 Dragnet TV movie, many viewers resonated and still resonate with his quirk in the law speech. Yet the Dragnet universe, I guess, if you want to call it, could also be a bit more balanced in terms of what is the duty of the policeman. It is the duty to follow the law as it exists. One of my favorite episodes of Adam 12 was called the Dinosaur, and it is about a police officer who had been amazing and heroic and had actually been someone that the hero of Adam 12, Pete Malloy, looked up to. But he had been injured in the line of duty and he spent eight years out of the force and came back. But when he came back, he was stuck in the old ways. He had been doing things, and as a result, criminals got let off and a woman nearly died as a result. And at this point, Malloy had kind of emerge into more of a leadership role. Not a sergeant left, but he just told the guy to pack it in. He said people need to grow with change, and you didn't have that chance. It illustrated the degree to which police procedures and the expectations of them in their jobs had changed over the few years as a result of various court rulings. And I guess as an aside, that also might be one reason why the 1950s dragnet kind of disappeared from circulation. One of the appeals of Dragnet was that it showed the police in action how they worked, but when how they worked to change radically. You also, of course, did have the appeal of the color episodes, but it made sense probably to stop syndicating the show. It is fair to question whether an arrest today would have been allowed or whether the evidence would be thrown out today or even a few years after the fact. But the fact is that it probably would not have been thrown out in 1951 because the exclusionary rule was not operative in most states in the Union. Now it's time to thank our Patreon Supporter of the day. And I want to go ahead and thank Robert patreon, Supporter since August 2016, Currently supporting the podcast at the Detective Sergeant level of $7.14 or more per month. Thanks so much for your support, Robert. And that will do it for today. If you're enjoying the podcast, please follow us using your favorite podcast software. And if you're enjoying the podcast on YouTube, be sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel, and mark the notification bell. Join us back here next Thursday for another episode of Dragnet. And next Monday, be sure and listen for Danger with Granger. But join us back here tomorrow for yours truly, Johnny Dollar Ware.
