Judge Robert Gardner of Santa Ana, Calif., has the reputation of being an innovator. But even to Gardner, the request by the defense attorney was an extraordinary one. On trial was a young Filipino mother, Antonia Thomas, accused of murdering her six-day-old infant by feeding it some caustic substance from a baby bottle. She had already been found guilty in the killing once, but a mistrial had been declared. Between the trials, Defense Lawyer Dudley Gray had read in TIME (Dec. 29) about Thomas Kidwell, an accused wife killer who was shown...
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