State v. Green

No matter how devotedly the courts strive for perfection, it is bound in some degree to elude them. The perfect trial probably is yet to be held. Therefore, an appeal by an inevitable process of intellectual distillation reduces the points under review to a question of whether the flaws in the record are of sufficient moment to mark the trial as unfair. In the last analysis, the final measure of error in a criminal case should be: Was the defendant afforded, not a perfect but, rather, a fair trial? — for the constitution guarantees no one a perfect trial.

It was 10 minutes before midnight in…