Pudd'nhead Wilson — Mark Twain

Think of a Crime Patrol episode where the whole mohalla has already decided who did it — the outsiders who were found standing next to the body. Now imagine the only person who can save them is the man everyone has laughed at for twenty years, and his only weapon is a box of glass strips covered in greasy finger-marks. That is the trial at the heart of Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson. The question it asks a law student is simple and still sharp: when appearance, reputation and prejudice all point one way, what evidence should a court trust?

In two minutes

In Pudd'nhead Wilson, the lawyer the town mocked as a fool uses fingerprint records collected over twenty-three years to prove the Italian twins innocent of Judge Driscoll's murder, unmask the real killer as 'Tom' Driscoll, and expose that Roxy had switched 'Tom' with her master's baby in the cradle — so the courtroom scene doubles as Twain's attack on slavery and on blind faith in circumstantial evidence.

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