The scandal captured the headlines of newspapers around the world. The Los Angeles celebrity was accused of trying to kill his wife. The evidence against him was overwhelming. It seemed only a matter of time before he would trade his wealth and fame for a prison cell and disgrace.

Every lawyer recommended that he take any kind of plea agreement the prosecution would offer. Every lawyer except one, that is. He thought there might be a way to win.

You might think this is a story from recent history. Hollywood celebrities are always getting in trouble and need high-priced lawyers to save the day. It was O.J. Simpson, after all, who dodged a murder conviction by hiring the legal “Dream Team” that included Johnnie Cochran and F. Lee Bailey. After a lengthy and public trial, the jury acquitted Simpson despite the overwhelming evidence of his guilt.

Nearly a century before Simpson’s murder trial, there was another celebrity whose personal life became a public spectacle. It took the most celebrated lawyer of the day — a man who would inspire a legendary fictional attorney — to keep Col. Griffith J. Griffith out of prison.

Griffith J. Griffith arrived penniless in the USA in 1865. By 1882, at the age of 32, he was a millionaire through mining, investigative reporting, and real estate. His fortune increased when he married wealthy heiress Mary Agnes Christina “Tina” Mesmer.

Griffith liked to throw around his Colonel title. Aside from its pretentiousness, it was also a farce. Griffith had served in the reserves but was never promoted to anywhere close to officer status. The use of the title was just one indication of his Napoleon complex. His short stature and the ways he compensated for it earned him the nickname “midget egomaniac.” He was also an insufferable bore. He gave long-winded, self-serving speeches at his exclusive men’s club. Members put up with him because of all the money he threw around.

In addition to being a pompous liar, he was also a drunk, and a mean one, at that. Although he gave money to the temperance movement and proclaimed that he never touched a drop, Griffith’s alcoholism was one of the worst-kept secrets in California. When he drank, he became argumentative, violent, paranoid, and delusional.

On September 3, 1903, Griffith and his wife were vacationing in Santa Monica. They took up residence at the Arcadia Hotel’s presidential suite. Griffith, unsurprisingly, was drunk. In his alcohol-fueled stupor, he became convinced that his wife was conspiring with the newly installed Pope Pius X to poison him and steal his money.

He pulled out a gun and commanded her to kneel in front of him. Holding the gun against her head, Griffith pulled the trigger to take her life. At just the right time, the terrified woman flinched. The bullet passed through her left eye. Badly hurt, but alive, she threw herself out the window and landed on an awning two stories below. She was rushed to a hospital, having sustained a broken arm and lost her eye. Miraculously, despite her injuries, she survived. She told the police what had happened. It wasn’t long before the astonished public learned that Griffith J. Griffith had been arrested and charged with attempted murder.

The evidence was overwhelming. It would take a miracle to spare him an almost certain life sentence. What better way to procure a miracle than to employ the services of a miracle worker? That’s how Earl Rogers entered the scene.

Earl Rogers was born in Perry, New York in 1869. He studied law under former U.S. senator Stephen M. White and Judge William P. Gardiner. After receiving his law license in 1897, he began practicing law in Los Angeles. He soon became a living legend within the profession. Throughout his career, he defended 77 clients who were accused of murder, losing only three of those cases.

Rogers also became the attorney for one of the most famous lawyers of all time. When Clarence Darrow was charged with jury tampering, Rogers took his case, resulting in Darrow being acquitted of the charge.

Even someone as impressive as Rogers would have to pull a jurisprudence rabbit out of a hat if Griffith was going to come out of his trial with his liberty and reputation intact. Undeterred by the prospects, Rogers went to work.

Rogers pursued a novel defense for his client. He did not dispute that Griffith attempted to kill his wife. Instead, he said that his client was not legally responsible for his actions because of “alcoholic insanity.”

There was no shortage of witnesses to testify to Griffith’s pattern of excessive drinking and the violent and paranoid behavior that accompanied his intoxication. Even his wife readily admitted from the witness stand that when her husband was under the influence he was a wild, crazy man.

The alcoholic insanity defense had never been tried in a U.S. courtroom, but it worked on the jury. They found him not guilty of attempted murder. Instead, Griffith was convicted of the lesser offense of assault with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced to two years in San Quentin prison and ordered to obtain ”medical aid for his condition of alcoholic insanity.”

After Griffith’s trial, Tina filed for divorce and earned her own place in legal history. The court proceeding took less than five minutes — the fastest divorce in the history of Los Angeles.

As for Griffith, the experience caused him to wake up to his alcohol problem. He declined to apply for parole and chose to serve the entire two-year sentence. When he was released, he remained sober and tried to rehabilitate his reputation. Having earlier gifted 3,015 acres of real estate to the city, he tried to donate the funds to improve upon it. Facing public outcry, however, the city was forced to decline the gift.

Griffith would not be dissuaded, however. In his will, he left a major portion of his massive estate to the city of Los Angeles, designated for building what would become the Greek Theater and the Griffith Observatory. Today, they stand in Griffith Park, a massive parcel of land that has grown to 4,310 acres — five times the size of New York City’s 840-acre Central Park.

Today, thousands of visitors walk through Griffith Park, unaware of the drunken and bloody reputation of the man whose name it bears. If they do know about Griffith J. Griffith, they probably have never heard of Earl Rogers, the attorney whose brilliant legal strategy gave his client a second chance at redemption.

You may be one of those who never heard of Griffith or Rogers. In all likelihood, however, you have heard of someone else who owes his reputation to those fateful events of 120 years ago. About a decade after Rogers’ death, an aspiring author sat down to write a legal thriller. He envisioned the protagonist to be a fearless, brilliant, hard-hitting lawyer who stopped at nothing to defend his client. As inspiration, he drew on the life of Earl Rogers. This fictional lawyer got his first name from Roger’s hometown: Perry, New York. He first saw print in the 1933 novel The Case of the Velvet Claws. Over the next 90 years, he would appear in over 80 novels, a successful radio series, three television series, and 30 made-for-television films. He would forever be associated with Raymond Burr, the actor who portrayed him for most of his on-air appearances. Perhaps Earl Rogers’ most lasting legacy is that he inspired Erle Stanley Gardner to create the immortal Perry Mason.

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