Clearly, the safest thing to do is simply commit a murder as soon as you arrive, thus removing any risk that you might be the victim.
And if you get lucky, you might accidentally kill the murderer, so you’ll be safe!
“Have you ever killed anyone?”
“Yeah, but they were all bad.”
-Jamie Lee Curtis and Arnold Scwarzenegger, True Lies
It’s one of the short stories in the collection The Labours of Hercules, each one named after one of the classic twelve labours of Hercules. This one with the Pekinese is “The Nemean Lion”.
If i remember correctly wasnt a lot of mason’s courtroom appearances merely hearings to see if there was going to be a trial ? or if was there enough evidence to hold a suspect over for a trial?
That cover would look even better if there were a little box of Tide in the corner. 
Fun fact: Johnny Crawford went on to have a singing career and later in life fronted a big band.
Not fun fact: He died of COVID-19, pneumonia and Alzheimer’s in 2021 at 75.
That was usually the case (pun alert!). Most of them were preliminary hearings, but occasionally it would go before a jury. One even returned a verdict, but the case had been dropped by the DA while they were deliberating, and Mason burned the envelope containing the jury’s decision without reading it.