Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law - Season 3

Murder and romance weave a complex case and open a third season of controversial courtroom conflicts. The victim: a beautiful schoolteacher. The suspect: the student who loved her.

Owen believes a convicted murderer is innocent, but the only way to gain a new trial is to prove incompetence against the defense attorney, an old and close friend. The relationship between revered teacher and student is the focus of this offbeat and absorbing tale. A retired lawyer, a legend in his lifetime, well played by Ralph Bellamy, decides to come out of retirement and take up the defense of a young man accused of murder. What he forgets to consider is the state of his health and its effect on his concentration, both of which create a situation of near disaster for his client and his former student, Owen Marshall.

When Kim Hodges is found raped and murdered, a mass of evidence indicates that her mother's fiance, Mike Benson, is guilty. But a quotation from Elizabethan poetry in a testimony of Kim's professor, Nelson Hayes, leads Marshall into a new line of questioning in Benson's defense.

When his former woman friend is found murdered in her apartment, Tom Koveny, a clergyman, is charged with the crime.

Parents' disapproval of a daughter's morals leads to severe punishment in a small rural town. Owen is working to free the girl from a mental hospital to which her parents have had her committed. 

Mistaking her husband to be a prowler, Kit Howell shoots him and is charged with murder after evidence indicates she may have learned of his romantic affair with a nightclub singer. After Kit tells her husband she has heard prowlers around the house for several nights, he advises her to get a gun. Then, one night, she shoots at a shadowy figure outside her house — only to find she has killed her husband, who was coming home from his nightclub. The District Attorney learns that the husband was having an affair with a club singer, Stephanie Marks, and charges the wife with murder. Kit's brother, Tom Dayton, enlists Owen Marshall to defend her.

Owen defends a losing cause legally, but possibly a victory morally, when he defends a doctor friend in his stand against a private hospital for not admitting a dying boy.

Owen defends a policeman who is accused of murder after he kills the son of a wealthy businessman.

Thoughtful examination of a subject of topical concern, the sterilization of the retarded, especially among the very poor. In this case, the young lady involved is almost 18, only slightly retarded, and unwilling to be sterilized, even though her mother has signed the authorization. The dedicated lady doctor (Eve Arden), may be a bit too harsh in her drive for sterilization and that gives Owen Marshall the cue he needs to explore.

Christopher George guest stars as a detective who is charged with a wrongful death after he enters a home without'a search warrant and kills a youth he believes to be a jewel thief.

On "Marcus Welby" a young nurse named Dr. Kiley the father of her son. Now Owen Marshall and Company undertake the doctor's defense in court. Kim Darby and Lynda Day George guest star.

Owen represents a bus passenger when he is paralyzed as the result of a richochet bullet fired by an angered bus driver during a robbery.

Owen Marshall accepts to defend a newspaper reporter jailed for contempt of court to reveal his sources on a drug story in the record industry.