Kabuo Miyamoto is a Japanese-American fisherman who is on trial for being accused of murdering a white fisherman named Carl Heine. Also inside the courtroom is a man named Ishmael Chambers, who is the local reporter and knows the defendant and the wife well. The sheriff of San Piedro, Art Moran, is the first witness in trial. He explains to the courtroom how he and his deputy, Abel Martinson, discovered Carl Heine’s boat with no sign of the missing man. They soon reeled in Carl Heine’s net to find his corpse tangled in it. The men identified a large indent on the side of Carl’s head. This piece of information leads Nels Gudmundsson, the defence attorney, to question whether or not the wound was conflicted before or after the sheriff and his
