Presumed Innocent

“I grew up about three blocks from here, in an apartment over my father’s bakery. I recall them as dark years. During the day my mother and I, when I was not in school, helped my father in the shop. At night we stayed in one locked room while my father drank. There were no other children. The neighborhood today is not much different, still full of people like my father: Serbians, as he was; Ukrainians, Italians, Poles—ethnic types who keep their peace and their own dim outlook.”

Rusty’s upbringing plays an important part in the narrative, developing the theme of The Effect of Parenting on Adult Children. In particular, his father plays a pivotal role in Rusty’s life, even after his death. Rusty also emphasizes his working-class background, highlighting the difference between Rusty and many of the other lawyers he works with, as well as his ability to operate in different settings and different enclaves throughout the city.

“He makes a face—unwisely, for Dry can certainly see it—before he walks off with Paul, disappearing into the gothic dark of the church. The mayor, Augustine Bolcarro, has the character of a tyrant.”

Rusty observes Raymond’s reaction to being summoned for a private meeting by the mayor, Bolcarro. Although Rusty claims not to be as political as some other characters, this scene illustrates that Rusty understands and can operate in a political atmosphere. The fact that Raymond can’t hide his reaction to Bolcarro, and Rusty notices and understands the disadvantage of it, shows that whether he realizes it or not, Rusty has surpassed his mentor in political understanding.

“Now, in the computer era, the search can be done by machine. A laser mechanism reads the print and compares to every one in memory. The process only takes a few minutes, but the department, due to budgetary constraints, does not yet own all of the equipment and must borrow pieces from the state police for special cases.”

This passage is significant because it dates the novel, published in 1987, through the emerging computer technology and the way it changes investigation and the justice system. It also illustrates the bureaucracy that drives the justice system on a day-to-day level, and the hard realities of the limited resources they have. The technical details also establish Turow as someone with credible insider knowledge of the practice of law and the criminal justice system.

“What is occurring on these galaxian visits to other planets of human learning is unknown to me. No doubt she would share her newfound knowledge if I asked. But over time I have lost the ability even to pretend high interest, and Barbara regards my dullness to these matters as a failing. It is easier to maintain my own counsel, while Barbara roams the far-off realms.”

This quote illustrates the main tension between Rusty and Barbara, which they will not surmount by the end of the novel. Their dynamic is established as one where each of them has a far-reaching independent life that is completely separate from the other. Rusty doesn’t know Barbara’s mind, and while he admires her, he is also intimidated and so withdraws. His reference to her visits to “other planets” shows how distant and inferior he feels when confronted with his wife’s intellect.

“A fine trial lawyer always has a latent message to the jury, too prejudicial or improper to speak aloud, whether it’s a racist appeal when black victims identify white defendants or the no-big-deal manner that a lawyer like Stern takes when the crime is only an attempt. In this case, Sandy wanted the jury to know that her husband forgave Colleen McGaffen, and if he could, why couldn’t they do that too?”

Rusty shares more insider information with the reader, in this case connecting to the theme of Performance’s Role in Courtroom Strategy. Turow uses the example of the McGaffen case that Rusty and Carolyn worked together to do two things at once: establish the backstory between Rusty and Carolyn and offer more information about courtroom strategy. The McGaffen case also serves as the reader’s introduction to Alesandro Stern, or Sandy, who will end up being Rusty’s lawyer.

“People of my generation and social stratum do not like cops. They were always beating our heads and sniffing for dope. They were unenlightened. So when I became a prosecutor I started from some distance behind which, in truth, I have never made up. I’ve worked with policemen for years. Some I like; more I don’t. Most of them have two failings. They’re hard. And they’re crazy. They see too much; they live with their nose in the gutter.”

Rusty reminds the reader of his working-class background by referring to his generation, growing up in the 1950s in what he calls an “ethnic neighborhood.” He also shows how this attitude affects his career, in which he works closely with cops every day. Rusty’s character is developed as smart and insightful about human character and behavior, and he sees how a cop’s work would necessarily affect their entire worldview.

“Twelve and a half years after he got started talking about revolutionizing the idea of law enforcement, and a year too late for the best interests of us both, Raymond Horgan has finally pulled the plug. It is now all someone else’s problem. And to the little incubus that argues that principles and issues are involved, there is, after twelve years, an exhausted man’s reply. Ideas and principles are not foremost here.”

Raymond has just told Rusty that he knows he is going to lose the election, and he seems at peace with the idea. Rusty’s perspective on Raymond at this moment highlights both the idealistic passion with which Raymond started his career and the jaded “exhausted” leader’s view of politics. Turow again here emphasizes the bureaucratic nature of the justice system, and how it forces participants to leave their idealism and passion behind.

“Now I think of Pandora, whom as a child I always confused Peter Pan, opening her box and finding that torrent of miseries about.”

Here, Rusty references Pandora and Peter Pan, conflating the two with a subtle sense of absurdism. While Pandora, in a Greek myth, opened a box containing evil and released it into the world, Peter Pan is an eternal child choosing to live in Never-Never Land. Both references are apt in the context Rusty is using them, to explain his relationship with Carolyn.

“Did other men, as boys, dream about their sons? I looked twenty years ahead with passion and with hope. As I always saw him, my son was a gentle, obedient soul. He was good; he was full of virtue and skill. Nat is not like that. He is not a bad boy. That’s a song around our house. Barbara and I have been telling each other that since he was two. Nat is not, we say, actually, we say, a bad boy. And I believe that. Fervently. And with a heart engorged with love. He is sensitive. He is kind. And he is wild and distracted. He has been on his own schedule since the time of his birth.”

Rusty often reflects on his relationships with his father and son Nat throughout the novel. He is devoted to Nat, but here he alludes to something unpredictable and unknown that that he doesn’t understand. Rusty’s expectations of Nat are bound up in his own childhood, and his expectations of himself are tied to his own father, who he feared.

“We’ve got the print results. The ones you never could remember to ask for. And they’re your prints on the glass. Yours. Rožat K. Sabich. Right on that glass on the bar. Five feet from where the woman was found dead. Maybe you didn’t remember at first that all county employees get printed.”

In the final pages of Part 1, Turow offers the first major twist of the novel, upholding the conventions of the legal thriller genre. The twist is the fact that they have evidence that makes them believe that Rusty is the killer in the case he’s investigating. However, another twist also takes place—Rusty, who Turow has presented as the consummate prosecutor, a well-respected insider, is now in the position of defendant. This perspective shift will challenge Rusty during his trial, but his experience on the other side will also prove to be an advantage.

“‘Don’t panic. Defense lawyers have a name for what you’re feeling. They call it clong.’

‘What’s clong?’

‘Clong is the rush of shit to your heart when you see the state’s evidence.’”

Here, Turow offers a specific example of how Rusty’s perspective shift also involves a shift from insider to outsider. He knows nothing about the defense side of the courtroom. Each side has slang and insider knowledge, and “clong” is one example of something commonplace to a defense lawyer but not even recognized by a prosecutor.

“Larren Lyttle. Raymond’s old partner, the defense lawyer’s dream. I am lightheaded. Kemp reaches back and with no other movement squeezes my hand. Molto actually groans. I am pleased to see that up on the bench Judge Mumphrey for an instant seems to smile.”

This comment shows the small world of the Kindle County justice system, in which everyone’s biases and quirks are well known. Lyttle is connected to Raymond, Rusty’s boss, and further, every lawyer in the room knows Lyttle’s character. Mumphrey’s smile at the end also indicates that Mumphrey and Rusty know each other well and he is on Rusty’s side. They take care of their own, even when they are being prosecuted by their own.

“Certainly I value loyalty and commitment, kindness and attention, when they are shown. Her instants of selfless love, so focused upon me, are balm for my abraded ego. But it would be phony and hollow if I were to claim that there are not also moments when I despise her. The injured son of an angry man, I cannot fully master my vulnerabilities to her blackish moods.”

Rusty is thankful for Carolyn’s support, but at the same time, he hates her for it. At the end of the novel, Rusty reveals that at this point in the story, he already knew that Carolyn had killed Barbara, which contextualizes his anger differently. However, with that anger comes the inevitable comparison to his father, who abused and terrified Rusty as a child, connecting to the theme of The Effect of Parenting on Adult Children.

“My dream is still clear to me: my mother’s face in agony; that worn cadaverous image as she neared the end, and worse, her look of lost, unspeaking terror. […] My mother, who was phobic about venturing beyond our apartment building or the shop who had to begin her preparations early in the morning if she was going to depart her home sometime that afternoon, who from the time I was eight sent me to the market so that she could avoid leaving the house.”

Rusty dreams about his mother often and had a very close relationship with her when he was a child. He gradually builds a picture of a woman who isolated herself, especially in the face of his father’s abuse. One reason he worries about being his father is that throughout the novel, he highlights the similarities between his mother and Barbara, including the fact that they both rarely leave home.

“Not much is like the first day of a murder trial. Sunup on the morning of battle; Christians against lions back in Rome. Blood is in the air. Spectators have crammed themselves into every linear inch available along the public benches.”

Turow compares the first day of a trial to larger, more epic events like war to build a sense of the spectacle of a murder trial. He shows his heightened sense of the importance of the event, where “blood is in the air,” and then shifts from war to the crowded bustle of the actual courtroom. Rusty has been a part of murder trials before, but not from the defense perspective, and while he has always thought of it as a “battle,” now he is emotionally involved and grasps its importance in a new way.

“I keep getting the feeling that Nico is out of place emotionally. He is not oriented in this case—like offering me his hand on the day of the arraignment. He has never been the kind of person to make a frontal approach to unpleasantness, especially once someone has reached him. […] I dry my hands. I realize now what it is. Nico still wants me to like him. God, human beings are so strange. And maybe Nico even has his redeeming side. Horgan at his moment would be as cold as a saber’s edge. It seems pointless at this little minute to resist him. I smile a bit. I use his nickname.”

Throughout the trial, Rusty constantly reads Nico’s state of mind. Nico is Rusty’s foil and though they are completely different, they are bound by the experience coming up in the prosecutor’s office together. Rusty’s read of Nico emphasizes important characteristics of Rusty: he is both observant and thoughtful and has a high emotional intelligence. However, he also shows that he is willing to use these traits to his advantage—using Nico’s nickname taunts Nico and shows Rusty’s willingness to engage in manipulation, which is what makes him such a successful lawyer.

“In ruling on the motion, the judge is required to evaluate the evidence in the light most favorable to the state, meaning, for example, that for the purposes of this decision Judge Lyttle will have to accept Eugenia’s testimony, right down to her angels. However, a directed-verdict ruling is unreviewable; the state may not appeal. As a result some judges—Larren quite notoriously—use this as a device for imposing the result they favor.”

Rusty offers commentary on the technical aspects of the trial to inform the reader. This is characteristic of the legal thriller genre, which, similar to the police procedural, offers a high level of technical detail about the professions and process of the justice system. It also shows how personal bias can play out even within strict rules and procedures.

“It is all too clear: Lipranzer is a friend, willing to be misled. The jury will not fail to perceive this. It is as I always feared. The rule of equal and opposite reactions applies in the courtroom as well. Due in large part to his visible reluctance, Dan Lipranzer has been the most damaging witness against me to date.”

Rusty’s comments reflect the theme of Performance’s Role in Courtroom Strategy, in this case, with Lipranzer’s testimony as an example of what not to do. The fact that Lip, a police officer, doesn’t understand the strategy of courtroom performance is illustrated by his attempts to help Rusty, which only end up hurting him. Throughout the trial, Rusty’s status as the defendant has given him the opportunity to observe the proceedings more closely, and his comments offer readers additional insight.

“‘Well, certainly he asked you to compare these five identified prints to see if two of them might be from the same finger?’ Very good, I think to myself. Excellent. This is the kind of detail that I always overlooked as a prosecutor. I thought about the defendant, and the defendant of course thought about everybody else.”

Rusty is a defendant, but he’s also working on his own defense with Sandy. Even so, these reflections show that he still thinks like a prosecutor and is learning from Sandy. Here he points out a particular blind spot of the prosecution—as a prosecutor, he is thinking about just one person, the defendant, and trying to wrap the evidence around them, whereas the defense is looking at all other suspects as well.

“I became familiar with Grace Street projects during my fourth year as a deputy P.A. By then, I had joined Raymond Horgan’s fair-haired coterie, and he selected me to lead a large-scale police/grand-jury investigation of the Night Saints.”

Turow alludes to the Night Saints case throughout the novel as the case that made Rusty’s reputation as a prosecutor. However, Rusty doesn’t reveal the story until much later in the novel, when the Night Saints begin to intertwine with Carolyn’s B file case. In addition, the connections that Rusty made during the Night Saints case are all the people who Rusty asks for help on his own case, showing how the development of a strong network is crucial in an investigation.

“The only thing I have figured out for certain in the last hour is that this is what Kenneally didn’t want to tell me when I saw him last week. That Larren was taking. That’s what pissed off the coppers back then. The judge was doing it, too.”

Throughout the novel, Rusty is faced with layers of secrets surrounding his investigation. Paradoxically, these secrets are often common knowledge within certain communities. In the case of the B file case, Rusty discovers that everyone at North Branch knew what was happening, and yet full secrecy from the outside world was maintained.

“She was, I think, like so many of the hurt and maimed who have passed before me: the synapses and receptors were in working order on her heart and feelings—but they were overloaded by the need to give solace to herself. Her pain. Her pain! She was like a spider caught in her own web.”

Rusty has spent a lot of time thinking about his feelings about Carolyn throughout the novel. However, he hasn’t, until this point, tried to consider the source of her behavior. This is one of the first moments in the novel when Rusty views Carolyn with compassion, rather than a flat portrayal of her as merely an actor on his and other men’s lives.

“I am now a local hero. Kindle County’s Dreyfus. People regret some of the pleasure that they felt watching me be flogged. Yet it is not possible for me to forget how out of place I feel in society. The trial is still like a shell around me. I cannot reach out.”

In this quote, Rusty refers to the Dreyfus affair, a famously incendiary and divisive event in France’s history. Dreyfus was the victim of a political and judicial conspiracy that far exceeded Rusty’s situation, and by drawing a comparison between the two events, Rusty highlights the outsized reaction to his acquittal. Everyone suspicious of him now supports and even elevates him; however, remembering their treatment before his acquittal, Rusty feels like more of an outsider than ever.