Defending Jacob

by William Landay

That is the Prosecutor’s Fallacy—They are bad guys because I am prosecuting them—and Logiudice was not the first to be fooled by it, so I forgave him for being righteous.

The voice in his head was mine: Never mind how weak your case is. Stick to the system.

If they had to answer, they’d probably tell you about their rough childhoods or something. They’d make themselves the victims. That’s the usual story.”

I wanted to help him. At the same time, I wanted to get away from him.

I am ashamed to admit that I thought, Thank God. Thank God it was his kid that got taken, not mine. I did not think I could survive the loss.

I just think we flatter ourselves when we say we can engineer our kids to be this way or that way. It’s mostly just hardwired.”

She knew that my father’s ghost troubled me, but not why.

At some point as adults we cease to be our parents’ children and we become our children’s parents instead.

It is a childish realization, I admit—no one worth knowing can be quite known, no one worth possessing can be quite possessed—but after all, we were children.

That is how this little heartbreak felt: like a physical injury, deep inside my body, an internal bleeding, a nick that would continue to seep.

The man who presented himself in public as the embodiment of The Law, they thought, was in reality a publicity seeker, an intellectual lightweight, and in the courtroom a petty tyrant. Which made him the perfect embodiment of The Law, when you really thought about it.

That is how the system works. In the end, the lawyers and judges happily step aside and hand the entire process over to a dozen complete amateurs. It would be funny if it were not so perverse.

It shows up as an inflated sense of self-importance, a conviction he is special, exceptional. Rules that might apply to others do not apply to him.

Without empathy, anything is permitted. Morality becomes very subjective and flexible.

Damage hardens us all. It will harden you too, when it finds you—and it will find you.