The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir

by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

The verdict was a legal contradiction. So I thought that, faced with the question of whether Ricky should live or die, the jury had refused to decide. But I have realized that I am trying to rescue a place for the un-neatness of everything that happened. Lorilei didn’t forgive Ricky, but she still didn’t want him killed. My grandfather did everything he did, and he was still my grandfather. The law—with each side’s relentless pursuit of one story—has never known what to do with this complicated middle ground. But life is full of it. I see the jury’s verdict differently now. While the verdict the jury voted is legally incoherent, what strikes me now is its elegant, human beauty. It says what cannot be true in law, but can only be true in life: that Ricky is both responsible and not. The law the jurors were presented with didn’t have room for this middle ground. They created it, as though they opened up space in the law, inventing a category that doesn’t exist. Ricky.