Defending Jacob

“The voice in his head was mine: Never mind how weak your case is. Stick to the system. Play the game the same way it’s been played the last five-hundred-odd-years, use the same gutter tactic that has always governed cross-examination—lure, trap, fuck.”

Andy describes Logiudice’s prosecutorial technique. He has taught his former mentee that a trial is a game. Regardless of your faith in your case, you must play it well. The reader is left to determine whether Andy is still using this technique in the courtroom and in his narration.

“Now, this was not exactly true. I do not believe in the court system, at least I do not think it is especially good at finding the truth. No lawyer does. We have all seen too many mistakes, too many bad results. A jury verdict is just a guess—a well-intentioned guess, generally, but you simply cannot tell fact from fiction by taking a vote. And yet, despite all that, I do believe in the power of the ritual.”

Andy expresses his doubts about the legal system. He asserts that no lawyer believes the system is truly fair, or truly excellent at uncovering the truth. This helps justify his interference in Jacob’s case. This quote also establishes Andy as an unreliable narrator: he has lied under oath, so he may lie again to the reader.

“The effect was to reverse the behavior patterns you might expect to see in adults—the teens seemed evasive when honest and direct when lying—but their shifting manner set off alarm bells just the same […] I could have told them, of course, that a virtuoso liar slips the false statement in among the true ones without a flutter of any kind […]”

Andy describes Ben’s classmates. Based on their failed attempts at lying, he is immediately certain that they are hiding something. Here, he also implies that he knows how to lie successfully. This invites the reader to further doubt his assertions and to look for the false statements that have been slipped into the version of events he presents in this book.