Defending Jacob

The morning after our initial conference with Jonathan, I experienced that elusive, oxymoronic thing, a “good run.” I felt light and fast. For once, ru

I padded around the parking lot a bit. I did not have the vaguest idea where Patz’s apartment was. The buildings were plain blocks of red brick, three stories high.

I found Patz’s car, a rusting plum-colored late-nineties Ford Probe whose description I remembered from Patz’s file, among the details Paul Duffy had begun to gather. It was just the sort of car a child molester ought to drive. The vehicular embodiment of a pedophile is precisely a plum-colored late-nineties Ford Probe. Short of flying the NAMBLA flag from the ante

At the entrance to the nearest apartment building, I found the buzzer for his apartment, “PATZ, L.”

The apartment complex was begi

The idea was only just forming in my head that Jonathan’s approach was too timid. He was thinking too much like a defense lawyer, content to put the Commonwealth to its burden, win it on cross, poke a few holes in Logiudice’s case then argue to the jury that, yes, there was some evidence against Jacob but it wasn’t enough. I preferred to attack, always. To be fair, this was a misinterpretation of what Jonathan had said and badly underestimated him. But I knew-and Jonathan surely did as well-that the better strategy is to offer the jury an alternate narrative. The jurors would want to know, naturally, if Jacob did not do it, who did? We had to offer them a story to satisfy that craving. We humans are swayed more by stories than by abstract concepts like “burden of proof” or “presumed i

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Bringing in a shrink was Jonathan’s idea. It was standard procedure, he told us, to seek a “competency and criminal responsibility evaluation.” But a quick Google search revealed that the shrink he chose was an authority on the role of genetic inheritance in behavior. Despite what he had said about the absurdity of a “murder gene,” Jonathan was preparing to confront the issue if need be. I was convinced that, whatever the scientific merit of the theory, Logiudice would never be allowed to argue it to the jury. The argument was bogus, just a slicked-back, scienced-up version of an ancient courtroom trick, what lawyers call “propensity evidence”: the defendant tends to do stuff like this, so he probably did it here too, even if the prosecution can’t prove it. It’s simple: the defendant is a bank robber; a bank has been robbed-we all know what happened here. It is a way for the prosecution to tempt the jury with a wink and a nudge to convict despite a weak case. No judge would let Logiudice get away with it. Equally important, the science of genetically influenced behavior simply had not matured enough to be admitted in court. It was a new field, and the law purposely lags behind science. The courts ca

Our meetings with the shrink took place on the campus of McLean Hospital, the mental hospital where Dr. Elizabeth Vogel practiced. We met in a bare, bookless room. It was sparsely furnished with a few chairs and low tables. African masks hung on the wall.

Dr. Vogel was a big woman. Not flabby; on the contrary, she had none of the pale softness of an academic, though she was one. (She taught and researched at Harvard Medical School as well as McLean.) Rather, Dr. Vogel had broad shoulders and a great square carved head. She was olive-ski

Laurie confessed everything to her willingly, eagerly. In this Earth Mother she felt she had a natural ally, an expert who would explain Jacob’s problems. As if the doctor was on our side. In long question-answer exchanges Laurie tried to draw on Dr. Vogel’s expertise. She quizzed the doctor: How to understand Jacob? How to help him? Laurie did not have the vocabulary, the specific knowledge. She wanted to extract those things from Dr. Vogel. She seemed unaware, or maybe just unconcerned, that Dr. Vogel was extracting from her as well. To be clear, I do not blame Laurie. She loved her son and she believed in psychiatry, in the power of gab. And of course she was shaken. After a few weeks living with the fact of Jacob’s indictment, the strain was begi