When it comes to our understanding of crime and criminals, lawyers and novelists—and lawyers-turned-novelists—might offer the same caution: presume nothing.
At the forefront of this elite group of storytellers is attorney Scott Turow, who redefined the legal thriller with 1986’s Presumed Innocent. A breakout bestseller now largely considered a contemporary classic, the book inspired a feature film starring Harrison Ford and a more recent streaming adaptation for Apple TV with Jake Gyllenhaal. Turow has now published thirteen novels and two works of non-fiction, which have been translated into more than forty languages and sold in excess of 30 million copies worldwide. His newest, Presumed Guilty (Grand Central Publishing; January 14, 2025), is his third to feature former prosecutor and retired judge Rusty Sabich.
Sabich—twice tried for murder (in Presumed Innocent and its sequel), and twice acquitted—is living a quiet life in the Midwest, where he’s engaged to be married to school principal Bea Housley. They share a lakefront home with her and her 22-year-old son, Aaron, whom she adopted at birth. Aaron—a Black man raised in White America—is on probation for a drug offense and faces reincarceration after violating the terms to go camping with his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Mae. But things go from bad to worse when Aaron returns alone and Mae is later found dead, the victim of an apparent homicide.
Aaron is soon charged with first-degree murder, and Bea implores Rusty to represent him. Doing so would be a personal and professional quagmire, and yet Rusty— failing to find a suitable alternative, and knowing full well how hard it would be for Aaron to get a fair trial—reluctantly agrees. With Aaron’s freedom at stake, not to mention his future contentment with Bea, Rusty must put it all on the line in the hopes of winning a case that has torn the community apart—and that will have consequences regardless of the outcome.
Now, Scott Turow discusses the rules of law (and writing), race, and revisiting Rusty Sabich …
John B. Valeri: As a title, Presumed Guilty isn’t simply a callback to Presumed Innocent but an acknowledgement that perceptions can beget judgments regardless of the actual truth. Please expand on this notion and how it relates to these two stories. Also, what compelled you to revisit Rusty Sabich at this moment in time — and did you find it a calculated risk to do so given how (and when) things were left in Innocent?
Scott Turow: So many fruitful questions. Yes, perceptions are reality—until they’re not. Because my novels are more internal than some in this genre, my protagonists’ inner life often leads him/her astray. It often amazes me how frequently we blunder through life, living with wrong assumptions. But suspending judgment, reaching no conclusions at all about what is going on in the life of others, seems vaguely immoral—we need to try to understand what is transpiring outside the boundaries of our own skins. Fiction itself depends on that. As for why I went back to Rusty, I had suspected when I finished Innocent that Rusty and I were destined to spend intimate time once more. His life was so shattered at the end of Innocent that I felt he might have deserved better. As for what he’d been through, everybody in their later years has endured some stuff. Surviving cancer, loss of loved ones, time in war. Rusty has a little more unusual list to trot out on a first date—time in prison, tried twice for murder—but as he recognizes, he has an easier path than some, since it’s broadly accepted that he was framed—twice, in fact, by a vengeful prosecutor. This is yet another misperception, in some ways, the who if not the what, but he has condemned the real facts, as he understands them, to a tomb of silence.
JBV: Aaron is a Black man who was adopted into a white family immediately after birth. In what ways does his race color (some) people’s attitudes and impressions of him, no matter how subtly, and might this impact his ability to get a fair trial?
ST: I doubt that any white person in our country—certainly not this white person—can fully understand the lived experience of African Americans, as it occurs day by day, even though I am always cautious about any stereotype. I doubt racism affects all Black people equally. For some it’s a bitter fact most moments of everyday; for others, I suspect, it’s like bad weather, regrettable but something to be accepted in the category of things they can’t change. But as Aaron points out, growing up black in a white family is a special case, because the racial divide is less stark. Aaron came of age loving and being loved by his white family, which makes the prejudgments of other white people about him often more surprising and embittering. But he understands from the start that in a place like Marenago County, where most residents have had next to no exposure to African Americans, the racial prejudice, where it exists, will be strong.
JBV: How did you approach capturing the essential truth of his experience despite not having lived it yourself?
ST: First, I don’t accept that a white author could never fully recreate the experience of being black. But it’s a very steep hill to climb, starting with the number of readers who’d say to start that it can’t be done. At any rate, I was quite conscious that what I was relating, to a very large extent, were Rusty’s perceptions, not Aaron’s. Rusty knows what he’s seen—and as he says to Bea, no one in the U.S. is really well-adjusted about matters of race—but he accepts as a starting point that he has not lived with the same realities as Aaron. The last scene with Aaron in the jail delves deeply into these differences—but they are always acknowledged. And of course, I solicited the views of a reader who’d grown up in similar circumstances. She had some minor corrections but generally approved of what I’d done.
JBV: Rusty – both very much the man for the job and very much not – is understandably conflicted about defending Aaron. Tell us about the factors he must weigh in making his decision.
ST: You could not have put that better—Rusty is very much the man for the job and very much not. As a general matter, representing family members is not recommended for lawyers, because of the enormous challenges to objectivity. Can you really dispassionately judge the credibility of the client relative, who will never leave your life? In this case, Rusty has a thin veneer of protection because he and Bea are not yet married, so he has no legal relationship to Aaron. But it’s far from an ideal situation. On the other hand, in the unusual circumstances of this case, he comes with two pluses: first, as he puts it, he will work cheap, meaning he will not leave Aaron and his parents broke as a consequence of paying an enormous fee to another lawyer to conduct the trial. Second, he is far more experienced in first-degree murders trials than any other lawyer who is available in a rural area—and it’s very much the case that any attorney with a ‘city shine’ would be regarded with suspicion by a rural jury. Talk about prejudices!
JBV: Also, what are the potential consequences of this decision, and how are they inordinately heightened by his personal involvement with both Aaron’s and the victim’s families?
ST: The sharp irony is that in the end, it’s the factor that makes this a bad idea that moves Rusty to do it. He is desperate to preserve his relationship with Bea, and Bea is desperate to see Rusty take the case. He believes he has no way out. If he says no and Aaron is convicted, she will always believe he could have done better than whoever represented Aaron in the end and blame Rusty for the result.
JBV: The victim, Mae, had a history of drug abuse and erratic behavior that could be relevant to her death and who may have caused it. But bringing out those things in court opens the door to the perception (there’s that word again!) of victim blaming and/or shaming, which can be off-putting. What was your intent in presenting her character, proverbial warts, and all – and how does this speak to the broader, real-life issue of attorneys towing the line between truth and tarnish?
ST: Well, victim blaming may be looked down upon as a cultural matter, but in the courtroom it’s tried and true—and I would argue, for good reason. It is certainly the case, as Mae’s parents believe, that it seems like bringing out Mae’s problems diminish the crime, seeming to suggest that her life was ‘worth’ less. But her erratic behavior, which hardly started the day she died, also goes to explain some of the damning circumstances of the crime, like why Aaron left her behind in a sparsely inhabited area.
JBV: While conventional storytelling wisdom extols the virtues of showing the reader something rather than telling them, trials are very much about telling in order to show (and many of this book’s most dramatic moments come from what is said in court). Can you talk about this seeming conflict and how you balance the two in your writing?
ST: Well, clearly a lot gets said in court. And in terms of the circumstances of the crime, as the prosecutor perceives them, and as the defense reveals them to be, there are a lot of outright surprises (or so I hope) but as for Rusty’s emotional state, the strategy is more typical, shown more than told.
JBV: Further, tell us how Rusty’s age and reflective state of mind play into how he narrates this particular book.
ST: Rusty has never been anything other than self-conscious, a determined observer. Knowing that he is participating in a criminal trial for the last time, after a lifelong career centered in this forum, there is a lot to say—accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the shortcomings of the process. With so much at stake emotionally, his perceptions are to some extent a buffer for his feelings. He observes, rather than succumb to his dread of the outcome and the wreckage that might be his life in the aftermath.
JBV: While trials are inherently dramatic, the proceedings can also be tedious. What liberties do you allow yourself to take for the sake of story – and, using that as a point of reference, what advice would you offer to others when considering creative license with the overall integrity of a piece?
ST: Of course, when you are the lawyer trying a case every moment is dramatic, even the legal rulings that seem trivial or unintelligible to lay observers, because something is happening that you feel is important for your side—otherwise, there’d be no argument. That becomes the advantage of telling the story from the trial lawyer’s perspective, because he so often understands the stakes in moments outsiders might find boring—whether to move for a mistrial, for example, or a judge’s attitude toward an objection. I have no quarrel with the short handing of trials that is often necessary, especially in time-limited media like film. but I’ve never gone for changing the rules, maybe because I know that if I was in the audience it would totally disrupt my suspension of disbelief. I don’t go through the jury instructions conference in Presumed Guilty. but I’d never pretend that the judge doesn’t give the jury instructions.
JBV: As a former practicing lawyer, you know better than most that justice isn’t always done. What satisfaction, or wish fulfillment, does fiction allow you that real-life sometimes doesn’t?
ST: When I wrote the first draft of Presumed Innocent, I didn’t say who’d committed the crime. My excuse to myself was that was like what happens in court, where, after an acquittal especially, we don’t know who’s really guilty or how the crime occurred. That provoked a long heart to heart with myself, which took place over many months, in which I ultimately accepted that the premise of the mystery is that we can always know whodunnit and why.
JBV: Since retirement, have you found that your relationship with the work has changed? If so, how?
ST: I’m still not fully retired. I have one remaining pro bono case, which keeps me pretty engaged with the law at times. But I doubt surrendering the reins entirely will do much to change my perspectives. Being a trial lawyer is such an intense experience, that it is more or less burned into your soul like a brand. The one difference is that with less law to practice I’ve been able to write faster, which is a good outcome as you’re getting older when there still seems to be a lot to say
JBV: Leave us with a teaser: What comes next?
ST: I’m in the cogitative stage. But I believe the next book will start with a very old lawyer who consults the obituaries, as he does every day, and finds a death notice for a man he was certain had been murdered nearly fifty years before by a central figure in the old lawyer’s life.
