Scott Turow
Subject: Presumed Guilty
Bio: American author and lawyer
Reading: Presumed Guilty is here
Darren Schwartz
Subject: Presumed Guilty
Bio: What Happens Next culture critic
Transcript:
Larry Bernstein:
Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast which covers economics, politics, and culture.
Today’s topic is Presumed Guilty.
Our first speaker is Scott Turow who is the author of the newly released courtroom thriller Presumed Guilty and the best selling book Presumed Innocent that was made into a movie and recently into a TV series. I want to learn from Scott about why the jury is biased against the defendant, how race influences the legal strategy, what it costs these days to defend in a murder case, and why you should not take the stand in your own defense.
We are also going to hear from Darren Schwartz who has recently been promoted to be the What Happens Next culture critic.
Scott, can you please begin with six minutes of opening remarks.
Scott Turow:
35 years ago, I got to ride on a rocket ship called Presumed Innocent. I had written four failed novels that never got published to the author of a number one bestseller on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 40 weeks. And as I often tell people, that if you have the chance to become a bestselling novelist, I recommend it. It's a great gig.
My life since then has been a blessed one in terms of my writing and the hero of Presumed Innocent, Rusty Sabich, changed my life. Rusty has always been a part of me, a voice that I know and recognize as my own.
15 years ago, I published a sequel to Presumed Innocent called Innocent, and I left Rusty at the end of that novel in a shattered state. He had just been released from prison. I was not happy about where I was leaving him.
The idea has been with me for many years of writing a novel about what happens in a family when a child is accused of having committed a violent crime. The way it tests the parents makes them wonder about what gross errors they have made in the upbringing of this child and that the child is innocent and will be found not to have done that.
What if Rusty's the guy? I have had a house in Southern Wisconsin for many years, and the city people are not particularly welcome in rural Wisconsin. Over decades I have seen a lot and I had the idea I am going to set a book in an area like Southern Wisconsin, Kenosha County.
You have got the idea for a book, and you start asking yourself questions like if Rusty's up here in a place like Kenosha County, what is he doing up there?
When I was up in Southern Wisconsin, I would get up on Sunday morning and go to the one local gas station that carried the New York Times and only one copy. I said to the proprietor, who comes in and buys this? I never met that woman. I have no idea who she is or what she is like. But what woman would be living in a rural place but going early to the one gas station in town that had a copy of the Sunday New York Times.
Larry Bernstein:
Remember, if she shows up late, you took the copy, and she does not get it.
Scott Turow:
Exactly. And I am sure that happened to her more than once. These are the swirling dust that becomes my own imaginative cosmos.
And the final ingredient was if Rusty's living in a house with a young man who gets accused of a crime, it would be interesting if he had to be a defense lawyer because in the life, I have given him, he's been a prosecutor, a judge, and an appellate court judge. The one part he has not played in the criminal justice drama is as the defense lawyer. When he decides that he is going to take up his stepson's defense, I will have played every speaking part in the courtroom except the clerk who calls out to start things here.
Larry Bernstein:
In all your books, the jury plays a trivial role. And have you ever thought about expanding the proceedings from the jury's perspective?
Scott Turow:
It is an interesting idea. I was a prosecutor for eight years. My first big case was the trial of William J. Scott who was at that point, the sitting Attorney General of the State of Illinois. I was the junior prosecutor on that case for the US Attorney Tom Sullivan, who Scott had publicly promised that he was going to ruin.
Tom hired jury consultants. Tom was one of the finest trial lawyers I ever saw. He had been a partner at Jenner & Block for many years before he was appointed the US Attorney. He was one of those iconoclastic trial lawyers with a style you could never imitate. He was like a severe school principal in the courtroom.
He hired this jury consultant. We begin jury selection, and the basic advice of the jury consultant is you want suburban women because they will be offended by the grimy routine nature of what goes on in the life of a political office seeker who is asking people for money. In Bill Scott's case for cash that he stuck in a safe deposit box. The first woman is called about 60 years old from Barrington.
She listens to the judge's questions, and as soon as they are done, Tom stands up and says, your Honor, we excuse juror number four with thanks. He spent all this money on a jury consultant. I said, Tom, she is perfect, just who Jay told us to pick. And he said, I did not like her. And the reality is that a guy like Tom Sullivan who had succeeded in the courtroom for decades knew intuitively what jurors would respond to his style and to this case and to hell with the jury consultant and their categories.
But in Presumed Guilty, there is a jury consultant and he told Rusty places north of Kenosha County there is one person in 50 in that county is African American and they don't know black people.
This is not a case where you are looking for an acquittal because given those statistics, it is going to be hard to get 12 people in the box who will see this case without prejudice. What you are looking for is the one person who will hang the jury. And because when a defense lawyer gets a hung jury, he is one step closer to taking his client out of the courtroom door because a second trial is always harder for the prosecution.
Larry Bernstein:
Race plays an important role in the novel, and it seems like you have it both ways. You just mentioned that you assumed racial animus in the community, but all the facts in the novel suggest otherwise.
Aaron, the African American youth, is adopted by white parents. He is loved by them. He meets his love interest for life in junior high school and their love is reciprocated. His best friend is a young white woman. Rusty loves him. When the police officer sees him near the crime scene, he is completely oblivious to the fact that he could even be considered a suspect. I know there is this latent assumption that there's racism in Northern Wisconsin, but there was no actual racism in the book.
Scott Turow:
Well, yes and no. I have never met anybody who thinks that they bear racial animosity. Following the George Floyd murder people talked about being anti-racist. It is extremely hard to be a white American without having shared the experience of being African American without being somewhat polluted by various assumptions.
Race, it is not a plus. As Rusty says to him, do I think this case would be tried the same way if you were sitting behind a screen in the courtroom and the jurors did not know what color you were? No, I will never believe that. That is an American reality. What he ultimately argues to Aaron, there's abiding prejudice against African Americans in the white community, but almost every white person he knows is racist to a degree and in a different way.
Aaron, he is presumed guilty because he's Black in a predominantly white area.
Mae, the woman who is alleged to have been killed, is the daughter of a politically powerful family in that area. Her father is the prosecuting attorney in Skagen County to the south and a longtime colleague of the prosecutor who is bringing the case in Marengo County, and they like grieving families, often are all too eager to believe that Aaron's responsible. To some extent because of their influence over the law enforcement system preordained that result.
Larry Bernstein:
Just to push back. The boyfriend, the husband, they are always the chief suspect.
Scott Turow:
The circumstances of this case, Aaron goes off with the woman comes back alone, hitchhiking. He has got her phone with him, which he has got some lame explanation about why he has got it. It is clear she did not give it to him voluntarily. So, there is some fight. It is hardly crazy that he becomes a suspect.
Larry Bernstein:
Who else can be your suspect?
Scott Turow:
Well, the novel goes through several other possibilities, including the one that the prosecutor's worst enemy, Mr. Stranger Danger, the guy who just comes along and ends up abducting her and ultimately killing her.
A well-functioning justice system is not going to accuse many innocent people of serious crimes. The jurors of citizens of this country know that most of them are guilty.
When they arrive in the courtroom, the judge says, this guy's presumed innocent. And they nod and they say bullshit. I know the odds are nine out of 10 that he did it. So that is what is stacked against any criminal defendant.
Larry Bernstein:
There is a question of whether Aaron will take the stand in his own defense. Rusty discourages him, but he will not hear it. He wants to do it. Is that how it works between a client and his defense lawyer? I would imagine that the defense lawyer would say, you are not going to the stand, I am sorry. How often does that relationship work in a way that is the defense lawyer defers?
Scott Turow:
It is always the defendant's decision, and the law began to evolve in the last 40 years to the point that a defendant who decides not to testify must stand up in open court and be admonished by the judge who will tell him, you understand Mr. Jones, the Constitution of the United States gives you the right to testify. Your lawyer says you do not want to testify. Is that true? Do you understand that you are waiving your constitutional right to tell those people who are going to decide your fate of what happened?
Larry Bernstein:
In the novel, Rusty mentions that the cost of the defense is a lot and they had to cut corners. And I want to push back on that. In this case, his mother's a principal at a high school. Wisconsin principal makes around $135,000 a year. She has significant savings. Her son is in the trial for his life and luckily for her and for Aaron, Rusty is going to do this case pro bono. And so, what are the expenses? They have an investigator doing some work on the side.
Scott Turow:
Yeah, she is working 60 hours a week.
Larry Bernstein:
Let us make the math easy and make it a hundred dollars an hour. That is $6,000 a week.
Scott Turow:
We have got 12 weeks and now it's $72,000 just for the investigator.
Larry Bernstein:
And this is the part where I thought you were overzealous on expense minimization. Aaron would have benefited from experts in fiber analysis, maybe a forensic pathologist.
How much would it cost to get a fiber expert and a forensic pathologist? Those are the two experts that you said they could not afford.
Scott Turow:
Let's talk about the forensic pathologist because that's discussed in the novel. So Rusty is ultimately referred by his old defense lawyer, Sandy Stern, to a famous pathologist, a white haired, avuncular older gentleman who is frequently seen on TV, and he agrees to meet with Rusty for the discounted rate of a thousand dollars an hour. But that forensic pathologist $2,500 an hour in court. His day on the stand would cost $20,000 just to start. That is not the prep time. That is not the independent research that she or he would have to do into the facts of the case. If you could get a forensic pathologist in this case for a hundred thousand dollars after taxes, Larry. Mom may make $135,000 a year, but she cannot earn in a single year what it costs to pay that forensic pathologist.
And again, we are ignoring the fact that probably the biggest reason Rusty agrees to defend his future stepson is because he is going to work cheap. He is not going to charge the woman he loves. I cannot imagine a murder case getting tried for less than $300,000 or $400,000 by a defense lawyer. And it is easy as you go through these numbers to see how the cost of defense is going to literally bankrupt that family.
The only obvious source of money to pay the probably close to a million dollars that it would cost for Aaron’s defense is for Bea to invade her IRA. In other words, she is not going to have any money for her retirement. Probably the same thing with her ex-husband, and even then, they would end up owing the lawyer money. So legal fees for private counsel are crushing for middle class people, and yet you certainly do not want to go to court in a murder case with anything other than the best. It is brain surgery. As Rusty says you want an experienced hand. The last murder case that was tried was defended by the public defender's office. But here is the rub, the public defender at that time was the judge who is now presiding on this case. So that is your one experienced public defender, and she is obviously unavailable. I do not think I stacked the deck too much of presenting what would face a defendant like Aaron, the family would go into debt to finance his defense. And most of the time he will end up getting convicted anyway.
Larry Bernstein:
Before the trial starts, Rusty meets with the grandfather of the victim and he says, if you do this Rusty, our relationship is lost. Is that true that relationships cannot last when they're doing their job?
Scott Turow:
The victim Mae Potter is named for her grandfather. She is wild and troubled, but also brilliant like her grandfather and has always been close to him. And he says to Rusty, I know how these things go. You tear down the victim; you blame the victim. That is how this always goes in a murder case. Declarant is under full assault. The grandfather's a wonderful lawyer and he sees what is going to happen. You are going to try this case by putting Mae on trial and saying she was a drug user, a tramp, she got around that she is so eccentric and often mean that there were a lot of other people in town besides Aaron who would want to kill her.
Larry Bernstein
Come on, who else could it be?
Scott Turow:
That is what Rusty's job is. To answer that question, who else could it be? How many other people hated Mae Potter's guts? Well, it turns out there are quite a few including somebody within her own family. So, there you go. And that is what Mansy anticipates is going to happen.
Larry Bernstein:
He anticipated he would not be able to get over it.
Scott Turow:
Why would you ever forgive the former friend of yours who stood in court and sullied your dead granddaughter's reputation to the point that that is how she is now remembered in public memory.
Larry Bernstein:
My grandfather wrote his memoirs and the publisher said, is it possible you could add some sex. Scott, you often have sex in your books. What's driving this? I also noticed that in the original Presumed Innocent, it was more descriptive of sex. Tell us about putting sex in your novels.
Scott Turow:
I read a review this morning, which was quite laudatory of the book, but it said, the one thing I just did not like was how brief the sex was. And he used the word priggish. The sexual descriptions work, the narrator sounded like he had a stick up his behind.
I am the nephew of a psychoanalyst. I grew up in Freudian theory. Sex and sexuality are constant human preoccupations. And we could spend the rest of today going through the people who have been ruined by their inability to control their sexual appetites.
I was amused that I who have often been accused of lingering too much on sexual matters and being too florid in my descriptions of it. This one reviewer was disappointed that he did not get more.
Larry Bernstein:
Going back to the previous point about looking past to maintain friendship. I had Trent Lott speak at one of my book clubs, the former Senate Majority Leader, and he was responsible for the Clinton trial. After it went for a vote and Clinton survived, the next day Trent Lott received a gift from Bill Clinton. It was a box of cigars, which happened to have been a play on what had happened during the trial. Lott laughed, picked up the phone, and called the president and said, thanks for the cigars. And Clinton said, I look forward to doing business with you. Have a nice day. So maybe there is something special about Bill Clinton's willingness to look past, but that most human beings cannot.
Scott Turow:
I think that's true, Larry. Most people cannot look past. Clinton was a pro and so was Lott. And there were a lot of body blows delivered in politics.
Larry Bernstein:
When I first read Presumed Innocent, I did not know you. I was amazed at the breadth of your knowledge and understanding of the world. But when I read this book, now that I am a friend of yours, I am like Scott's just writing about stuff he knows. This is where he lives in Wisconsin. That is the local gas station where he buys the Times. These are his friends. How much of Kindle County is just your life?
Scott Turow:
A lot. My friend Ann Patchett wrote this magnificent novel Bel Canto about an affair between an opera singer and a Japanese executive, neither one of whom can speak the other's language and an affair conducted as they are being held hostage in a South American embassy. This impossible relationship is so compelling. It is a wondrous work of the imagination. But I have read another novel of bands, Tom Lake that I bet is much closer to her lived experience. And that is what writers do. They embroider on the tapestry of their own life. I have had an interesting career, a lot of great cases, and they gave rise to amazing stories. So, the Chinese say it's a curse, may you live in interesting times, but it's also an advantage for a writer.
Larry Bernstein:
Presumed Guilty is one of your best books. Where you find your mojo is in the trial scenes. Character development is most successful when there's dialogue between parties. You have two approaches. One is descriptive when you are describing someone versus based on the dialogue that was represented. I now understand this person and how she thinks.
Scott Turow:
Henry James’s old injunction to novelists is show, do not tell. And certainly, that is the most involving to the reader where they are making the judgments that the author hopes they are making.
Larry Bernstein:
When I tell stories-
Scott Turow:
You tell great stories.
Larry Bernstein:
I use dialogue, but I get complaints.
Scott Turow:
You should do a podcast just Larry telling stories.
Larry Bernstein:
Often the complaint is everyone in the story speaks like you, even the five-year-old girl. But you do not fall into that trap. Tell us about using dialogue to show, not tell, and how you make it in a way so that they all do not sound like Scott though Rusty does.
Scott Turow:
Rusty admittedly does. You have certain blessings as a writer. And David Kelly who wrote the scripts for Presumed Innocent, says I just hear the characters talking. People cannot understand how David is so productive, but if you realize that it does not require any thought for him to hear these characters talking to each other, that as soon as he is conceived of the situation.
Larry Bernstein:
The scene writes itself.
Scott Turow:
And very often that is what happens for me. I hear these people talking and I think my way through these scenes through their conversation. And I do not hear them speaking to one another in the same voice. I hear very distinct voices.
Larry Bernstein:
Your novels generally have closure.
Scott Turow:
Yep.
Larry Bernstein:
And life does not.
Scott Turow:
True.
Larry Bernstein:
Why do you have closure? Is something that the audience demands? I got to know who did it and how. Can we say, I do not know? It was not this fella, but I do not know what happened. Why can't you end it like that?
Scott Turow:
I spent a long-time writing Presumed Innocent because I was working full time as a prosecutor. I spent the last week trying to write the end of the book. My initial inclination was to say, who knows? We do not know who did it. There are all these possibilities that the novel raises. Maybe it was the judge, maybe it was the prosecutor, maybe it was Raymond Horgan, Rusty's boss. There are a lot of people who might have killed Carolyn. We are just going to leave it like that because that is what happens when there is a not guilty in the case. That is what a not guilty verdict means. We do not know. Not only does the jury not know, but we do not know. But a crime happened. Unfortunately, 12 people were unable to figure it out. And that is the verdict. We do not know.
I realized that the mystery novel depends on knowing who done it, that it may be a reduced version of reality. And for that reason, perhaps a lesser form, but it is imperative that the mystery like the law try to answer the question of why evil happened. And it is not just the identity that is essential to the mystery novel, it's also the motive. You've got to understand why would somebody do this? And the answer is whatever the mystery novel is supposed to provide. And that I decided is a prerequisite for the form.
Larry Bernstein:
It is a weakness too. So maybe not so much in the novel, but take Presumed Innocent the movie where the killer articulates why the individual has committed the murder? It seems bizarre that this character would say it in that way to Rusty. Do you feel like it is a weakness of the form?
Scott Turow:
It depends how well you handle it. Presumed Guilty ends with a compelling discussion between the guilty parties. It is extremely hard to look at human beings and say really bad things happen. And we just do not know why. Almost all of us want to live in a universe where there's causality where bad things happen for a reason, and we do not want to say it is just random. Nobody knows why that happened. The mystery novel presumes something bad has happened and it takes upon itself the job of restoring order to the world. And I do not think it is essential that the guilty be punished in a good mystery. They can get away. But who and why? Yeah, that is essential because it restores our sense of an ordered universe.
Larry Bernstein:
We did a book club together with Judge Richard Posner, and it was your novel Innocent, and Judge Posner's book Law and Literature. And the essence of his book is that literature provides a much better angle to appreciate the nuances of legal theory and legal practice. And Judge Posner said, I can only discuss the facts in this case. In literature, we can play with the facts to highlight the stress points. Tell me how you think about using literature to enhance the understanding of the law.
Scott Turow:
Law and literature, it is a subject taught at most major law schools now. And there's good reason for that. The law maintains an extraordinary facade about its own rectitude, its own objectivity, its own imperiousness to emotion. And what literature does is not only give you great insight into Iago and Othello, but it explains that the institutions of the law are often hobbled by the limitations of human beings.
Certainly, that is what goes on in my novels. I tell my audience two things. This is a noble institution. It is a positive achievement of humanity that we have generally agreed in the Western cultures to govern ourselves by law. And it is constantly fucked up by human nature and the imperfectness of human beings.
It also becomes an interesting way to look at the language of the law itself and how restricted it is compared to the language of the poet, the novelist, or the dramatist.
Larry Bernstein:
Judge Posner mentions that the French courtroom is different than the American courtroom in that the goal is truth seeking. That the prosecutor and the judge, have a duty to find out what happened, find out the truth. The judge is not an arbiter or an ombudsman but is actively seeking to find out what is going on. And the prosecutor's duty is more than to get the guilty party, but to ascertain whether he is in fact innocent or not and feels obligated to dismiss a case.
In Presumed Guilty, that is clearly not the case. There is a scene where Rusty goes to the district attorney and says, he did not do it, drop it. And he says, no, we have empaneled these 12 people. Let them decide. I am not going to get in the middle of that. You can sense the distinction between truth seeking as a French ideal and the common law practice of adversarial relations coming to truth seeking in that form. How do you think about literature enhancing the appreciation for that distinction?
Scott Turow:
We have this adversarial system, and we believe that both sides will put forth their version of what happened. And from that, a neutral party, the fact finder, be it judge or jury, will come to some agreement as to what's the truth. Even if the truth is we just don't know.
But that is not the literary model. The literary model is we can know. This is my defense of the mystery novel; all literature depends on the convention that we can know why people do what they do. That's why we read literature. That is what every book, play, and poem is about, is why do we do what we do?
Larry Bernstein:
Immediately following your podcast will be a discussion with Darren Schwartz. This is going to expand Darren's responsibilities beyond being the movie critic for What Happens Next to being a culture and literary critic as well. Do you have any misgivings about using Darren Schwartz in this additional capacity?
Scott Turow:
Darren is a smart guy and almost always has a unique take on things.
Larry Bernstein:
I asked Darren, is there a question that you would like to ask Scott?
He said there were three new characters added to the Kindle County repertoire. Aaron, Mae, and Bea and all have names that contained two vowels in a row. Is there a backstory on that decision?
Scott Turow:
I went around Bea's name from draft to draft. At one point she was Beata. It was supposed to be something chosen by her German mother. And my daughter read that draft where she was Beata and said, I cannot stand novels where I do not know how the character's name is pronounced.
Make it something simpler. I did not think so much about the AA in Aaron, although I have always been struck by that. Why is that name spelled like that in English? Other languages do not spell the biblical Aaron with two As. So, tell Darren that as usual, he is seen something that only he would see, and I am grateful to him for noticing, but I have no answer as to why.
Larry Bernstein:
Thanks Scott let’s now go to our second speaker who is Darren Schwartz who is the What Happens Next culture critic.
Scott Turow’s book, what did you think?
Darren Schwartz:
I thought it was fantastic. It hooked me early on. The character development was strong and there was a very intricate courtroom drama with lots of twists and turns, and in Scott Turow fashion, he pulls it off magnificently and I was left thinking, wow, that was a powerhouse.
Larry Bernstein:
I agree. This is one of his best books because Rusty is his strongest character, and Scott admitted just a minutes ago, that he is his alter ego.
Scott has suggested that this could be his last book. Do you believe him?
Darren Schwartz:
I don't believe him.
Larry Bernstein:
I don't either.
Darren Schwartz:
I don’t know if Scott's going to do gardening.
Larry Bernstein:
Adrian his wife is the gardener. He just observes and that's not full-time work.
Darren Schwartz:
He’ll be sitting around practicing some sand shots, wedges, not a bad idea for him. And what's he going to do? He's got the juice after this book. There’s no way someone reads this book and says, ‘this guy is in his twilight’. He’s just ramping up. Yeah, no way.
Larry Bernstein:
I hear jewelry bouncing around. Are you wearing jewelry?
Darren Schwartz:
Yeah, I can take it off.
Larry Bernstein:
I think you should. Would that be a lesson? No jewelry on the show?
Darren Schwartz:
Okay. I’ll take it off with the agreement that you include this exchange on the podcast so people can see how oppressive and heavy handed you are. It’s off.
Larry Bernstein:
Rusty's love interest. He meets her at a gas station fighting over the New York Times. How do you feel about this to meet women?
Darren Schwartz:
Anytime you meet a woman, and you’re fighting, it's a good start. If someone likes the New York Times and you find someone who’s that passionate about your same choice of cultural news, go for it.
Larry Bernstein:
The gas station used to have lots of copies available of the New York Times but dropped it to one and that reflects the movement to online.
Darren Schwartz:
A technology person would describe that person as a laggard, in terms of technology adoption.
Larry Bernstein:
I'm a laggard. I was the last Blackberry user.
Darren Schwartz:
Something interesting about Scott, and you referenced it in your interview, is that that your stories, and there are a lot of them, all the characters are you. Even when you tell a story about me, I become you. But Scott does not. He has characters in their mid-twenties and he’s using language that someone in their earlier to mid-twenties uses. When Aaron's on the stand describing Mae, he says the first time he saw her he ‘was slain’, and describing her beauty- ‘she was lit’. If you’re young and in love, ‘everything is just mid except that person’. I don’t’ think Scott talks like this.
Larry Bernstein:
I've never heard Scott use those words before in conversation.
Darren Schwartz:
I've never heard him say, “Darren, that golf shot was lit man”. Or “Larry, your putting is very mid today”, which if he said it would be accurate.
Larry Bernstein:
He said stuff like “Man, who taught you how to putt?”
Darren Schwartz:
Yeah, but not mid or lit or slain. It’s obvious that there’s an edgy part of Scott, and you wouldn't think it.
Larry Bernstein:
Rusty was surprised at how Aaron was doing on the stand. Do you think that Scott interfered in the normal interchange of dialogue and put a bit of his lawyer audio into his repertoire.
Darren Schwartz:
It did seem at times like ‘Wow, Aaron's really polished’. I think that’s what you’re saying, right?
Larry Bernstein:
In other words, he fell into the Larry Bernstein trap of, in a Larry Bernstein story everyone sounds like Larry Bernstein, including a five-year-old girl. I’m pushing back because when Aaron was on the stand, he sounded like Scott.
Darren Schwartz:
No, I disagree. I think what it shows is that Aaron was a really sharp guy who fell into some drugs, and things like that which took him sideways. I think what you're seeing come out is the best Aaron that did exist. And Rusty did a really good job prepping him and bringing that out on the stand. No, I don't think Scott has ever been an adopted, African American country kid with a meth problem.
Larry Bernstein:
I don't agree with you.
Let's move on to sex. There are discussions about sex or descriptions of sex in Scott's books. How do you think Scott uses sex appropriately or inappropriately in his novels? He was mentioning that someone referred to his latest novel, the sex made him look priggish. That is a word I don't often hear. What do you think about the application of sex in Scott’s novels?
Darren Schwartz:
Scott's use of sex has a shock factor to it. Although this book is far less graphic than Presumed Innocent.
Larry Bernstein:
We have mutual friends who talk about sex, and we have friends that don't. Where does Scott fall in that?
Darren Schwartz:
I have never had an in-depth conversation about sex with Scott. But Scott does talk about it in his books. In real life, he's been a US attorney, a very standup guy, someone that you would say seems to walk a straight line, but there's clearly an edge there, at least creatively.
Larry Bernstein:
Rusty is in his seventies involved in an intimate relationship with a woman who's 15 to 20 years younger and that makes sexual relations a little confusing. How do you think about Rusty's relationship, particularly from the sexual perspective because he is older?
Well, you are older, you should be able to understand this.
Darren Schwartz:
I don't understand. Are you asking me to comment on the fact that Rusty is 20 years older than his fiancé?
Larry Bernstein:
That is correct.
Darren Schwartz:
I think it depends on your age. If you’re 42 and your girlfriend's 20 then it’s an eyebrow raiser. If Rusty's 75 and the woman he’s dating is 57, the percentage is much lower. You’re basically the same age.
Larry Bernstein:
Well, the French have that rule (N/2)+7. I do not know if you know it.
Darren Schwartz:
I have heard that.
Larry Bernstein:
An example, if the age of the man is 40, you divide by two and add seven, that is 27. So, 40 and 27 is fine. And for 70 it would be 35 plus seven or 42, that takes care of that strangeness around that 40 and 20 problem. How do you think about (N/2)+7 as a guiding rule for older males?
Darren Schwartz:
It seems like you wind up with someone who’s much younger, and I’m not sure you know what to talk about, but maybe that’s not the point.
Larry Bernstein:
How do you feel about dialogue as a way of learning about pushing the narrative forward?
Darren Schwartz:
It's a preference on based on the storyteller, and I think we differ a little bit in this case with Presumed Guilty. It was a long build before you get to the trial, and I think the character development pretrial was, to a certain extent, in depth. That plants the seeds and then when you get to the trial it really brings to life the character development that occurred early on. So, in this case I think it was wonderful.
Larry Bernstein:
Some the best aspects of Scott's book is it brings us into into the vagaries of the law. In this we learned about jury selection, use of fiber, maybe some technicalities or forensic pathology. What did you learn you didn't know about, what were you excited to learn about on aspects about the law?
Darren Schwartz:
One of the things I learned is how often the defense will just rest after the prosecution rests, without calling any witnesses. I looked it up—that happens 30 to 40% of the time. They’ve prepped witnesses, they’ve done investigation, but they’ll say, ‘The bar for being convicted is beyond a reasonable doubt. We don’t think they’ve done that, and if we put our people on the stand, there could be a risk. We’re done.
Larry Bernstein:
A lot of time in the novel was trying to decide whether Aaron should take the stand in his own defense. Darren, if you were in the trial for your life, would you insist on taking the stand or would you be concerned about you as a witness?
Darren Schwartz:
I would be concerned about going too far afield in my attempts to impress and gain acceptance from the audience. And that’s my point, I would consider it an audience.
Last thing I should ever do. I would object, I would do my own objections.
Larry Bernstein:
“Answer the question. Are you sorry. Yes, or no?”
Darren Schwartz:
“I object, your honor”.
That’s something else you learn in the book–how risky it is to put the defendant on the stand to testify in their own defense, because as we saw here, the prosecutor can pick you apart —all they need to do is get one little turnabout, “Didn't you say this?”, or “Well, now isn't that a lie?”
But alternatively, when somebody chooses to defend themselves, they believe they’re telling the truth and ‘shouldn't we believe him, because he’s taking the stand in his own defense’. And if he doesn’t, does that mean he’s guilty? It’s a big deal and I think neither of us should take the stand.
Larry Bernstein:
I agree.
Scott mentioned that he thinks that jurors do not give the presumption of innocence to the defendant because the government did not pick out some random guy. They thought this through, and they think they have got a great case. And so at least 9 out of 10 times this guy is guilty. And the whole essence of the book, the title is Presumed Guilty.
If you were called upon as a juror, would you presume innocence or would you presume guilty?
Darren Schwartz:
It’s so hard to ignore the reality that somebody is being charged with a crime, and they would be falsely accused. At the same time, you hear all the time about new DNA evidence, or new witness came forward—and someone who's been in jail for 10 years is now exonerated. But I completely agree; you walk into a court as a juror, and someone’s being charged with a heinous crime: someone has died, and their grieving family is in the audience. There’s an immediate weight towards guilty.
Let me take a bite of this lovely omelet that was prepared for me. This is delicious.
Larry Bernstein:
In the podcast for the movie Wicked, you mentioned that you left the theater to eat. This is the first time where you have left your podcast responsibilities to take a break to eat. Why is it that in your job function for What Happens Next, you are constantly struggling between your desire to eat and your desire to do the responsibilities required?
Darren Schwartz:
I can’t even push back on that. During Oppenheimer, I left for about 10 minutes to get popcorn.
Larry Bernstein:
People deal with their urges in different ways. Some people respond immediately to the first thing that comes by. You knew we had scheduled podcast and yet you were unable to get your omelet eaten before and now you take a time out to eat.
Darren Schwartz:
Asked and answered counselor.
In doing my post-reading research, I read reviews. The book comes out this week. These people had received an A.R.C. copy, which means “advanced review copy”. They all seemed very glowing.
There were several people who stated they had no knowledge of Scott Turow before the TV series Presumed Innocent, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Now they've read the book, and they plan to go back and read more of Scott Turow’s books.
Larry Bernstein:
That he pumps out a book every year or two. Is that what you mean?
Darren Schwartz:
They stated, “He doesn't produce a book every year or two”. Which is what someone said “Unlike other legal authors”.
Larry Bernstein:
A slap in the face to Grisham.
Darren Schwartz:
The implication is that Scott takes his time, and he’s not a legal paper mill. His books are thoughtful and well-crafted, and he publishes them on a methodical basis, which tells the reader that he’s taking care to weave together a powerful and captivating story.
Larry Bernstein:
What is the appropriate amount of time?
Darren Schwartz:
If you’re putting out a book every year, it’s like if you're dating three women at the same time—you’re telling the same jokes, the same stories. There is a certain exhaustion, as opposed to when you’re reading a book and it's an author that you love, but it’s been long enough where you're reminded how fresh the writing is and how unique the characters are. This is Scott's 13th fictional book.
Larry Bernstein:
Presumed Innocent came out in 1987, that's 37 years.
Darren Schwartz:
13 books. Every three years seems perfect.
Larry Bernstein:
I did a book club with a Columbia literature professor James Shapiro for his book 1599. In that one year, Shakespeare wrote four plays: Hamlet, Henry V, Julius Caesar, and the comedy As You Like It. This is our most productive English writer pulling out four masterworks in a single year. I do not think anyone looks at him as a paper mill for that production. Why can't Scott take a page from Shakespeare and just knock out four masterworks in a single year?
Darren Schwartz:
Shakespeare wrote his plays in 16th-century England, but did they get to Brazil? Whatever the audience was, it took a much longer time for them to be exposed to his works. Present day, you’ve got the internet. Boom, someone publishes, and you’re in a cave in Mongolia, and you know about it the next day, and you can read it the next day. There is an exhaustion (readers feel) because it’s a much shorter time, present day, versus when Billy Shakespeare was writing his shit. Don't come at me with Shakespeare.
Larry Bernstein:
Next topic is character development.
Darren Schwartz:
I liked Susan the investigator. She had a multicolored mohawk, rode a motorcycle, and had leather pants that plugged into her motorcycle to stay warm. Who’s ever heard of that? I don’t think Scott has leather pants that plug into anything.
Larry Bernstein:
This goes to the point about how we're always amazed what Scott seems to know about.
Darren Schwartz:
He doesn’t have friends who are in motorcycle gangs, or people that have leather pants to plug into outlets. He probably doesn’t know Mohawk people.
Larry Bernstein:
What would you want to see from Scott's next book? I suggested the vantage point of the jury. I don't think I got much traction out of Scott on that.
Darren Schwartz:
I don’t think that would be consistent with his approach, because what you would be doing is a story about how people are thinking in the jury room—what they did in 12 Angry Men. You’d have to go back and talk about their backstory: ‘What are their preconceived notions?’ ‘What are they dealing with at home that is affecting them in the jury room?’ And now you’re getting into more about emotions that are separate from what is going on in the trial.
That might be an interesting story, but there’s a reason why it hasn’t been done very often. They did a pretty good job of that in A Few Good Men, but still the big payoff was the court scene.
Larry Bernstein:
“You want me on that wall.”
Darren Schwartz:
“You need me on that wall.”
Larry Bernstein:
“Did you order the code red?”
Darren Schwartz:
“You're goddamn right I ordered it.”, “Willie Santiago was a substandard marine. He put lives at risk.”, “My existence, although grotesque”, everyone knows those lines.
Larry Bernstein:
For the last 15 years, I gave up on television and been exclusively reading books. And the demand of this podcast is just sucking up TV time. But I love TV. I watched a lot of Law and Order in my time.
Darren Schwartz:
Did you really?
Larry Bernstein:
I liked the framework. There has been a crime. The cops go down the wrong path and then they get the guy. The prosecutors show up, the trial starts, witnesses are called, the prosecutors make their final statements, the jury decides, and it's a wrap. How do you feel about mystery novels following the Law-and-Order formula?
Darren Schwartz:
It speaks to wanting to be entertained, but also to have some conclusion, some payoff. ‘I’ve invested my attention into this. Don’t be lazy and put it on me to figure out what happened at the end.’
Larry Bernstein:
In every episode of Scooby-Doo, at the end, the criminal comes forward and says, 'If it weren't for you meddling kids, we would have got away with it.' And then they explain exactly what they did. Velma makes some moral conclusion, and then it is a wrap. How do you think of the Scooby-Doo conclusion as it applies to mysteries in general and Turow’s work in particular?
Darren Schwartz:
Did you bring it up to Scott Turow that you were going to compare his works to Scooby-Doo?
Larry Bernstein:
I did not. I saved it for you Darren.
Darren Schwartz:
I do not think that you can compare Scott Turow to Scooby-Doo.
Larry Bernstein
Why not?
Darren Schwartz:
There is no talking dog. There is no Veronica. Who is the guy with the blonde hair?
Larry Bernstein:
Shaggy.
Shaggy talks to his dog. You talk to your dog all the time.
Darren Schwartz:
Well, my dog is a good listener. So no, I don't think there's a significant applicable comparison of Scott Turow’s work. He was on the cover of Time Magazine decades ago as the inventor of the legal crime thriller, and there is a sophistication that does not exist with Scooby-Doo.
I always thought Shaggy was the animated version of Gilligan. How do you feel about that?
Larry Bernstein:
Shaggy reminds me of Owen Wilson more.
Darren Schwartz:
That's fair. Do you think Owen Wilson has ever heard that?
Larry Bernstein:
No question. Owen Wilson is a modern-day Shaggy, and because Shaggy came first, Owen Wilson tailored his style to be consistent with Shaggy's. He's the copycat.
Darren Schwartz:
That’s actually very insightful.
Larry Bernstein:
Scott Turow watched Scooby before he started doing his major work.
Darren Schwartz:
I bet he didn’t.
Larry Bernstein:
You underestimate Scott's ability to interact with modern culture.
Darren, should the audience run out and read this book?
Darren Schwartz:
A hundred percent.
Larry Bernstein:
Why the delay is that 80%?
Darren Schwartz:
No, I was trying to tone it down so people didn't think that I was hyping it up too much. I have read reviews, people love it, and they’re going to go back to read more of his works. It is a wonderful book and I'm really happy to have spent time with all the characters.
Larry Bernstein:
What would you say if your child came to you and said, ‘Dad, I see you did this podcast on Scott Turow, what should I read first?’
Darren Schwartz:
One L because it speaks to creating a career that you want. He wanted to be a writer, and he had that in him. He wrote about his experience, which is memoir based. He realized he could do it and then said, ‘Okay–what’s the best form for me to apply what I’m good at and what I love?’ And that’s a message for anybody who wants to be happy in life.
Larry Bernstein:
Thanks to Scott and Darren for joining us.
If you missed our previous podcast the topic was America First. Our speaker was H. W. Brands who is the author of the book America First: Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War. Trump has said that his foreign policy will focus on America’s interests first. We need to reexamine the debate prior to America’s entry into World War 2 and hear Lindbergh’s arguments about why we should stay out of European wars.
You can find our previous episodes and transcripts on our website whathappensnextin6minutes.com. Please follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thank you for joining us today, goodbye.
Check out our previous episode, America First, here.
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