Presumed Innocent

In Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow delves into the routines, habits, and strategies of criminal lawyers, both prosecution and defense. He illustrates how trying a case requires an all-encompassing strategy, in and out of the courtroom. An essential part of this strategy is performance, particularly in the courtroom. Turow highlights this aspect of legal strategy with the various lawyers’ trial performances throughout the novel.

Turow highlights the performance aspect of legal strategy by immediately centering it in the narrative. The opening lines of the Prologue address performance directly, bringing it to prominence. Rusty reflects on advice from his mentor, who told him, “You must always point, Rusty” (3). Turow also highlights performance’s importance with the fact that Rusty was told so “the day [he] started in the office […] and John White brought [him] up to watch the first jury trial [he]’d ever seen” (3). Rusty’s admission that performance is the key to a successful legal strategy sets the scene for the courtroom drama to follow, in which the strategies of both the defense and the prosecution depend on the performance element.

After establishing performance as crucial to a successful legal strategy, Turow illustrates how lawyers put performance into practice at Rusty’s trial.