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Wasn’t it true that no videotape was made because Robinson was so obviously sarcastic and spontaneously creative in his responses that the tape would have been a liability to the detectives? Wasn’t it true that many key statements in the confession were wrong, such as the way the body was mutilated, and wasn’t it true that those points that were more or less correct were easy facts to infer from all that had previously been said? Did the police immediately look for the knives that the defendant mentioned? Wasn’t it telling that no knives were found? Wasn’t it possible that Mr. Robinson included such a detail in order to convince the police and to please himself with his own manipulating intelligence? Wasn’t it true that the entire confession was justa confabulation of this detail and of that hint and proved only that the detectives had arrested the wrong man?
    It didn’t work. Nelson disagreed with each question firmly, and Morgan began to look ridiculous. The detective, a tired man with no vanity, stank of credibility, and the questions came to an end.
    Morgan then began his defense, introducing witnesses who would try to prove that the defendant had an alibi. Morgan had assembled a group of Robinson’s local bar buddies who then grunted out various lies about spending much of the night drinking. One by one they seemed sullen and uncomfortable in the chair, dullards who could be bought. It was slow going, and, as was happening with frighteningly increasing frequency, Peter’s mind floated around the room. It was dangerous to do this, he could lose the thread of questioning, but he couldn’t help himself; the conversation with Janice was plowing him under. Perhaps he’d sounded foolish and pathetic to her. He was gripped these days—in court, in the office, anywhere—by the occasionally recurring worry that he might be a clown, a great glutinous-brained clown capable only of honking courtroom verbiage, who in the great scheme of things was as guilty and as doomed as those whom he sent to prison. Society had a way of spreading around responsibility. Laws and punishments and institutions were a thin overlay on the fact of ubiquitous guilt. And, in this brief, too-honest moment, he saw the court and clogged legal system as pathetic, absurd, and that he was, too. The ruffling of documents, the somber, pressed suit, the silk tie, the hours of preparation—it was very little, nothing really, and this depressed him, for without the accoutrements of the prosecutor, he was not even a clown but another cowering hairless monkey. His skeptical pal Berger saw this, but did the other lawyers on both sides? Didn’t the women attorneys realize how pompous they looked, strutting around in women’s business dress, spouting accusations? The men—getting fatter every year—enjoying the tightness of their pants and shirts, as if they would burst their armor with righteousness. He was tired of the legal scowl, that set of the jaw and eyebrows that carried with it an entire combative outlook.
    And yet, neurotic relativist that he was, every time he walked into court he felt pride—inflated by his own cheap ego, no doubt—that he was prosecuting the worst crime a human could commit. The PhiladelphiaDistrict Attorney’s office handed down a murder charge with great reserve, and usually when the evidence was convincing beyond all reasonable doubt. To be a prosecutor was to have enormous power over the lives of individuals. To charge someone—even a nut like Robinson—with murder was grave business. Whether defendants were convicted or not, the murder charge changed their lives—if not in their own eyes, then in the eyes of those who knew them. Even the innocent were terrified by the power of the prosecutor’s office. The Philly D.A. would never sell out a murder case,
never
plea-bargain down to a major felony in return for dropping murder charges. Such an act would be blasphemous, destroy the victim’s family and police