Two in a Million

Book Man

An intelligent prosecutor knows which points to highlight and which to dismiss as nothing more than speculation. He has to get into the jury's head and consider what the lay person, sitting there, debating the life of the defendant, wants to know. In describing Joel during his opening, Oppliger seemed to build a rapport with jurors, who listened intently as he explained why, he believed, there was a lack of forensic evidence at the crime scene.

Joel Radovcich

Joel was, Oppliger said, "a book-learned murderer who lacked practical experience."

Smart, in other words—as long as you were talking about literature or scholarship.

When it came to the street, Joel was as naive and gullible as a trained monkey.

(Which one could argue he was.)

"He was a college man. His book learning was evident at the crime scene—things like the absence of shell casings, no fingerprints, a silenced weapon."

Ah, yes ...

Oppliger knew that if he just laid out the facts as his investigators had uncovered them, Dana and Joel were going to spend the rest of their lives in prison or, possibly, end up on death row—where, some believed, a man who had sanctioned and conspired to murder his entire family belonged beside the man who did it.