Summary
“The Witness” is excellent television on its own terms and suggests a potentially surprising future for the Apple TV+ adaptation.
Episode 7 of Presumed Innocent, “The Witness”, is excellent television on its own terms, but also an exciting penultimate installment since it suggests quite strongly that the finale will not stick with the ending established in the book and the 1990 Harrison Ford adaptation.
Of course, the Apple TV+ series has already deviated from the source material in many significant respects, but there was always an underlying suspicion that it would keep the same killer. And it still might! But there is a real sense of uncertainty building now as the show continues to take wild swerves away from expectation.
And it’s riveting stuff, it has to be said.
Rusty Elects To Defend Himself
Let’s start with the elephant in the room — Raymond is fine. Despite collapsing and having what seemed like a heart attack at the end of Episode 6, we learn early in “The Witness” that he had bradycardia, an abnormally slow heartbeat. Now he has been fitted with a pacemaker he won’t just make a full recovery, but he’ll be better off than he was before.
However, Raymond’s health crisis has a profound effect on Rusty’s trial. Since Rusty immediately rushed to his aid to perform CPR, Nico is worried about his heroics swaying the jury and pushes for a mistrial. Tommy won’t hear of it since he — perhaps delusionally — believes the prosecution is winning handily. Nico isn’t so sure.
But without a mistrial, the show must go on even in Raymond’s absence. Mya is willing to step up as first chair, but Rusty instead elects to represent himself with Mya as second chair. It’s an impressive moment of narcissism and tactically ill-advised, but Rusty’s insistent.
Judge Lyttle warns Rusty that in the process of representing himself, if he gives any sense of his version of events he will be eligible to take the stand as a witness and be cross-examined. This would be catastrophic given his general volatility, but he’s willing to take the risk.
The Suspects Pile Up
Rusty’s first task is to continue the cross-examination of Michael, which he uses as an opportunity to remind the jury of Liam Reynolds and the similarities of Carolyn’s murder to that of Bunny Davis, and to implicate both Michael and his father, Dalton, as potential suspects.
Michael, it turns out, didn’t just hang around outside his mother’s house like a creepy little weirdo, but also dug into her case history on true crime websites. He could have known about the circumstances of Bunny Davis’s death, in other words. And, since he saw his mother’s lover entering his mother’s house on the night of her murder and then immediately went home and may or may not have told his father, that could be a motive.
As if to prove Rusty’s point, Dalton goes ballistic and tries to rush him, right there in the courtroom.
Rusty Makes A Mistake — Or Does He?
In response to this early success, Nico suggests calling Detective Rodriguez to the stand, despite her being Team Rusty and despising Tommy. Nico volunteers himself for the cross-examination, which Tommy isn’t keen on since he doesn’t want to let go (and is delusional), but Nico insists.
Nico asks the right questions. Rusty offered Reynolds a shorter sentence in exchange for a confession; he requested that evidence in the case be kept between him and the police and not shared with Nico and Tommy; and so on, and so forth.
But Rusty counters well. He persistently maintained his innocence even in private to Rigo, it is not at all unusual for prosecutors to request evidence be kept for their eyes only, and he didn’t trust Nico and Tommy to conduct a fair investigation. In the process, though, he makes a mistake.
In asserting his innocence, Rusty opens himself up to being called as a witness. Judge Lyttle gives him the choice of a mistrial or taking the stand, and he volunteers to testify, which aggravates Mya so much that she says she’s done with him and calls him a crazy narcissist. Which, you know, he is — there’s even an implication that he deliberately finessed the situation so he could be cross-examined, which sounds about right.
Tommy Gets His Moment
Mya, despite her outburst, insists on being at Rusty’s side during his cross-examination, and so does a now medically cleared Raymond. But it’s all for naught since Tommy eats his lunch on the stand.
To be honest, Rusty gave him a layup by consistently acting like a creepy violent weirdo. All Tommy has to do is show Rusty to be an obsessive lunatic, and he is one. The messages he sent Carolyn were crazy. He assaulted Ratzer on his front porch and gripped Kumagai up by the lapels, and there is clear proof of all these things.
But Tommy is nonetheless very pleased with himself. Until that is, he goes home and finds someone has broken into his apartment, leaving behind a fireplace poker — the one used to kill Carolyn? — and a Post-It note reading, simply, “Go F*ck Yourself.”
A Final Thing…
Rusty’s reliance on Ritalin is brought up in Presumed Innocent Episode 7. I can’t remember if this has been addressed before, but either way it comes up a few times but doesn’t amount to anything. We might return to this, so keep it in the back of your mind.
Read More: Presumed Innocent Episode 8 Explained
