Who’s Presumed Guilty on Presumed Innocent?
David E. Kelley’s done it again. The former attorney and writer is back in his pulpy legal-drama bag with Presumed Innocent, the unexpectedly engrossing and extremely watchable Apple TV+ series that has helped enliven our summer of mid TV. As disgraced prosecutor and murder suspect Rusty Sabich, Jake Gyllenhaal’s forehead vein looks like it’s about to pop in every scene (complimentary). Peter Sarsgaard gives Rusty’s rival, Tommy Molto, a perfect stanky smirk that proves sometimes typecasting is good. As Tommy’s boss Nico Della Guardia, O-T Fagbenle is breaking new ground in ambiguous accent work. Real-life married couple Bill Camp and Elizabeth Marvel, playing Rusty’s former boss Raymond and his wife Lorraine, seem to be making a play for their own reality show where they just do charming character-actor things for our viewing pleasure. It’s fun! And with Presumed Innocent’s first season coming to an end next week, it’s presumably almost time to get answers to the series’s primary questions: Who tied up prosecutor Carolyn Polhemus and beat her to death, and why?
Now, there is a previously established endpoint here. The novel Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow has an ending that went mostly unchanged in the 1990 movie adaptation, a surprise blockbuster starring Harrison Ford and directed by paranoid-thriller master Alan J. Pakula. We won’t spoil that ending here, although it’s easy to find online if you’re curious. It’s important to remember, though, that while Rusty is on trial and could be found guilty or not guilty in court, if we learn he’s actually innocent, that means there’s another responsible party floating around this case. So there are really two questions of guilt, one inside the courtroom and one outside of it, that the Presumed Innocent finale will need to answer.
To give a little peek behind the curtain, Apple TV+ has not provided press with an advance look at the season finale, so we don’t have any intel you don’t beyond the penultimate episode. And the series getting renewed for season two does open up the possibility of a cliffhanger, or a second season that somehow re-examines the crime and its impact (as Kelley did with his second season of Big Little Lies), or one that moves past this case and continues anthology style, with a new group of characters and a new murder. (Turow did write a sequel to Presumed Innocent, The Burden of Proof, but it mostly follows a character who isn’t in Kelley’s adaptation, and therefore seems unlikely to be the basis for another set of episodes.) There are a lot of options for season two, but there are even more options for who could be Carolyn’s killer in season one. So grab your bolo tie and let’s run through them, judging the presumed innocence and guilt of every character who could have plausibly — or implausibly — done it.
Rusty Sabich
Presumed Guilty: This man really was obsessed with Carolyn, and if circumstantial evidence is enough to go on, it’s all there. So many texts, so many calls, so many fingerprints all around Carolyn’s apartment, so many implicit threats in his demands that she listen to him, that she pick up the phone, that she acquiesce to them getting back together. Rusty was seemingly the only man in Carolyn’s life with enough access to kill her, and we know he was there the night of her death, and that he’s had various bizarre nightmares about her since then — perhaps as an expression of his guilt. Who else felt this much about Carolyn, while also not actually knowing that much about her? Rusty had two separate affairs with and impregnated her, but had no idea about the son she basically abandoned, also living in Chicago, or that she wanted to keep this latest pregnancy. (I would love to know what made Carolyn want to be a mother again, but that would require Presumed Innocent to actually make Carolyn a character.) That level of infatuation coupled with rejection and Rusty’s established capacity for violence could have made him break bad, and it really would be the biggest swerve for this show to actually make him the killer after a season of uncertainty and conjecture.
Also, Rusty is suspiciously ripped for a lawyer. I don’t trust that level of fitness from someone with this boring of a job.
Presumed Innocent: It being Rusty feels anticlimactic, doesn’t it? Even when Gyllenhaal strong-arms Rusty into very high levels of drugged-out agitation, the character is such an obvious option that it’s almost inconceivable for Presumed Innocent to put us through all this for him to be the guy.
Barbara Sabich
Presumed Guilty: Why cast an actress like Ruth Negga if you’re not going to give her more to do than look at her husband with vague concern, flirt with a rando bartender, and go dead-eyed in court listening to her husband’s declarations of love for another woman? It seems like a waste of her talents if we don’t get a “Barbara did it” reveal. Plus, Barbara’s defining character trait is her motherhood: She prioritizes Jaden and Kyle when Rusty doesn’t, she does all the domestic labor, she goes to therapy to work on her marriage, she talks about how important it is for her that the family stay together and her kids don’t grow up in a broken home. Recall what she says to Rusty in the premiere, when she learns that Carolyn has been murdered and she brings up Rusty and Carolyn’s affair: “I’m not tragically dependent. I could have left. I could have moved on. I still could. The reason I haven’t is we have a family … and if I’m desperate for anything, it’s to preserve that. Oh, and I love you. There’s that. I will fight. You and I will fight to save what we have, because we’ve got a lot. But you need to stop loving her.” Barbara will do something proactive to save their family unit, and she demands that Rusty stop loving the other woman … two things that can be solved with Carolyn’s murder.
It’s interesting that no one in the series ever considers Barbara as a possible suspect, which is wild, because I’ve watched enough Dateline to know that if a husband is having an affair and his mistress gets killed, that man’s wife is usually investigated. Barbara getting looked over in the series makes me think we’re being set up for a bigger reveal down the line.
Presumed Innocent: Barbara just doesn’t seem like she’s capable of that much violence, unless she is a phenomenal actress whose entire identity so far in Presumed Innocent has been a front. Which is very possible; have you seen Negga in Passing?
Tommy Molto
Presumed Guilty: Tommy had a crush on Carolyn that she not only didn’t respond to, but seemed actively disgusted by. Pair that with Eugenia’s reveal that Carolyn officially complained about Tommy’s behavior (a fact he never brought up to Nico, despite it being a potential conflict of interest), and it’s possible that Tommy went to Carolyn’s to make one more plea for them to date and she turned him down, with fatal consequences; his vehement insistence that Rusty killed Carolyn could be to save himself. Also, we can’t forget the weirdness involving medical examiner Dr. Kumagai and Tommy introducing a new report of Carolyn’s crime scene that indicates Rusty’s DNA under Carolyn’s fingernails. Did they plant the evidence? Did they just withhold it to mess with Rusty and Raymond’s defense? Even Nico isn’t exactly sure what went on there. Regardless, there’s some implied nefariousness here that could, if read in the most damaging way, mean that Tommy is purposefully framing Rusty.
Presumed Innocent: Someone can be an asshole but not a killer, and Sarsgaard is playing Tommy with such self-seriousness, arrogance, and spitefulness that I think he’s the former rather than the latter. He finally sees the opportunity to take Rusty down, and he’s going to take it — a petty but understandable desire. And it’s notable that there isn’t any physical evidence linking Tommy to the scene. Yes, the fireplace poker shows up in his house, but for the Tommy-killer theory to hold, we have to assume he typed up the “Go fuck yourself” note, left it for himself, and then responded with shock to a room that’s completely empty (except for his cat …). It’s possible this could be some sort of message to Tommy from a mystery accomplice or someone else letting Tommy know they know he’s hiding something, but it’s hard to say at this juncture who that would even be. Unless …
Tommy’s cat
Presumed Guilty: You know that cat has absorbed so many of Tommy’s bitter complaints about Carolyn over the years, and cats can be vindictive as hell. They’re also wily and cunning, and dextrous enough that I’m almost willing to convince myself this one could figure out some diabolical knots.
Presumed Innocent: The cat seems to have it pretty good at Tommy’s place! Even if the cat wanted to avenge Tommy’s hurt feelings, why mess that up by killing Carolyn and implicating Tommy? I just don’t see it putting its fairly nice living situation in jeopardy. But speaking of possible accomplices …
Michael and Dalton Caldwell
Presumed Guilty: Michael is a really angry kid! With an established pattern of curiosity in the cases his mother tried! Experiencing your mother abandoning you and then not even having the decency to move farther away than just, like, across town to begin her new life of ignoring you is brutal. And his insistence that Rusty did it, how bitter and rude he is to him in their meeting before court and during the trial itself, could be particularly pointed projection away from himself. Also, Michael’s a package deal; we have to assume that if he did it, Carolyn’s ex-husband Dalton is helping him cover it up by providing an alibi, which he supports with all that impassioned yelling at Tommy and Nico about them not protecting Michael well enough.
Presumed Innocent: Michael’s tempestuous teen years and Carolyn’s thorough rejection of him could breed enough resentment that he would do something violent against her (he did text her saying it would be easier if she were dead, after all). But functionally, I think Michael’s purpose in the series is less about being a suspect himself and more intended to throw doubt toward other people, like whomever Carolyn had a problem with in the prosecutors’ office. Michael is convinced that’s Rusty, but his recounting of Carolyn’s anxiety and tension opens the door to Mya asking Eugenia about Carolyn’s work relationships, which reveals that the only person Carolyn ever complained to HR about was Tommy. Michael’s a vector for mistrust toward both Rusty and Tommy, but I don’t think he’s really a source of it himself. And maybe Dalton’s just a good dad!
Kyle Sabich
Presumed Guilty: He was at Carolyn’s house more than once, he knew about Rusty’s affair with Carolyn, and he has typical teen-boy friction with his demanding father.
Presumed Innocent: Outside of the one scene where Barbara says to Rusty, “sometimes I think you forget our son is Black,” the series has done very little narratively with the mixed-race nature of Rusty and Barbara’s family. Maybe that’s secretly a good thing, because I’m not sure a show from the guy who made Big Sky or The Undoing is really where we should look for nuanced racial commentary. But ultimately, making Carolyn’s killer a young Black man feels like more heat than this show would be willing to take on.
Inmate Liam Reynolds and/or DNA depositor Brian Ratzer
Presumed Guilty: Bunny Davis, the woman Liam murdered, was tied up very similarly to how Carolyn was, and Liam did threaten Carolyn in court. Brian had a sexual encounter with Bunny before Liam killed her, and left behind DNA that Carolyn covered up when she tried the case and got Liam put away. Their direct and indirect connections to Carolyn aren’t much, but because they both overlapped with the murdered Bunny and lied about it, they do seem shady.
Presumed Innocent: Liam’s in prison. There’s no evidence Brian and Carolyn actually knew each other. There’s a reason neither Raymond nor Mya take Rusty’s ramblings about these men seriously, and that’s because there’s not much there there.
Nico Della Guardia
Presumed Guilty: Carolyn’s murder becomes the centerpiece of his campaign against Raymond, and it’s arguable that his hammering Raymond for not immediately solving the case is what clinches the election in his favor.
Presumed Innocent: Nico’s smug and power-hungry, but he’s also somewhat complacent. Recall that Rusty tells the media that Nico’s detractors call him “Delay Guardia” because of how he draws out cases and “stalls” until offering plea deals. He’s seemingly not decisive or dogged enough to take cases to court, so does he really have the gumption to kill someone to get ahead? I’m doubtful.
Eugenia
Presumed Guilty: She hated Carolyn, she knew Carolyn and Rusty were having an affair and suspicion would land on him, she also knew Carolyn had complained about Tommy to HR and suspicion could go his way if someone conveniently shared information about the complaint. You know, like Eugenia did on the stand!
Presumed Innocent: Maybe she had a crush on Rusty, and maybe she thought Carolyn was a bad colleague, and maybe she was annoyed by how completely obvious the two of them were in the office. But is all of that really cause to murder? I could see Eugenia being peeved and constantly complaining about them, and I also think that’s likely all she did.
Wildcard Option 1: Raymond and/or Lorraine Horgan
Presumed Guilty: This suggestion comes to you from my colleague Kathryn VanArendonk, who pointed out that Raymond seems very interested in the trial even after he’s had emergency open-heart surgery, going so far as to watch the day’s proceedings from his hospital bed. Perhaps because he’s invested in framing Rusty for the crime, and he wants to see how big of a ditch Rusty starts digging for himself when cross-examining Michael. (The size of said ditch? Imagine Julia Roberts’s “big mistake … huge!” from Pretty Woman.) And maybe Lorraine doesn’t want Raymond taking Rusty’s case because she killed Carolyn to somehow engineer her husband being voted out of office so that they could retire to Florida, like she wanted.
Presumed Innocent: Raymond and Lorraine seem like a nice, boring suburban couple who want to do nice, boring suburban couple things, like eat breakfast together each morning. In a series with so many lonely, miserable-even-when-married people, I would like to keep the fantasy of their happiness alive.
Wildcard Option 2: A Mystery Suspect
Presumed Guilty: Presumed Innocent did get renewed for a second season recently, and what would propel this story forward into another set of episodes more than a new suspect emerging at the very last second? In the novel, Carolyn has sexual relationships with more men than just Rusty and also does more sus things than hiding only one bit of evidence, and perhaps the upcoming season finale will reveal something that could follow either of those character traits: Carolyn was trying to break things off with Rusty because she’d started dating someone else, who was actually dangerous, or she lied and hid evidence on another case, and that culprit somehow got to her. Both possibilities!
Presumed Innocent: Please, I cannot live through another The Killing–style cliffhanger. Wrap this up, David!
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