Margaret

Evans

And about that prosecutor. Some saw Creighton Waters as a bitter little man who’d been nursing a grudge against the more “successful” Murdaugh since their law school days at Carolina, a man so petty and belligerent he was in danger of alienating the jury. Others saw a sharp, tenacious bulldog who was running rings around Alex, breaking him down, and would certainly ensure a guilty verdict.

Y’all don’t even need to know what I saw during Alex Murdaugh’s testimony, which as of this writing, is not yet finished. An incurable softie who regularly cries over episodes of Blue Bloods and FBI , I have learned not to trust my emotional reactions as any kind of truth barometer. If I had a dollar for every time my husband has said to me, “You know these characters aren’t real people, right?” as I wept over their fictional plights, I’d be a wealthy woman.

(Incidentally, I don’t see what “being real people” has to do with anything, but that’s for another column.)

The point is, I’m very much like my sister, who said to me last week, “I want Alex to be innocent so badly . . . but I just don’t know.”

I have been studying and writing about bias for a very long time now, and I recognize my own. I am now entertaining the possibility that Alex is innocent because I want Alex to be innocent. Because I can hardly bear to live in a world where men brutally murder their beloved sons. Their wives? Sadly, I can get my head around that. But their children? It’s almost impossible for me to fathom.

I don’t want to fathom it.

I am finishing this column on Sunday morning and will commit it to print on Monday around noon. We may have a verdict by the time you read it.

The jury is made up of biased humans just like me and Liz Farrell and the people in my “rational” Facebook discussion group. Anything could happen.