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like to trust a man with their money unless he's bald, limping, and constantly plucking at
his pants to get his truss around straight Andy was in for murdering his wife and her
lover.
As I believe I have said, everyone in prison is an innocent man. Oh, they read that
scripture the way those holy rollers on TV read the Book of Revelations. They were the
victims of judges with hearts of stone and balls to match, or incompetent lawyers, or
police frame-ups, or bad luck. They read the scripture, but you can see a different
scripture in their faces. Most cons are a low sort, no good to themselves or anyone else,
and their worst luck was that their mothers carried them to term.
In all my years at Shawshank, there have been less than ten men whom I believed when
they told me they were innocent Andy Dufresne was one of them, although I only became
convinced of his innocence over a period of years. If I had been on the jury that heard his
case in Portland Superior Court over six stormy weeks in 1947-48, I would have voted to
convict, too.
It was one hell of a case, all right; one of those juicy ones with all the right elements.
There was a beautiful girl with society connections (dead), a local sports figure (also
dead), and a prominent young businessman in the dock. There was this, plus all the
scandal the newspapers could hint at. The prosecution had an open-and-shut case. The
trial only lasted as long as it did because the DA was planning to run for the US House of
Representatives and he wanted John Q Public to get a good long look at his phiz. It was a
crackerjack legal circus, with spectators getting in line at four in the morning, despite the
subzero temperatures, to assure themselves of a seat.
The facts of the prosecution's case that Andy never contested were these: That he had a
wife, Linda Collins Dufresne; that in June of 1947 she had expressed an interest in
learning the game of golf at the Falmouth Hills Country Club; that she did indeed take
lessons for four months; that her instructor was the Falmouth Hills golf pro, Glenn
Quentin; that in late August of 1947 Andy learned that Quentin and his wife had become
lovers; that Andy and Linda Dufresne argued bitterly on the afternoon of 10 September
1947; that the subject of their argument was her infidelity.
He testified that Linda professed to be glad he knew; the sneaking around, she said, was
distressing. She told Andy that she planned to obtain a Reno divorce. Andy told her he
would see her in hell before he would see her in Reno. She went off to spend the night
with Quentin in Quentin's rented bungalow not far from the golf course. The next
morning his cleaning woman found both of them dead in bed. Each had been shot four
times.
It was that last fact that mitigated more against Andy than any of the others. The DA with
the political aspirations made a great deal of it in his opening statement and his closing
summation. Andrew Dufresne, he said, was not a wronged husband seeking a hot-
blooded revenge against his cheating wife; that, the DA said, could be understood, if not
condoned. But this revenge had been of a much colder type. Consider! the DA thundered
at the jury. Four and four! Not six shots, but eight! He had fired the gun empty ... and
then stopped to reload so he could shoot each of them again! FOUR FOR HIM AND
FOUR FOR HER, the Portland Sun blared. The Boston Register dubbed him The Even-