Triay - Presumed Innocent

Ford in Presumed Innocent is a flawed anti-hero. The film deals with a great amount of guilt placed upon Ford's character, Rusty Sabich. Sabich is accused of murdering a young woman named Carolyn, with whom the audience knows he has been having an affair with. The audience does not know whether Sabich truly did murder Carolyn, and with building evidence including finding Sabich's sperm inside of her after the autopsy greatly affect the audience's ability to trust Ford as the hero, the good guy. The audience can feel the guilt that Sabich is dealing with throughout the whole picture.



The film's final scene involves the revelation that Sabich's wife was the one who murdered Carolyn. She discovered Sabich's affair and, led to insanity, murdered Carolyn. The couple must now continue to live together, with this fractured notion of trust between them. Guilt is manifested within this broken sense of threatened trust, a trust that is based upon an "I've killed before, I'll kill again" ideal. This unsettling idea of the couple sticking together brings about an immense feeling of guilt on Sabich's behalf, as if he had remained faithful to his wife, none of this would have ever happened.

Kuebler-Presumed Innocent

In this ending moment where all questions are answered we find Rusty struggling with the fact that one of the women he once loved is now dead. We also find that not only is she dead, but even while cleared of murder Rusty is still deserving of guilt. While his wife is the one who killed Rusty's lover, he is still in some sense responsible. Rusty was the one having the affair and due to his lack of love and care for his wife she went crazy. This was a great surprise to me but a very unique end to the movie. The guilt is manifested by the hammer and the court room as the movie closes. Rusty tells the audience that there was a crime and someone was to be punished. He does not mention who is punished but we can imagine that he is referring to every party involved. The crime of passion, to make love and to murder for love and fear hurts many parties involved.


During the scene between Rusty and his wife she explains that she could not help but kill Carolyn. She was originally thinking of ending her own life but instead would "destroy the destroyer" and bring their family back to a healthy place. Rusty in this moment realizes that while his wife did in fact murder Carolyn, he had just as much a part in her death as the murderer. His cruelty to his family was a crime that caused the woman he was obsessed with to be killed and be framed for the crime. So while his wife steps downstairs with a "I did it, I fooled them all" Rusty realizes that he has never once fooled his wife and he is just as guilty if not more for all crimes present in this movie.

Koeferl- Presumed Innocent

A major theme in this movie is the justice system. Rusty is convicted of a crime that he did not directly commit, but he finds out at the end of the movie that he is indeed guilty of sparking a chain of events that led to Carolyn's murder. The film challenges us to decide who is guilty and who is innocent. Is Rusty guilty of the murder of Carolyn because he provoked his wife to kill her? Is the wife guilty because she physically murdered her? I think that the wife was put into a very tough situation; she could have talked with Rusty about Carolyn and forced him to stop his affair (and maybe she did, but knew that he still had feelings for her). Perhaps the only way she would ever feel at ease was knowing that Carolyn was dead.

I do not think that anyone is completely innocent in this movie (except the kid, who hasn't grown up yet). The judge and the lawyers are all corrupt somehow, taking bribes and sleeping with Carolyn, etc. Carolyn is certainly not innocent; I consider her the guiltiest of all the characters in the movie. She singlehandedly corrupts two innocent people: Rusty Sabich and his wife. Her actions, rather than Rusty's, cause the chain of events that lead to her own death. She seduces Rusty, a married man, so that she can better her own career. Rusty did not seek out a relationship with Carolyn; she sought after him. Rusty's wife only murdered Carolyn because she was trying to get her husband to love her again. Both Rusty and his wife were acted upon.

Although I see Carolyn as the guilty one in this film, Rusty feels guilty. In the conversation with his wife in the end, he realizes that he is responsible both for damaging his relationship with his wife, and for the murder of Carolyn Polhemus. He seeks punishment for his behavior; in the end this punishment takes the form of having to live the rest of his life knowing that his wife murdered Carolyn, and nobody else will know this (they think that Rusty most likely committed the murder). This final conversation with the wife, along with other final conversations with other characters in the movie, poses the question: was justice served? One way to look at the situation is that it was served; his wife murdered the "destroyer" (home wrecker), which was just, because she was trying to preserve her family. Carolyn died, which is just, because she caused so much corruption within this family. Rusty, who cheated on his wife, now has to live with guilt for the rest of his life. Justice was served, but not in the courtroom.

Morris- Presumed Innocent

In the last sequence of the movie, Presumed Innocent, Rusty Sabich finds the hammer used in the murder of his mistress, Carolyn. He knows now that his wife, Barbara, committed the crime for which he was put on trial. This scene is important in terms of his guilt because had he not had an affair, his wife would not have become a murderer and the woman would still be alive.

Knowing that it is your fault that someone is dead cannot be easy. Rusty now has to face the consequences of his actions which have been somewhat non-existent since his wife found out. The guilt manifests itself in the scene as his expression changes and he just sits there while his wife describes how she committed the perfect murder, a murder that she intended to wake him from his zombie-like existence, so they could move on to being a happy family once again.

In the last courtroom scene, Rusty’s voice over states, “there is punishment.” Although neither Rusty nor Barbara has faced punishment by the law, they have each other as punishment. Barbara has to live with knowing that her husband will always prefer Carolyn to her, and with killing another human being. Rusty will have to live with the guilt that the woman he loves’ death was because he loved her, and having to live with her killer.