2 Blog #10

The Pact” by Jodi Picoult
I finished reading the book, pages 315-500, for this blog. A lot of things happened that I didn’t expect. Chris goes to jail and has many troubling encounters with other prisoners. I think it’s because prison is such a different environment than the charmed life he’s used to living. He has to wait around in jail and Jordan, his lawyer, and his mom go to visit him. His dad comes at first, but then stops visiting Chris after he decides not to testify. I think it’s very selfish of Chris’s dad, James, not to testify. James even admits the reason he won’t testify is because he just wants it to go away because he wants his perfect life. He needs to be there for his son. At the trial, Jordan uses the defense of saying that it was going to be a double suicide, even though Chris told Jordan he wasn’t going to kill himself. Jordan said that it was ok and that he didn’t want to know the truth. I think this is a bad way to practice law. You should always want the truth to come out and justice to be served. Jordan uses the suicide defense the whole trial, but Chris unexpectedly demands to take the stand. Jordan doesn’t want him to because then the truth will come out and ruin his defense. Despite this, Chris still takes the stand. He says that he was with Emily and she wanted to kill herself. She took the gun and pointed it at her own head, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Chris said that he could see and feel her pain, so he felt he owed it to her to help put her out of her misery. He took the gun and held it to her head, but he couldn’t shoot her. Emily put her hand up to the gun and the gun went off and killed her. Chris isn’t sure if it was his motion or hers that set off the gun, so he doesn’t know if he killed her. That would be such an awful thing to live with. I think it would be worse than knowing for a fact one way or the other because you would always be wondering. In the end, the jury found Chris not guilty.