69 pages • 2-hour read
Presumed Guilty
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Impacts of Crime on Personal Relationships
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use, addiction, racism, mental illness, death, and illness.
Presumed Guilty explores how crime tests the bonds between families and friends, both breaking and strengthening these relationships. Aaron’s felony drug conviction colors his familial relationships. Though he grows closer with Bea and Rusty as he lives under their supervision, Aaron’s relationship with his father suffers, since Lloyd’s new wife, Camille, doesn’t want a felon near her children. When the text opens, Aaron has been in recovery and improving his life for a year, but his past actions remain prominent in his family’s mind. Bea remembers how Aaron used to steal from her and go no-contact when he was using, so when he disappears on a camping trip without a word, she immediately assumes the worst about his behavior. Bea is constantly paranoid that he will slip up, so she is increasingly critical of Aaron’s decisions.
Aaron’s arrest has an immediate impact on Rusty and Bea’s relationship. Bea is thoroughly convinced of Aaron’s innocence, and when Rusty opposes even slightly, Bea “sounds like she is casting blame, instead of welcoming [his] support” (127). Bea will always choose her son over Rusty, so he learns to keep his suspicions to himself, which is unnatural in their honest relationship. Once Rusty becomes Aaron’s lawyer, he must officially adhere to client-lawyer confidentiality, which closes him off further from Bea. Their relationship loses the comfort and joy it once offered: “I no longer can provide the distraction she needs at those moments, no anecdotes about my daily life, because for months now my daily life has been consumed by Aaron’s case” (194). Rusty took on Aaron’s case to preserve his relationship with Bea, since she wouldn’t think kindly of him again if he left Aaron without proper counsel. However, Rusty’s position puts him in a double bind, as his intense focus on winning Aaron’s case threatens their love just the same.
Aaron’s proximity to Mae’s murder also impacts the Housleys’ interactions within their community. Lloyd’s church congregation looks at him with suspicion, and parents and teachers gawk at Bea. Rusty’s friendship with Mansy takes a major blow, not only because the Potters think Aaron is guilty but also because Rusty chooses to defend Aaron. Rusty’s method of defending Aaron by casting suspicion on Hardy and referring to Mae’s less-than-savory behaviors only increases Mansy’s fury, and Rusty suspects his dear friend will never forgive him. Mansy and Rusty do ultimately reconcile, but the crime and trial do such irrevocable damage to the Housleys’ life in Skageon that Rusty, Bea, and Aaron decide the best course of action is to move away where they can start anew.
The Influence of Personal Biases on Legal Justice
Each character’s lived experience informs how they view those around them, and the text interrogates how characters’ biases can hinder the pursuit of justice. Aaron faces daily assumptions about his character due to his race, but his drug use also prejudices people against him. Hardy and Charmaine blame Aaron for Mae’s addiction, and they’re vehemently against Mae’s association with him. For example, when Mae claimed Aaron proposed to her, Charmaine thought Mae “would be throwing her life away” (222), despite Aaron’s newfound sobriety. Hardy openly disdains Aaron’s probation deal, since he thought that Aaron’s being in prison would keep him away from his daughter. Hardy will do anything to keep Aaron and Mae apart, like when he tips off Aaron’s probation officer about Aaron’s disappearance, hoping the judge will lock Aaron back up. Although Mae is more of a troublemaker, the Potters blame Aaron for Mae’s mistakes.
This prejudice against Aaron immediately infects the murder investigation. As the book’s title suggests, Hardy immediately presumes Aaron is guilty. Lieutenant Glowoski, the Potters’ close family friend, spearheads an investigation that, rather than seeking the truth, seeks to implicate Aaron. Hardy signs off on calling Aaron a “person of interest” before a crime is even discovered (369), and all the evidence-collecting efforts aim to confirm this pre-existing theory. Rusty exposes how the prosecution’s investigation was so intent on proving Aaron’s guilt that they didn’t fact-check their conclusions. For example, the investigators didn’t check if the rope in evidence was the rope Aaron purchased, which Susan determined with a quick trip to the hardware store. Glowoski refused to investigate a tip from Akylles Parrish that proved Aaron wasn’t near Ginawaban at the time of Mae’s death, since it would contradict her established timeline. The Potters’ biases cloud the police’s judgements, leading to a botched investigation that brings the family further from the truth.
During the trial, Rusty and Aaron also consider how the jury’s biases will impact their absorption of the evidence. Rusty selects jurors who will be more open-minded and skeptical of accepting the prosecution’s case at face value. Despite these safeguards, Aaron knows the only way he can overcome the jury’s racial assumptions about him as a Black man is to speak to them directly: “I think I can make them hear me, so I’m more of a person to them just like they are people, and not some silent dark-skinned dude across the room who they were inclined to believe the worst of when they first got a look at me” (456-57). Aaron openly shares his story of struggle and recovery, and to Rusty’s surprise, the jury bases their not-guilty verdict on the strength of the young man’s character rather than their biases.
Belief in the Potential for Personal Transformation
Several characters undergo personal transformations, and the narrative offers differing arguments for whether these changes are permanent or just an act. Before the text opens, Aaron had a drug addiction that made him unreliable, manipulative, and even criminal in his attempts to support his habit. Before his disappearance, Aaron was in recovery from substance use, and despite his concerning trip with Mae, Rusty and Bea are both convinced that Aaron’s sobriety is unshaken. He is more honest with his guardians, follows the rules of his probation, and gets an artistic job that he loves. However, people like the Potters and Lieutenant Glowoski think felons, like Aaron, will always be felons. The Potters continue to see Aaron as a threat to their daughter, and Jackdorp, in his courtroom presentation, relies on the presumption that Aaron is still untrustworthy. For example, Jackdorp’s cross-examination of Aaron focuses on proving that he is still a liar, despite his proclamations of honesty.
Although Mae isn’t an active player in the narrative, the characters still contemplate whether she had the potential to transform. Mae’s erratic behavior increased after her borderline personality disorder diagnosis, the volatility of which her drug use exacerbated. Despite this, Aaron still thought Mae could return to her real self: “And I could feel her, too, the pain of how far she’d gotten from that person and how much she wanted to get back to that” (484). Even after Aaron made his decision to leave Mae, he had a nagging belief that she might change her ways if given enough time. Joe, on the extreme other hand, is thoroughly convinced that Mae was doomed to be a manipulator for the rest of her life, either toward Aaron or toward any other man. This belief in Mae’s inability to change motivated Joe to kill her, since he saw it as his duty to rid the world of such a troublemaker.
Joe’s belief contradicts his transformation from abusive father to loving grandfather. When Aaron joined the Housley family, Bea couldn’t believe at first the drastic transformation in her father’s behavior, since he seemed so set in his violent ways. Joe’s chemotherapy forced him to stop drinking, which cooled some of his moods, but the sheer amount of love Joe has for Aaron results in a more tolerable personality. Bea still finds it difficult to interact with her father, but she accepts that he’s become a truly good force in Aaron’s life. Rusty chooses to keep Joe’s confession about Mae’s murder a secret so his family can keep this image of him in their minds—as someone transformed by love.
Unlock every key theme and why it matters
Get in-depth breakdowns of the book’s main ideas and how they connect and evolve.
- Explore how themes develop throughout the text
- Connect themes to characters, events, and symbols
- Support essays and discussions with thematic evidence