Monster summer entry #3

“I know she thinks I’m guilty.  I can feel it when we sit together on the bench they have assigned for us.  She writes down what is being said, and what is being said about me, and she adds it all up to guilty.  “I’m not guilty,” I said to her.  “”You should have said ‘I didn’t do it,’” she said.  “I didn’t do it,” I said.”(Myers 138).

            This quote is the dialogue between Steve Harmon and his attorney, Kathy O’Brien.  At the beginning of this quote from my book Steve is saying that he doesn’t trust his attorney. This is because he just doesn’t feel that she believes that Steve is actually innocent.  The next part of the quote is when Steve states that he is not guilty.  However Mrs. O’Brien says that saying he is not guilty is not the same as saying that he did not commit the crime that he is now being tried for.  As I read this line the first time I didn’t really understand why this mattered so much. If you think about it a little though it starts to make sense of what the difference between saying, “I’m not guilty,” and “I didn’t do it”.  The main difference between these two phrases is the confidence that you need to have to say I didn’t do it.  However, in the long run from Steve’s point of view he is being wrongly convicted of this crime.