----------------------- Page 3-----------------------

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-