Chapter summaries The Hamptons Lawyer James Patterson & Mike Lupica

The Hamptons Lawyer Chapter 35: Thirty-Five – Summary & Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter opens with narrator and defense attorney Maddy Smith reflecting on the legal standard for juror impartiality. She explains that any potential juror who admits bias is dismissed, but that trial lawyers on both sides actually want jurors to favor them. Maddy and prosecutor Katherine Welsh have been working through jury selection, using peremptory challenges when they cannot agree.

Maddy, weary, questions a woman from Westbury who runs a small PR firm. The woman appears intelligent and well-dressed. When Maddy asks if she can give a fair hearing, the woman answers “Probably not.” She reveals that the summer before last, Maddy’s client relentlessly pursued sex with her, refused to take no for an answer, and then attempted the same with her eighteen-year-old daughter. Maddy excuses her.

The woman, Missy Werner, is not finished. She snaps at Maddy not to turn her back. She states that she and her daughter are still alive, which perhaps cheated Maddy of defending the client on additional murder charges. Judge Horton bangs his gavel and orders her to step down. As Werner walks out, she hisses at Maddy, “Tell him that Missy Werner hopes he rots in hell after he rots in prison.” Norma Banks, watching, comments dryly, “Good talk.”

Key Events

  • Maddy explains the tension between the legal standard of impartiality and the reality of trial lawyers wanting jurors to love them.
  • Maddy and Katherine Welsh use peremptory challenges on multiple candidates.
  • Maddy questions a female juror from Westbury.
  • The juror reveals that Maddy’s client sexually harassed her and tried to solicit her teenage daughter.
  • Maddy excuses the juror; the juror refuses to leave quietly.
  • The juror (Missy Werner) makes a bitter exit, cursing the defendant.
  • Norma Banks’s sarcastic remark closes the scene.

Character Development

  • Maddy Smith: Shows professional exhaustion but maintains composure. The encounter with Werner forces Maddy to confront the predatory history of her client, likely deepening her internal conflict about defending him.
  • Missy Werner: Emerges as a sharp, vengeful figure. Her controlled fury and deliberate public exposure of the defendant’s misconduct demonstrate personal trauma transformed into courtroom defiance.
  • Norma Banks: Acts as an observer and provides cynical commentary (“Good talk”), aligning with Maddy’s inner circle but also highlighting the absurdity of the situation.
  • The Defendant: Though absent from the scene, his character is revealed through Werner’s accusation: a persistent sexual predator who escalates from harassing a mother to targeting her daughter.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

  • Jury selection as a performance: Both lawyers seek love from jurors, not true impartiality. The process is exposed as a power game.
  • Bias and personal history: The juror’s past with the defendant makes a fair trial impossible, illustrating the collision of legal abstraction with human reality.
  • Silence and complicity: Maddy’s silence in the face of Werner’s accusation implies the institution’s unwillingness to condemn the defendant before trial.
  • The clicking heels of Missy Werner: A rhythmic exit that underscores her finality and the lingering echo of her testimony.
  • “Good talk”: Norma’s deadpan line serves as a thematic punchline, reducing the loaded confrontation to mere conversation.

Why This Chapter Matters

Chapter 35 is a turning point in the jury-selection process. It provides the first direct glimpse of the defendant’s predatory behavior outside the murder charge, raising the stakes for Maddy’s defense. The juror’s public accusation threatens to poison the rest of the jury pool and foreshadows further damaging testimony. The scene also deepens Maddy’s personal burden, as she must defend a man whose alleged conduct she finds morally repulsive. The chapter underscores the grim reality that the legal system forces attorneys to compartmentalize their ethics.

Study Questions and Answers

  1. Why does Maddy excuse the juror so quickly, even before the juror finishes speaking?
    Answer: Because the juror admitted she could not be impartial (she said “Probably not” when asked if she could give a fair hearing). Under the legal standard, such an admission mandates dismissal. Additionally, the specific bias against the defendant is so strong that Maddy knows she cannot be rehabilitated.

  2. What does Missy Werner mean when she says her daughter and she are “still alive, which perhaps cheated you out of the chance to defend the sonofabitch on a couple of more murder raps”?
    Answer: Werner implies that the defendant might have killed them if he had the chance. By saying they are alive, she suggests that the defendant’s behavior could have escalated to murder, and that Maddy might have been forced to defend him on additional murder charges had he succeeded.

  3. How does Norma Banks’s reaction (“Good talk”) function in the scene?
    Answer: Norma’s dry comment undercuts the dramatic gravity of Werner’s outburst. It signals that despite the shocking revelation, the trial machinery will continue. It also reinforces Norma’s cynical, pragmatic personality and her unspoken solidarity with Maddy.

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