He could have hidden behind the manufactured evidence, insisted that any reasonable prosecutor would have done as he did, that the fault lay entirely with Richard Cole and none of it stuck to him.

All of that would have been, in a narrow sense, true; he had been deceived by a deliberate and skillful liar, and the deception was not his fault.

But there is a difference between fault and responsibility, and somewhere in that warden’s office, watching Richard Cole’s face come clear under the desk lamp, the prosecutor seemed to understand the difference.

He had not intended to convict an innocent woman.