Monster

One of the inmates in the detention center will get his verdict this morning for robbing a check-cashing center and shooting the guard. He’d just been desperate for money; he’d meant to pay it back someday. The man cries with anxiety, and Steve wants to cry with him. O’Brien told him that if the judge sentences him to 25 years, he’ll have to serve at least 21 and three months, which seems unimaginable. Steve thinks about his mom fretting over him, and about Mr. Nesbitt and the crime scene photos O’Brien showed him. O’Brien tried to hide it, but Steve knew she was watching him to see how he’d react, to see who Steve Harmon truly is; “I wanted to open my shirt and tell her to look into my heart to see who I really was.”

In his heart, Steve knows he’s a good person. Before he’d left the courthouse yesterday he’d asked O’Brien about her own life, and she told him about her university education and her law career, though she didn’t sound very interested by it. It sounded like a good life to Steve, though. In the holding pen, where Steve waits to be brought into the courtroom, the guards talk about their own lives: one about how much his kids’ dental work costs him, the others about how the Yankees are playing.

While Steve is waiting, someone brings King in and handcuffs him to the bench next to Steve. King asks Steve if Steve is trying to cut a deal, and he sneers, trying to scare Steve. Steve thinks he looks like a fool. He’d once looked up to King, wishing he were tough and untouchable like him, but now after being terrified out of his wits every night in jail, King isn’t scary anymore. He can’t do anything to Steve here. When an officer brings them into the courtroom, Steve sees that a middle school class is sitting in the observation area, there to see a trial on a school trip. They are afraid to make eye contact with Steve, and Steve can imagine that he is in their place, “looking at the back of the prisoner.”

Back to the screenplay: A pretty juror sits, smiling. Steve smiles at her and she looks away and stops smiling. He puts his head down on the table, and when O’Brien tells him to sit up, there are tears in his eyes.

Petrocelli continues questioning Osvaldo, who claims he participated in the robbery (his job was to stop anyone who came out of the store from chasing King and Bobo) simply because he was scared of Bobo. The government is cutting him a deal in exchange for his testimony. Briggs takes his turn, insinuating that Osvaldo is lying under oath, testifying so the district attorney will keep him out of jail. O’Brien starts questioning Osvaldo, pointing out that he was arrested again for beating up his girlfriend. When O’Brien asks if Osvaldo is in a gang, he lies and says he isn’t until O’Brien forces him to acknowledge that he’s in the Diablos, and that to join up he had to fight another Diablo and then slash a stranger’s face with a knife. O’Brien points out that it seems unlikely that Osvaldo was afraid of Bobo.

In a visiting room, Steve’s father Mr. Harmon visits him. Mr. Harmon says O’Brien isn’t sounding very positive about the case so far, but it will be good when Steve has the chance to tell his own side of things. Mr. Harmon tells Steve this was never what he thought Steve’s path would be. When Steve was a baby, Mr. Harmon dreamed he’d go to university like his father did and play football, not wind up in jail. As Mr. Harmon leaves, he reaches to touch Steve’s hand but a guard blocks the contact. As the scene fades, Steve hears his father sobbing.

In his notes, Steve writes that he’s never seen his father cry before. Steve doesn’t even know what he’s guilty of—all he did was walk into the drugstore and back out of it. He didn’t steal anything; he didn’t touch Nesbitt. But his whole family feels the pain of it, and Steve feels like his relationship with his dad has broken. He thinks his dad sees him as a monster now too, just like the jury.

Cut to Steve’s neighborhood. Two women stand together, talking about a recent murder in the drugstore. Steve is within earshot, playing basketball, but as they talk he takes off running. Then Steve is at home, watching a newscaster on the TV report the murder. The newscaster asks a local resident if he is “shocked” by it, and the man says it’s a bad thing, but it’s nothing new; a little girl was killed sitting on her porch a couple months ago. Steve watches in shock, his mouth open, but Jerry thinks nothing of it and changes the channel.

Two weeks later, Steve’s mother Mrs. Harmon tells him that they caught the two murderers from the drugstore. Steve watches on the news as a newscaster announces Bobo and King’s arrest, showing footage of them being handcuffed. Mayor Rudy Giuliani appears in a press conference, talking about fighting crime in all parts of the city, not just the white parts. That evening, Detectives Williams and Karyl arrive and announce that they’re taking Steve to the precinct for questioning. Mrs. Harmon panics as they handcuff her son, but Steve tries to reassure her it’s all “routine.” After they leave, Mrs. Harmon runs out into the street, but realizes that she doesn’t even know where the police took Steve.