Dmitri’s defense attorney, Fetyukovich, is making the argument in his remarks that Smerdyakov murdered Fyodor. He’s trying to expose Dmitri’s arrest and his possible conviction as a potential “judicial error,” for the jury would be sentencing a man who is not guilty and would be doing so as a result of erroneous information. Fetyukovich tries to convince the jury that his word is more valid than that of the prosecutor, because he had an actual encounter with Smerdyakov. The defense attorney’s purpose is to show that people are not always what they seem. The image of Smerdyakov as “a weak…