[Sniffnoy]

One bit of the story I'm very confused about -- going by the article, it sounds like the Freeman case was reopened after McGuffin had already been convicted of it, and then he was somehow convicted again of the same crime. Of course you can't be convicted twice of the same crime, so what happened here? I'm quite confused.

[DaveHerbert]

We open the story on the McGuffin case, and then go back in time to the 1950s, and then catch up with the story in 2010. He's just convicted the one time.

[Sniffnoy]

Oh, I see, thanks for clarifying. The 10-year time jump forward in the opening, that I notice upon rereading, is confusing; I read the opening as all occurring contiguously. The confusing thing isn't the jump backward in the middle, that's clearly a flashback interlude; it's that A. the opening isn't contiguous but contains a 10-year jump, and B. when we return to the Freeman case, we've returned to it at a point behind where we left off, rather than continuing from there.