Jack Henry Abbott Trial: 1982

Another witness, Wayne Larsen, told of seeing Abbott and Adan outside the diner. After a brief dispute, Abbott had lunged at the other man with a knife. Adan staggered back, clutching his chest. Abbott screamed, "Do you still want to continue this?" Adan, bleeding profusely, replied: "God no. Are you crazy? I already told you I don't."

Earlier rumors that Norman Mailer would testify on Abbott's behalf proved erroneous. It was left to Abbott alone to give the court some insight into the rigors of prison life, rigors that he claimed had honed his paranoia to a lethal level. In the midst of tearfully recounting his brawl with Adan, Abbott was caught off guard when the victim's father-in-law, Henry Howard, suddenly leapt up and yelled, "Abbott, you scum! You useless scum! It's just like the book, Abbott, just like in the book." Still shouting, Howard was led away.

Abbott took the interruption coolly, eyes blinking through gold-rimmed spectacles, and continued with his version of events on the fateful night. Adan had approached him outside the diner. "I was going to run, but then I thought, 'You don't do that.' "Adan kept coming. Abbott claimed that Adan went for a knife (none was ever found), that he had tried to block it, and that a brief struggle ensued. "All of a sudden the knife was in his chest and it was dead still.… It was one of the most tragic misunderstandings I can imagine."

Abbott's culpability was never in dispute, only the degree. After more than 24 hours of deliberation, the jury adjudged him guilty of first-degree manslaughter, but not murder. On April 15, 1982, Judge Irving Lang sentenced Abbott to 15 years to life imprisonment. He did so regretfully, blaming Abbott's behavior on "a prison system that brutalizes rather than rehabilitates."

Norman Mailer, asked for his opinion on the verdict, sounded melancholic. "What can I say—the man is used to jail. Jail, sadly enough, is his home."

This case is eerily similar to that of Edgar Smith, when another renowned literary figure, William F. Buckley, took up a murderer's cause with disastrous repercussions. But it also highlights the problem facing all parole boards: balancing humanitarian concerns for the inmate against the public's right to protection from its worst elements. One cannot escape the nagging suspicion that, in this case at least, the weight of celebrity opinion counted for more than common sense.