I CAN NEVER FORGET I SENT A MAN TO JAIL FOR LIFE
Oscar winner channels his anguish into new thriller set in the jury room
Oscar-winning writer Graham Moore has used the “guilt and doubt” that has plagued him since sending a man to prison for life to create a thriller tipped to be this year’s “must read” bestseller.
The Holdout tells the fictional story of a woman, Maya Seale, who persuades the rest of the jury in a murder case to clear him after initially deciding he was guilty.
This decision haunts them all until, a decade later, one of the jurors is found dead and Maya becomes the prime suspect.
The novel, out now, is acclaimed by bestselling writer Sophie Hannah as “the most gripping and satisfying thriller I’ve read in more than a decade”. It is being adapted by Moore for a TV drama on streaming service Hulu in the US, with UK distribution to follow.
But the “knockout” thriller from the scriptwriter of The Imitation Game, which starred Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, was inspired by Moore’s real-life jury service when he was an aspiring writer in New York 11 years ago.
This trial for attempted murder still keeps him awake as he agonises over the consequences of the decision. After the twoweek hearing in 2009, Moore and another juror, a woman, became “holdouts” in refusing to accept the not guilty verdict the other 10 jurors wanted to deliver.
On trial was a man in his early 20s accused of attempted murder for thrusting a broken bottle into the neck of a man in his late 70s after a row outside a store.
Moore says: “I honestly felt it was a case that should have been relatively open and shut but the defence attorney did a great job and the prosecutor, who was younger and inexperienced, did not.
“It was fascinating to watch a defence attorney who was so effective that he had most of the jurors on his side.
“At the end of the day the physical evidence was overwhelming and the defence story did not really make sense.”
After days in the jury room Moore and his ally convinced the rest of the jury to find the accused guilty of assault. It then emerged this was the “third strike” for the defendant, which under New York law meant he would be jailed for life.
Moore, 38, who now lives in Los Angeles with wife Caitlin, says: “That is a decision which has haunted me every day since. I believe we were right, I am quite certain we were right, yet there is always a part of me which wonders, ‘What if we were wrong?’
“I write novels and films for a living, I live in a lovely house with my wife and dog in Los Angeles and this man, to my knowledge, is still in prison and if not for me, he might not be.
“That’s a weight on my shoulders that I’ve never figured out how to deal with.” He adds: “Writing this novel was my way of processing through the guilt and doubts I have and it helped. But I don’t know if they will ever go away entirely.” Moore, who grew up in Chicago determined not to pursue a legal career as both his parents are lawyers who divorced and then married two other lawyers, says one of the hardest parts of being a “holdout” was the fact that he was the only man on the jury with 11 women.
He says: “As the only man on the jury I was very aware as we started debating that I didn’t want to become the caricature of the alpha-male dominating the conversation and bossing everyone around.
“If it was only me as the holdout with 11 women against me it would have been much more difficult.
“If it had been me alone I would have debated a little bit but it would have been much easier to say ‘Even if I don’t agree with what you are saying, even if I think you are wrong, I will just vote with you because you outnumber me and I must have missed something’.”
Moore won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2015 for The Imitation Game, which starred Cumberbatch as maths genius Alan Turing, who broke the Nazis’ Enigma code at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.
Moore has written two other novels but The Holdout is his first thriller inspired by personal experience. He says: “Once I decided I wanted to write about this experience, which was eight or nine years after the trial, I read books and memoirs from jurors on more famous cases, like the OJ Simpson trial or the Scott Peterson one.”
Peterson was convicted in 2004 of murdering his pregnant wife Laci in California, after a trial in which one juror was removed and replaced for misconduct, and the foreman requested his own removal during the jury deliberations. Moore has suffered from depression since childhood but found writing and making films were creative outlets which helped manage mental illness.
He received a standing ovation for his speech in receiving his Oscar, after bravely admitting that he attempted suicide when he was 16 because he felt “weird” and
‘Our verdict haunts me every day’ ‘As the only man I couldn’t be bossy’
“different” and that he “did not belong”. He had said: “I would like this moment to be for that kid out there who feels she’s weird or she’s different or she doesn’t fit in anywhere – yes, you do, I promise you do.
“Stay weird, stay different and when it’s your turn, and you are standing on this stage, please pass the message on.”
Moore, who has three brothers and three sisters, did not even tell his family that he was going to do this, saying: “I am a writer, which means the number of times I am going to stand on a stage on television and speak to hundreds of millions of people around the world are likely to be few.”
● The Holdout by Graham Moore (Orion, £12.99)