At a trial that begins on Tuesday in upstate New York, a district attorney will rise to tell the story of an attempt to murder a man in his seventies who was sitting on an amphitheatre stage four miles from the courthouse.
Jason Schmidt is known to be an accomplished prosecutor, quick on his feet, and even the most prosaic description of the alleged crime would be laced with drama. Yet it may be hard, in an opening statement, to match the account of the attack that has already been set down by one of the most famous writers of the age, who was also its victim.
