Monster characters

Appears from the start

A sixteen-year-old Harlem student who loves filmmaking and has been charged with taking part in a drugstore robbery in which the owner was killed. Frightened by jail and by the label attached to him in court, he imagines his trial as a screenplay while recording private thoughts in a journal.

Appears from the start

Steve's defense attorney. Focused and controlled in court, she presses him to understand that a verdict may depend less on abstract truth than on whether jurors can distinguish him from the people accused alongside him.

Appears from the start

The prosecutor handling the felony-murder case. She presents Steve and James King as willing participants in the same criminal plan and asks the jury to judge each person's contribution to the robbery as part of a single act.

Appears from the start

Steve's adult co-defendant, accused of entering the drugstore during the robbery. He is tried beside Steve but represented separately, so their defenses share a courtroom while their interests do not fully align.

Also known as Bobo

Appears from the start

An admitted participant in the drugstore robbery who testifies for the prosecution under an agreement intended to reduce his own punishment. His account is central to the effort to place the other defendants within the plan.

Appears from the start

A fourteen-year-old member of a neighborhood gang who acknowledges a role in the robbery and appears as a prosecution witness. His testimony raises questions about coercion, credibility, and the bargains made by witnesses who face charges themselves.

Appears from the start

The owner of the Harlem drugstore targeted in the robbery. His death during the crime is the basis of the murder charge against everyone alleged to have joined the plan, whether or not that person fired a weapon.

Appears from the start

A witness who was in the drugstore shortly before the killing and identifies James King as one of the men she saw there. Her evidence gives the prosecution a witness without an admitted role in the crime.

Appears from the start

Steve's film-club teacher, called by the defense as a character witness. He knows Steve through the student's creative work and describes him as thoughtful and humane, though the prosecution tests how much a teacher can know about a pupil away from school.

Appears from the start

Steve's father, who visits him while he awaits the verdict. He loves his son but is shaken by the possibility that the young man in court may not be the person he believed he knew.

Appears from the start

Steve's mother, steadfast in her belief in him during the trial. She brings him a Bible and tries to give him emotional certainty while the jail and courtroom make him doubt how others see him.