In their seminal 1981 work on courtroom performance, Reconstructing Reality in the Courtroom, Lance Bennett and Martha Feldman propose a theory purporting to show "how ordinary means of telling and interpreting stories are used in trials to assess the credibility of competing claims." Key among their insights is that courtroom dynamics are a function of more than lawyers attempting to convince lay jurors in the presence of a judge. What I hope to show over the next few installments in this series is that—without disagreeing with Bennett and Feldman (and even some of their critics)—the matter is rather more complicated than they posit. Ultimately, I want to focus on two things: first, the shifting roles that the various actors play throughout the course of any trial; and second, that most trials do not present jurors with a binary choice between diametrically opposing versions of "what really happened."