Could Jacob be innocent?

As a court interpreter who is currently doing some studying on law, Defending Jacob might be surprisingly one of the best series I've watched last year. The cast is absolutely of high calibre, the acting, screenplay, soundtrack, and the way of telling the whole story are all captivating. It only took me half a day to finish the whole series. I hope Season 2 is coming soon.

If I were fortunate enough to finish JD, I hope I could eventually turn out to be a lawyer like Joanna. She is meticulous, perspicacious, resourceful and majestically calm. She is being professional at all times, offering considerate, timely advice to Andy and Laurie. She works with Jacob in an objective, unprejudiced, impartial manner (court interpreters are asked to do the same).

I've never read the book, I knew the series is an adapted version of the original story. Everyone seems to believe that Jacob was the perpetrator. People assumed that he has motive because there were confrontations between Ben and Jacob. Jacob was bullied by Ben, mostly verbally, mildly physically. It is completely normal for a 14-year-old boy to hold a grudge towards a bully. Nobody likes to be provoked and intimidated. There were non-direct evidence pointing towards Jacob directly as well. At the time, only his school mates knew about the bullying, Jacob chose not to tell his parents. He thought the internet would be the best place to vent by just creating a pseudo-name and writing a story to express his anger. The violent, threatening, and graphic story he wrote could be purely fictional. It could be his way of venting out his feelings towards Ben without actually hurting him. Jacob is from a decent, well-off, well-educated family. His father is the first assistant of the DA, his mom is possibly a teacher/an educator works in a prestigious institute. Jacob is highly intelligent, compassionate, well-educated and well-behaved (most of the times at school and home). Even though he doesn't really show much of his emotions to people, this is the way he communicates with the world. After finding Ben lying on the ground, he thought he would go and check up on him, he thought he could help him before he realised what actually happened to Ben. Jacob freaked out and walked away. His father works on cases like this all the time, he thought he would be considered as a suspect for being on the crime scene. The serrated knife he bought to make people think it is cool is another critical factor in this case. Jacob has no menacing intention of using this knife to hurt people, he might just carry the knife with him to show off, but it certainly doesn't look this way after he became the suspect with his fingerprints found on Ben's shirt. The aforementioned evidence have pointed to one direction which seems obvious, but could Jacob be the murderer? No one knows yet.

I would like to propose a hypothetical: Derek Yoo has a plausible motive. Why? Because Derek has been obsessed with Sarah. Ben has lured Sarah to send him nude photos of herself and threatened her to do something else sexually to him to not post the nude photos. Sarah was stressed and scared, so she let Derek know about her situation. Derek might have planned the whole thing to make his revenge on Ben and set it up on Jacob. Firstly, Derek knew about the issues between Ben and Jacob. Ben was mean to Jacob, Ben verbally attacked Jacob in public using insulting words and he physically hurt him as well by attempting to pick up fights. Secondly, Derek knew about Jacob has a serrated knife. Thirdly, Derek knew about the story Jacob wrote online, he knew it was fictional because nothing happened. However, Derek also knew that he could use everything written in the story to frame Jacob. Last but not least, Derek's obsession with Sarah is eccentric. There is a possibility that Sarah had a crush on Jacob but didn't tell him, somehow Derek observed and found out. So he held a grudge towards both Ben and Jacob on different levels, he thought he could connect all of these factors to kill two birds with one stone. The serrated knife is definitely not a limited edition, anyone could get one from a hardware store. Therefore, Derek could get the exact same knife as well and kept to himself. Everyone knew Jacob had one, but didn't know that Derek bought the same one to hurt Ben and blamed it on Jacob.

Of course, this is hypothetical. Jacob still could be guilty. Season 2 might give us more details, from different angles. Very keen to find out soon. :)