Unfortunately, it turned into nothing more than a setup for the "prisoner with one last chance" beginning to the second section. As another poster pointed out, we could have just as easily begun this section with the golem in the cell, hearing about the crime only in retrospect, if at all. The crime was no longer important to this part of the story, and certainly didn't justify the time and energy that went into the rather gruesome flashback.
This summed up most of my feelings quite nicely. The gruesome beginning and gruesome flashback seemed to have little to do with the plot except to justify to the reader why they could get away with a "prisoner's last chance" plot.
The murder scene was the worst scene to start the story with, immediately dropping almost all chance of me actually relating to the protagonist. At best it was a shock scene to get my attention with cheap gore and at worst. And the rape information was withheld until later why? By the time it arrived it was too little too late and just came off as an apology for the opening scene "Oh yeah, sorry about misleading you back then. He totally had a reason for doing what he did. But my shock scene opening wouldn't have been effective if I'd revealed that then". The fact that this vital information was withheld for so long was nothing more than a ploy by the author but I hates it when a protagonist withholds vital information from me in this way--it just screams plot device instead of helping me sympathize as much as I can.
For me the interesting part was the AI interaction and the information stored in the race of insects until they evolved the capability of making use of the stored information. That part was still cool, but I just felt it was drowned out by the backstory that ended up having little to do with the SF story.
