We’re bound to be in violation of the fire codes at this point, but Judge Elder has allowed it, so nothing will be done to thin the crowd. Shad gives a respectful nod to the gallery, then turns back to the jury box.
“I’ve learned a lot during this case, and what I’ve learned has tried my spirit. I’ve learned that no matter how hard I might bend my mind and will to the task of understanding the intimate relations between the black and white races, I can’t do it. I can’t fathom the pain and guilt and fear that led a beautiful soul like Viola Turner to welcome death from the hand of a man who had once claimed to love her. I cannot plumb the depths of despair in a son who never knew his real father, who sank so low that he felt he had no option but to steal back the inheritance he believed was his birthright. Though it hurts my heart, I must accept that I will never understand these things. I don’t think the law is equal to that task. But the law was not written for that purpose. It was written to judge the acts of men, not their motives. Not their hearts. And under the law, Tom Cage is guilty of murder.”
And with that, Shad begins as masterful and concise a summation of a forensic case as I’ve ever heard. He does not merely parrot what he laid out in his opening remarks or his case in chief. He culls what did not work for him and incorporates the elements of Quentin’s case that worked against him before this hour. As I feared, he tailors his theory of Dad using the adrenaline to kill Viola while fentanyl was ready to hand by suggesting—as Drew Elliott did to me on the first day of the trial—that Dad had intended to claim that Viola had suffered a heart attack and he’d tried in vain to resuscitate her. He doesn’t bother to mention that Dad never made that claim, but instead counts on the details and emotion of his presentation to sweep all doubt before them. Shad speaks with authority and precision, but he manages never to talk down to the jury—something he’s been guilty of in the past. Nor does he put them to sleep by delving too deeply into the science of the case. He chooses to conclude the first act of his closing argument with the weakest point of his case: Viola’s videotape.
“Ladies and gentlemen, watching that videotape was difficult for me. One reason is that judging by what Mrs. Turner said on that tape, I turned out to be wrong about some of the things I’d guessed about Dr. Cage’s motivations. But if I was wrong in part about his motive, I was not wrong about his actions. You must remember that all the while Viola Turner was speaking to that camera, she was doing so in the firm belief that only hours later, Tom Cage was going to inject her with a lethal dose of morphine. Nothing she said on the tape disputes that. In fact, Mrs. Turner specifically refers to her imminent death. And so, I will remind you of something I told you in my opening remarks: in the last analysis, motive is not a key element of the crime of murder. Under the law, the question is this: Did Tom Cage, on December twelfth, intend to enter that house and end the life of Viola Turner? If he did, he is guilty of murder. And all of the evidence we have indicates that he did.”
For a moment I think Shad is about to sit down, but he appears to think better of it. “Ladies and gentlemen, I believe I should address a couple of points before Mr. Avery gives his summation.
“First, we live in a time when public perception of the justice system has been greatly influenced, even distorted, by television shows like CSI. Juries sometimes feel that if the State’s case is anything less than a parade of high-tech tests and recordings, then they cannot judge someone to be guilty of a crime. In this case, purely by chance, video recordings were made of the time surrounding the crime, and of the victim’s death. We saw some of that footage. And there’s nothing I would have liked more than for us to see the contents of the tape found in the Dumpster of St. Catherine’s Hospital. I am almost certain that it showed the actual commission of the murder. However, as you know, the killer’s efforts to wipe out this record of his crime ultimately proved successful. Our hopes of seeing Mrs. Turner’s murder presented as an objective reality were thwarted.
“But that does not mean that her murder was not real. You saw the terror and pain in Viola’s eyes when she died. You heard her cry out the defendant’s name. And it falls to you twelve jurors to determine the events that immediately preceded that final recording. You are the finders of fact. You were not summoned here to sit passively and watch a film of a crime. You were summoned to sift through the sum total of evidence brought before you, to listen to the witnesses, and then to the best of your ability judge the innocence or guilt of the accused.”
Shad’s eyes were on my father as he said the last sentence, but now he shifts his gaze to Quentin.
“Ladies and gentlemen, when my learned opponent gave his opening remarks, he spoke to you about something called the Unwritten Law. He described it as what happens when a jury, for some compelling reason, decides to set aside the rules—the law—and vote what it feels in its collective gut. As you all know now, Mr. Avery has a silver tongue, and he made this phenomenon—known as jury nullification—sound downright noble. Like a vote for conscience, if you will. Like a jury being brave, instead of kowtowing to whatever rules some lazy, cigar-chomping legislators wrote over in Jackson. But I’m afraid that’s not the case.
“When Mr. Avery characterized jury nullification as something noble, he was cleverly trying to provide justification for you to set aside the law, and the judge’s instructions, and vote in defiance of the evidence. What Mr. Avery was really telling you was, ‘If you think Dr. Cage is a fine old fellow, no matter how incriminating the evidence against him might be, just vote your heart. You can get a good night’s sleep afterward, because there’s plenty of precedent for it. Why, you’re showing moral courage by doing it.’”