had graduated, grown up, he was finally The Man. We all have felt such things at one time or another. Oedipal or not, it is a pleasure after long years to stand in our fathers’ place, and it is a perfectly innocent pleasure. Anyway, why blame Oedipus? He was a victim. Poor Oedipus never meant to hurt anybody.
Logiudice nodded toward the judge (Show the jury you are respectful…). He glared balefully at Jacob as he passed (… and that you are not afraid of the defendant, because if you do not have the courage to look him in the eye and say “guilty,” how can you expect the jury to do it?). He stood directly in front of the jury with his fingertips resting on the front rail of the jury box (Close up the space between you; make them feel you are one of them).
“A teenage boy,” he said, “found dead. In a forest called Cold Spring Park. Early on a spring morning. A fourteen-year-old boy stabbed three times in a line across the chest and tossed down an embankment slick with mud and wet leaves, and left to die facedown less than a quarter mile from the school he’d been walking to, a quarter mile from the home he’d left only minutes before.”
His eyes roamed across the jury box.
“And the whole thing-the decision to do this, the choice-to take a life, to take this boy’s life-it only takes a second.”
He let the phrase hang there.
“One split second and”-he snapped his fingers-“snap. It only takes a second to lose your temper. And that is all you need, a second, an instant, to form the intention to murder. In this courtroom it is called malice aforethought. The conscious decision to kill, however quickly the intention forms, however briefly it is in the murderer’s mind. First-degree murder can happen just… like… that.”
He began to pace the length of the jury box, lingering to make eye contact with each juror as he passed.
“Let’s think about the defendant a moment. This is a case about a boy who had everything: good family, good grades, beautiful home in a wealthy suburb. He had it all, more than most, anyway, much more. But the defendant had something else too: he had a lethal temper. And when he was pushed-not too hard, just teased, just messed around with, the sort of thing that must go on every day in every school in the country-but when he was pushed a little too far and he decided he’d had enough, that lethal temper finally just… snapped.”
You must tell the jury the “story of the case,” the tale that led to the final act. Facts are not enough; you must weave them into a story. The jury must be able to answer the question “What is this case about?” Answer that question for them and you win. Distill the case down to a single phrase for them, a theme, even a single word. Embed that phrase in their minds. Let them take it back into the jury room with them, so that when they open their mouths to discuss the case, your words come tumbling out.
“The defendant snapped.” He snapped his fingers again.
He came to the defense table, stood too close, purposely disrespecting us by invading our space. He leveled his finger at Jacob, who looked down at his lap to avoid it. Logiudice was entirely full of shit but his technique was magnificent.
“But this wasn’t just any boy from a good home in a good suburb. And he wasn’t just any boy with a quick temper. This defendant had something else that set him apart.”
Logiudice’s finger slid from Jacob to me.
“He had a father who was an assistant district attorney. And not just any assistant district attorney either. No, the defendant’s father, Andrew Barber, was the First Assistant, the top man, in the very office where I work, right here in this building.”
In that moment I could have reached out and grabbed that fucking finger and torn it off Logiudice’s pale freckled hand. I looked him in the eye, showed nothing.
“This defendant-”
He withdrew his finger, raised it above his shoulder as if he were testing the wind, then he wagged it in the air as he moved back to the jury box.
“This defendant-”
Do not refer to the defendant by name. Call him only “the defendant.” A name humanizes him, makes the jury see him as a person worthy of sympathy, even mercy.
“This defendant wasn’t some clueless kid. No, no. He’d watched for years as his father prosecuted every major murder in this county. He’d listened to the dinner table conversations, overheard the phone calls, the shop talk. He grew up in a home where murder was the family business.”
Jonathan dropped his pen on his notepad, emitted an exasperated hissing sigh, and shook his head. The suggestion that “murder was the family business” came awfully close to the argument Logiudice had been barred from making. But Jonathan did not object. He could not appear to be obstructing the prosecution with technical, legalistic defenses. His defense would not be technical: Jacob did not do it. Jonathan did not want to muddy that message.
I understood all this. Still, it was infuriating to watch such contemptible bullshit go unchallenged.
The judge eyed Logiudice.
Logiudice: “At least, murder trials were the family business. The business of proving a murderer guilty, what we’re doing right here right now-this was something the defendant knew a little about, and not from watching TV shows. So when he snapped-when the moment came, the last deadly provocation, and he went after one of his own classmates with a hunting knife-he had already laid the groundwork, just in case. And when it was over, he covered his tracks like an expert. Because in a way he was an expert.
“There was only one problem: even experts make mistakes. And over the next few days we’re going to uncover the tracks that led right back to him. And only to him. And when you’ve seen all the evidence, you’ll know beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond any doubt, that this defendant is guilty.”
A pause.
“But why? You’re asking, Why would he kill a boy in his eighth-grade class? Why would any child do this to another child?”
He made a perplexed gesture: eyebrows raised, big shrug.
“Well, we’ve all been in school.”
His lips began to curl up into a smirk, conspiratorial. Let’s be naughty together and have a laugh in the courtroom.
“Come on, we’ve all been there, some of us more recently than others.”
He gave a crocodile smile which was, to my amazement, returned with little knowing grins from the jurors.
“That’s right, we’ve all been there. And we all know how kids can be. Let’s face it: school can be difficult. Kids can be mean. They tease, they horse around, they poke fun. You’re going to hear testimony that the victim in this case, a fourteen-year-old boy named Ben Rifkin, teased the defendant. Nothing especially shocking, nothing that would be a big deal to most kids. Nothing you wouldn’t hear on any playground in any town if you left this courtroom right now and drove around a bit.
“Let me be clear about something: it is not necessary to make a saint out of Ben Rifkin, the victim in this case. You’re going to hear some things about Ben Rifkin that maybe aren’t too flattering. But I want you to remember this: Ben Rifkin was a boy like any other boy. He was not perfect. He was a regular kid with all the flaws and all the growing pains of an ordinary teenager. He was fourteen years old-fourteen! — with his whole life stretched out in front of him. Not a saint, not a saint. But who among us would want to be judged only by the first fourteen years of our lives? Who among us was complete and… and… and finished at fourteen?
“Ben Rifkin was everything the defendant wanted to be. He was handsome, cool, popular. The defendant, on the other hand, was an outsider among his own classmates. Quiet, lonely, sensitive, odd. An outcast.
“But Ben made a fatal mistake in teasing this strange boy. He didn’t know about that temper, about the defendant’s hidden capacity-even desire-to kill.”
“Objection!”
“Sustained. The jury will disregard the remark about the defendant’s desire, which is complete speculation.”
Logiudice did not look away from the jury. He stood stone-still, shirked the objection, pretended he had not even heard it. The judge and the defense are trying to keep it from you, but we know the truth.
“The defendant made his plans. He got a knife. And not a kid’s knife, not a whittling knife, not a Swiss Army
