“Oh, that’s right. I was characterizing Mr. Hickory’s closing as ‘overwrought yet completely irrelevant.’ You probably want to know why.”
Her voice was soft. She always tried to start the closing that way to get the jury to lean in a little. It also gave her voice space to grow, space for her narrative to build.
“Mr. Hickory kept blabbing on about what we already knew, didn’t he? In terms of evidence, that is. We don’t dispute that the gun belonged to my client or any of that other stuff, so why waste our time with that?”
She gave a heartfelt shrug but didn’t wait for Hickory to try to answer.
“But everything else Mr. Hickory claimed…well, I won’t call them bald-faced lies because that would be rude. But the prosecutor’s office is a political one, and like the worst politicians—don’t we have too many of those nowadays?—Mr. Hickory slanted the story so that you only heard his biased and distorted narrative. Boy, I’m sick of that, aren’t you? I’m sick of that with politicians. I’m sick of that with the media. I’m sick of that on social media, not that I’m on social media, but my grandson Matthew is and sometimes he shows me what’s there, and I tell you, it’s Crazyville, am I right? Stay away.”
Brief laughter.
This was all a bit of rapport/showmanship on her part. Everyone dislikes politicians and the media in the same way they dislike attorneys, so this made Hester both self-deprecating and relatable. It was, however, an interesting dichotomy. If you ask someone what they think of lawyers, they will trash them. If you ask them what they think of their lawyer, they will speak glowingly.
“As you already know, most of what Mr. Hickory said doesn’t add up. That’s because life isn’t, as much as Mr. Hickory wants it to be, black and white. We all know this, don’t we? It is part of the human condition. We all think that we are uniquely complex, that no one can read our thoughts, but that we can read theirs. Are there black-and-whites in the world? Sure. We will get back to that in a moment. But mostly—and we all know this—life is lived in the grays.”
Without turning to the screen, Hester hit the remote and a slide appeared on the television screen the defense had brought in. Her television was intentionally bigger than the prosecution’s—seventy-two inches while Hickory’s was a mere fifty. Subliminally, it told the jury that she had nothing to hide.
“For some reason, Mr. Hickory chose not to show you this.”
The jury’s eyes were naturally drawn to the image behind her. Hester didn’t turn and look. She wanted to show them that she knew what it was; instead she watched their faces.
“I hate to state the obvious, but this is a closeup of a hand. More specifically, the right hand of Mr. Lars Corbett.”
The image was blurry. That was part technology—it was an extreme closeup—and part intentional. If it had worked in her favor to improve the lighting or pixels, she would have done so. A trial is two competing stories. It didn’t serve her interest to do anything but blow it up in this way, quality be damned.
“Do you see what’s clutched in his hand?”
Some of the jury squinted.
“A little hard to make out, I know,” Hester continued. “But we can see it’s black. It’s metal. Watch now.”
Hester pressed play. The hand began to rise. Since this was extreme closeup, the hand appeared to move fast. Again: intentional. She strolled over to the exhibit table and picked up a small gun. “This is a Remington RM380 pocket-size pistol. It’s black. It’s metal. Do you know why you buy a gun this size?”
She waited a beat, as though the jury would answer. They didn’t, of course.
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s in the gun’s name. Pocket-size. So you can carry it. So you can conceal it and use it. And what else do we know? We know that Lars Corbett owns at least one Remington RM380.”
Hester pointed again to the blurry image.
“Is that the gun right there in Lars Corbett’s hand?”
Again she paused, shorter this time.
“Right, exactly, so we already have reasonable doubt, don’t we? That’s enough to end all of this. I could sit down right now and not say another word, and your vote not to convict is obvious. But let’s continue, shall we? Because I do have more. Much more.”
Hester motioned dismissively toward the defense table. “We heard testimony that Lars Corbett’s Remington RM380 was ‘found’”—Hester put the word in sarcastic air quotes—“in his basement, but really? Do we know that for certain? Corbett owned a lot of guns. You saw them during this trial. He had a fetish for all sorts of destructive weaponry—big scary assault rifles and machine guns and revolvers and Lord-knows-what. Here, let me show you.”