Norma Banks gives my hand a quick squeeze. I take a last sip of water, take in some air, get to my feet.
Showtime for real.
I’m the one walking to center stage now.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I say.
Then I’m the one speaking directly to the ladies and gentlemen of the jury.
“Well, of course he did it,” is the way I begin.
FIFTY-FIVE
I HAVEN’T PLANNED TO begin this way. But now that Katherine Welsh has taken her shot at me, I decide to go with it.
Maybe it’s the cocktail of Red Bull and adrenaline and being further hot-wired with nerves that pushes me even further. I give her table a quick pat with my hand as I walk past her.
“Of course he did it,” I say to the jury. Then I follow it up with this:
“Because the guy did it before, right? Stands to reason.”
My tone is conversational as I begin to walk back and forth in front of them, making eye contact with as many of the men and women staring back at me as I can manage, as if this is the start of story time.
Which it is.
“Come on,” I say. “You know what you’re all thinking, even if the only way you’d admit it is if I gave you truth serum. He killed that other family and got away with it, and now it turns out he’d already done the exact same thing with another father and mother and daughter who’d only committed the capital crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
I lean on the banister now, right in front of the woman who is Juror No. 7, a high school teacher from Williston Park.
“C’mon, you can tell me,” I say, lowering my voice and trying to sound conspiratorial. “I promise to keep it between the two of us.”
She smiles at me. In that moment, I have her on my side, whether she’d ever admitthatwithout truth serum or not.
I turn and walk back to the middle of the room. I always like to stay in motion as a way of holding their attention.
And I’m certain that I have their attention now.
“My esteemed opponent wants you all to believe that my client’s guilt is a foregone conclusion,” I say. “She expects you to simply follow her wherever she wants to lead you. Some people would say she wants you to follow her like sheep, except that sheep are highly intelligent animals, despite the popular misconception about them. Somewhat like the misconception about my client’s guilt in this case.”
I briefly turn to Katherine Welsh now and give her the same dead-eye look she’d just given me. Only I hold mine a beat longer.
I know she thinks she’s tough.
I’m tougher.
“But if they do follow you down a dead end, that will be the real crying shame, won’t it, Ms. Welsh?” I say, speaking directly to her.
You’re not supposed to call out the other side in an opening statement.
But she started it.
I walk back toward the jury.
“The real and lasting shame of convicting Rob Jacobson for crimes he did not commit is that it will do nothing to bring justice to these three victims,” I say. “Because convicting an innocent man never does that.”
Just like that, I feel as if I’m rolling with material which by now I know by heart. I tell them that by the time I’m back in front of them for my summation—“Trust me,” I say, “you’re definitely going to want to stick around for that”—they willhave done everything with the DA’s alleged DNA evidence except fold it into a paper airplane.
There’s no such thing, by the way, as “alleged” DNA evidence. It either is or it isn’t, but they don’t need to know that.
