The law should be very simple on this one. We as a nation do not condone executing people in our streets.
The world is watching and waiting to witness this verdict.
This should be a murder conviction.
The Three Rules of Closing Statements very much were in evidence yesterday in Minnesota:
1 If the facts on are on your side …you pound the facts.
2 If the law is on your side… you pound the law.
3 If neither are on your side…you pound the table and hope to hang one juror who will become your advocate in jury deliberations.
That’s what we saw yesterday in Minneapolis. We saw the defense ramble on incoherently for almost three hours hoping he can get one juror to bite on the notion Derek Chauvin acted in a legally responsible manner on the fateful day in question.
Conversely…the prosecutor went basically Frankie Galvin-Paul Newman with the jury. He appealed to their common sense and human decency. He reminded the jury they are the law right now.
Not the books. Not the trappings of the courtroom. Not the politicians. Not the cable news networks
THEY ARE THE LAW and within their own life experiences and prisms of human decency this will be their moment to define the law.
If we as nation want to show the rest of the world the Doctrine of Equal Justice for All is in place in America…this will be a murder conviction.
The movie The Verdict was produced in 1982 by Sidney Lumet. It is my favorite movie based on a legal courtroom drama. The Paul Newman character Frankie Galvin reminds me to this day of my father.
Frankie Galvin didn’t graduate from Harvard. He was a Boston College grad. Bob Jackson didn’t graduate from Harvard either. He was an Oklahoma City University grad.
But both had the same basic underpinnings of what their role should be in practicing law.
That being….those who need legal representation against either the rich and/or powerful are entitled to their day in court with the best possible legal representation.
The law is in place to make us all equal… to protect the weak from the powerful… who for various reasons can lose their sense of what it means for all us to live the American Dream with our own sense of human dignity.
This is why we need the law.