“How do you know?” Johnny said. “How do you know?”

Chaos again.

The jury was excused and then the judge told the attorneys to approach. Phrases like “not relevant” and “this never came up before” and “We have had no time to address this, research this . . . you can’t allow this, it’s new evidence, not vetted . . . Johnny’s making it all up . . . playing the jury . . . this is a lie . . . it goes to the threat that Johnny felt in the house, that Betsy knew of . . . it goes to the character of the man who was killed . . . it’s abuse . . . it’s a pattern . . . it gives weight to his self-defense . . . Are you serious?”

The judge allowed Johnny to speak after the jury came back in. “My mother, Gabriella Cortez Kandinsky, was abused for years. My mother’s family was from Mexico. They worked in the fields. Her father died when she was six. He got pneumonia and no hospital would admit him because he was illegal. They gave him cough syrup and sent him home.

“When my mother was nineteen, her mother died. She was attacked by the owner of a farm. He wasn’t even arrested. My mother met my father shortly after that, picking berries on one of his neighbor’s farms. She was soon pregnant. I have no idea if she was willing to have sex with my father or not. My mother told me later that my father told her that he would tell the authorities that she was illegal and he would allow her to be shipped back to Mexico without us if she didn’t obey him. She would never see us again. I remember”—he choked on his words—“I remember her begging him not to do that, on her knees.

“My father wouldn’t let my mother work, would hardly ever let her leave the house. He called her fat. He called her a whore all the time. He called her a Mexican slut. He would beat her face until it swelled. I have no memory of my father ever being kind to my mother, and then, one day, she disappears. I think he killed her. We left Idaho for Oregon the day after he told us she left with a lover. Like I already said, my mother had no lover.”

The noise in the courtroom raised again to a deafening level, and the judge pounded his gavel.

“This is all a lie,” Alfred yelled, making sure he looked authoritative. “It’s all a lie. This is something concocted by Johnny, egged on by Betsy, to bolster their ridiculous self-defense theory. He’s made this up. There is no evidence that Gabriella was killed by Peter Kandinsky. None. No police reports. No witness. No photos. No body. Nothing.”

“Objection!” Orlando shouted.

The judge said, “I’ll allow it.”

The trial went on, Johnny brave and composed on the stand.