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Chapters (23)
  1. ALSO BYFIONA SNYCKERS
  2. LACUNA
  3. PROLOGUE
  4. CHAPTER 1
  5. CHAPTER 2
  6. CHAPTER 3
  7. CHAPTER 4
  8. CHAPTER 5
  9. CHAPTER 6
  10. CHAPTER 7
  11. CHAPTER 8
  12. CHAPTER 9
  13. CHAPTER 10
  14. CHAPTER 11
  15. CHAPTER 12
  16. CHAPTER 13
  17. CHAPTER 14
  18. CHAPTER 15
  19. CHAPTER 16
  20. CHAPTER 17
  21. CHAPTER 18
  22. CHAPTER 19
  23. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DAVID LURIE: Of course it did, M’Lady. I’m not a monster. I thought about it long and hard before I made this decision. But the fact is, my daughter and I have never been close. She was much closer to her mother than to me. And she was part of the problem. She was very attached to the farmhouse and didn’t want to sell it. Her mother left it to both of us, but it was insured in my name only. I thought that after the rape, she would be too disoriented to look closely at the title deeds and start demanding half of the money. And I was right. She didn’t give it a second thought.

DESHEN SC: I see. Yes, I see. I think I speak for this court as a whole when I say that you had no choice. You did what you had to do.

DAVID LURIE: I knew if I had the opportunity to stand up and tell my story that you would see it my way. I’m a reasonable man, M’Lady. And this is a court full of reasonable men. Mutatis mutandis, of course, M’Lady. We are all reasonable men.

In a stunning twist in the case of the State v David Lurie, the accused, Mr. David Lurie, seemed to talk the court around to his way of thinking this morning.

Before today, commentators were adamant in their belief that the defence was making a serious misstep in putting Mr. Lurie on the stand at all. They believed he could accomplish nothing beyond giving the state more ammunition to hammer him on in cross-examination.

Mr. Lurie proved the naysayers wrong in his evidence-in-chief today. The lawyers, the audience in court, and the judge seemed to be eating out of his hand. Even this journalist has to own herself convinced. When David Lurie got the bit between his teeth and explained why he’d had no choice but to order the gang rape of his own daughter, you could have heard a pin drop.

What a triumph for the defence. When we look back on this case and talk about the moment at which the momentum of the trial swung away from the prosecution and towards the defence, this is what we will be discussing. Today was a black day for the prosecution, a black day indeed. I don’t see how they can recover from this. David Lurie has dealt a stunning blow to the state’s case, and most pundits can’t see the prosecution coming back from it.

CHAPTER 19