“I’m sorry if I offended anyone by saying that,” he says, “but anyone easily offended by such language would be well advised to leave this courtroom and not return. For race and racism, as I said, lie at the very heart of this case. Let us be honest here together. Everyone in this room has heard the word ‘nigger’ more times than they could count. We’ve heard it said in anger and in jest, in casual discourse, and in flaming rhetoric. But the important thing to recognize about the statement I made—that it only takes one drop of black blood to make you a nigger—is that a horror and hatred of what was once called miscegenation was part of the world Tom Cage grew up in. Even if Dr. Cage himself did not share the deepest prejudices of many whites—and I’m not saying he didn’t, for many a white racist loved to bed black women—Tom Cage knew that he lived in a town filled with people who did. This town. And after a lifetime of building a reputation for integrity unsurpassed in this city, Dr. Cage could not stand to see that reputation shattered, his children disillusioned, his son’s political career damaged, his personal legacy destroyed.

“And what of Viola Turner? For four decades she had dutifully concealed his darkest secrets. But when she returned to Natchez, this poor woman was staring at death’s door, and she was ready to unburden her soul. Ready to do right by her child. She could no longer stand to carry Dr. Cage’s lies within her like a second cancer. Hiding those lies had forced Viola to enmesh herself in a web of deceit so complex that no one knew the whole of her terrible life story. Tragically, Viola believed that Tom Cage had enough integrity and responsibility to live up to the actions of his past. But he did not. Faced with the choice of telling the truth or committing murder, Dr. Cage chose to kill. And how easy it must have been. For evidence will show you that Tom Cage was no stranger to murder.”