Shad starts to object, but there’s a long-standing tradition that lawyers do not interrupt each other’s opening statements.

Quentin rolls closer to the jury. “You folks may not know it, but we have a mess of lawyers sitting in this courtroom with us. Yesterday, too. This is a historic trial. And I’ll tell you right now, a lot of those lawyers think I’m crazy. That I’m going senile. Why? Because I’ve let the DA get away with murder for a day and a half. He’s bent the rules every which way, and I’ve done nothing to stop him. I haven’t even tried to slow him down. I’ve let Mr. Johnson present patently inadmissible testimony without objecting to it . . .”

Shad’s face is rapidly darkening, but Quentin pushes on, as though oblivious to the effect of his words on opposing counsel. As outrageous as they sound, they are also true.

“I’ve listened to hearsay, irrelevant evidence, testimony about prior acts that can’t legally be held against my client in the present, and I didn’t object to any of it. I’ll tell you something else. By not objecting, I lost my ability to appeal a guilty verdict based on that testimony. That’s right. If you convict Dr. Cage of murder, I cannot appeal your verdict based on any of the legal flimflam that Mr. Johnson has pulled, because I didn’t object to it when he did it. If I didn’t have the long experience that I do, I believe Judge Elder himself would have dragged me back to his chambers to ask me if I ever graduated from law school.”

As I scan the faces in the jury box, it seems to me that they are grasping Quentin’s point. Whatever his strategy might be, it’s an all-in bet.

“So why, you must be wondering, would I do that? Why would I give Shadrach Johnson an inch and watch him take a mile? I’ll tell you. In the Book of Matthew, Jesus said, ‘If a man asks you to walk a mile with him, walk with him twain.’ ‘Twain,’ for those of you who don’t read your Samuel Clemens, means ‘two.’ Well, while Mr. Johnson put on his case, I tried to follow Jesus’s exhortation. It’s been difficult, but early on, Dr. Cage and I decided that, since he has nothing to hide, we would not attempt to stop anybody from saying anything they wanted to on that witness stand. We’re not going to try to ‘game the system,’ as the young folks say, or manipulate it to our benefit. We want the same thing you good people do. We want the truth to come out. The whole truth, and nothing but.