“Ladies and gentlemen, watching that videotape was difficult for me. One reason is that judging by what Mrs. Turner said on that tape, I turned out to be wrong about some of the things I’d guessed about Dr. Cage’s motivations. But if I was wrong in part about his motive, I was not wrong about his actions. You must remember that all the while Viola Turner was speaking to that camera, she was doing so in the firm belief that only hours later, Tom Cage was going to inject her with a lethal dose of morphine. Nothing she said on the tape disputes that. In fact, Mrs. Turner specifically refers to her imminent death. And so, I will remind you of something I told you in my opening remarks: in the last analysis, motive is not a key element of the crime of murder. Under the law, the question is this: Did Tom Cage, on December twelfth, intend to enter that house and end the life of Viola Turner? If he did, he is guilty of murder. And all of the evidence we have indicates that he did.”

For a moment I think Shad is about to sit down, but he appears to think better of it. “Ladies and gentlemen, I believe I should address a couple of points before Mr. Avery gives his summation.

“First, we live in a time when public perception of the justice system has been greatly influenced, even distorted, by television shows like CSI. Juries sometimes feel that if the State’s case is anything less than a parade of high-tech tests and recordings, then they cannot judge someone to be guilty of a crime. In this case, purely by chance, video recordings were made of the time surrounding the crime, and of the victim’s death. We saw some of that footage. And there’s nothing I would have liked more than for us to see the contents of the tape found in the Dumpster of St. Catherine’s Hospital. I am almost certain that it showed the actual commission of the murder. However, as you know, the killer’s efforts to wipe out this record of his crime ultimately proved successful. Our hopes of seeing Mrs. Turner’s murder presented as an objective reality were thwarted.

“But that does not mean that her murder was not real. You saw the terror and pain in Viola’s eyes when she died. You heard her cry out the defendant’s name. And it falls to you twelve jurors to determine the events that immediately preceded that final recording. You are the finders of fact. You were not summoned here to sit passively and watch a film of a crime. You were summoned to sift through the sum total of evidence brought before you, to listen to the witnesses, and then to the best of your ability judge the innocence or guilt of the accused.”