It was Lauren who taught me the importance of pointing. On my first day, she told me and the other new arrivals to the Special Victims Bureau that you need to show the jury that you’re not afraid to stand in judgment. It tells them that they shouldn’t be either.

With my arm still outstretched, I continue, “Dana Goodwin was engaged in an extramarital affair with Lauren Wright. You will see proof and hear testimony that Ms. Goodwin and Ms. Wright met on a weekly basis for months, always in hotel rooms, so that neither of their husbands would know about the affair. The most compelling evidence of Ms. Goodwin’s guilt will not come from a third party, however, but from the defendant herself. Her text messages to Lauren Wright, and Lauren’s messages back to the defendant, show that they were two people who, if not in love, were definitely in lust with each other. And one of those texts—the last text that Ms. Wright ever received—was sent by Ms. Goodwin at 1:03 a.m., asking Ms. Wright to meet her in Central Park. The very place where she was found dead a few hours later.”

I tell them that Franklin Pearse’s ID matches Dana Goodwin’s physique, that she owns a black hoodie, and that the murder weapon was registered to the late Detective Papamichael, a cop who worked a case that Dana prosecuted four years earlier.

I think it sounds compelling. But midway through my opening, I can feel that I’m losing the jurors. I’m not connecting the way I need to, which is evident by the vacant expressions I’m seeing from the twelve people who are charged with adjudicating Dana Goodwin’s guilt.

Part of it is that I’m rusty. It’s been more than a year since I’ve tried a case. But I thought I’d handled jury selection well. The men and women who are seated are pretty close to the collection I was hoping for—older people, who I thought would be less willing to accept both the extramarital affair and its being of the same-sex variety; and no African American women, who jury consultants repeatedly told me in the past I do not connect well with. Moreover, I only need my eyes to know that women of all races love LeMarcus Burrows. My jury-selection strategy was vindicated by the fact that Burrows operated on exactly the antithetical premise, trying to fill the jury with African American women and millennials.

I suspect the real weakness in my opening has nothing to do with my being out of practice, and far more with the fact that when it comes time for me to connect the dots for the jurors, I fall short. Although I’ve told them the who—Dana Goodwin—and the how—two gunshots to the head—I haven’t delivered on the why.