“Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time preparing my opening remarks, writing, practicing, memorizing—but you know what? After what we heard from the deputy attorney general this morning, I’ve decided to toss my presentation and try something else.”

Now even the judge is leaning forward.

“Who here has seen My Cousin Vinny?” Hardy asks.

Judge Dow clears his throat. “Ms. Hardy, this is not a quiz show.”

Hardy smiles. “It was a rhetorical question, Your Honor. We’ve all seen it.”

Nods from the jurors confirm that.

“So we all recall how Joe Pesci’s character, the attorney defending the two young men—‘deese two yutes’—responds to the local prosecutor’s opening statement.” She alters her body language and actually does a pretty solid Pesci impression: “‘Everything that guy just said is—’” She stops there. “I can’t finish the line in this courtroom, but you all remember it.”

Smiles and nods from the jury. Chuckles and a few laughs from the gallery.

Judge Dow raps his gavel again, and, like everybody else in the room, I add the final word in my head.

The word is bullshit.

“Did you know, ladies and gentlemen, that the American Bar Association’s own publication, the ABA Journal, ranked My Cousin Vinny as number three on its list of the greatest legal movies ever made? That’s because it got so much right in its portrayal of the legal system, including when a prosecution attorney tries to make a case out of… well, you know.”

The jury’s with her now. I can feel it.

Hardy turns serious. “It saddens me to say that, because I have so much respect for prosecutors and what they do. But this case should never have come to trial, ladies and gentlemen. The truth—the real truth—is that the government has no case against Cole Wright.”

She starts ticking off points on her fingers. “There are no witnesses to this alleged crime. There is no DNA evidence connecting Cole Wright to this alleged crime. There is no physical evidence connecting him to this crime. There are no video or audio recordings of my client threatening or injuring Miss Bonanno.”

Now she steps even closer to the jury box. “Yes, there are a few witness statements alleging some harsh or aggressive words from Cole Wright at a time when he was in a very aggressive line of work. Might some of that aggression have spilled over into his personal life? It would be surprising if it didn’t.

“And let’s all remember that this was over seventeen years ago. When you hear these witnesses, ask yourself: How confident are you of exactly what you heard or saw nearly two decades ago? Would you bet on it? Would you send an honorable man to prison based on it? Or might you have some reasonable doubt?”