“Murder,” I said, turning back to the jury. “Just say the word. Murder. Sort of hangs in the air, doesn’t it? Brings up these horrific images of every movie you’ve ever seen, all the slasher films, the assassination films, the Mafia films. But it’s not like that, is it? The evidence you heard these past five days was, in the words of a wise woman from long ago, banal. Evil is banal. It’s boring and tame. There’s no devil with a pitchfork and fire spurring someone on. It’s just men. Men and the wickedness they do.” I shrugged. “Banal . . . is it, though? It takes a special kind of man to do something so heinous, strangling the victim, a young woman barely out of her teenage years, to death.” I lifted my hands, simulated the strangling, and stepped closer to the jury. “To wrap your fingers around an innocent girl’s throat and squeeze . . . to see life drain from her eyes, to know she’s about to die, and to keep going . . . that sort of evil should never seem banal. And Marcus Green is not a man capable of that type of evil.”

I looked to the judge, a cherubic man named Clemens, who appeared half-asleep.

“You were instructed by the judge that you must be impartial in your reasoning. You took an oath before this trial that you would uphold the law, that you would do what’s right and what’s just. And what is justice? It’s doing what’s fair. Don’t buy into this nonsense the prosecution has fed you.” I took out a coin, flipped it into the air, and caught it with one hand. Then I opened that hand, revealing that the coin wasn’t there. I opened my other hand, which held the coin. “What the prosecution has done on this case is what I just showed you: a magic trick. They tried to distract you with things about Marcus’s past. And it’s all true. Marcus was a drug addict, and somehow, by the grace of the Lord, he pulled himself out of that life. And far be it from the government to give him a second chance, even though he’s paid his dues.

“You heard from him yesterday. You saw him get up on that stand, tears in his eyes, and tell you how much he loved Mindi Bower. That he was going to marry her, that he wanted children with her and to grow old together. And someone took that away. Poof,” I said, making the coin disappear again. “Just like that, the love of his life was gone. Imagine what that would feel like.”

I paused and looked to Marcus, who had put his head down, just as I’d instructed him to do.