“Now imagine the police come to you and start grilling you. Where were you? What was your relationship like? Let us see the last text messages you two sent each other. Detective Pascal over there held Marcus in a room for seven hours and grilled him with her partner to the point that he broke down and wept. A man who had been through the most horrific thing a man can go through, seeing the corpse of the person he loves on his floor, and they tortured him like he was a terrorist.”

I leaned forward on the banister in front of the jury. I didn’t like to invade their space—jurors hated that—but I also knew that after five days of gruesome photos, a recording of a heartbreaking 911 call by a neighbor, and a medical examiner who’d gone into excruciating detail about the strangulation, they were beaten down and numb. Being right in their faces would get their attention.

“The prosecution told you Marcus has a temper and that temper flared up and he killed Mindi. Really? How do they know he has a temper? Have you seen it? Have you heard from a single witness anything that indicates he has a temper? Did you see anything on that detective’s video interview that indicated he had a temper? Because all I saw was a man weeping over the loss of the woman he loved.”

I took a step back. “The fact is, there is no motive, there is no physical evidence. There are no witnesses other than a neighbor who says she didn’t see anything until coming into the house and discovering Mindi’s body. What we do have is a broken kitchen window someone climbed through, missing cash and jewelry from the home, and a grieving husband who testified that he arrived during a home invasion and scared the monster off . . . but not before that monster killed Mindi.” I pointed to the prosecutors. “They have nothing here but circumstantial evidence and a hope that they’re right. Because that’s what this is really about: hope. They hope they can get a conviction in this case because it’s in all the papers, and because Mindi was an up-and-coming actress. This prosecution is grotesque, and it’s enough. Marcus hasn’t even had time to grieve for the loss of his love and the life he was supposed to have with her. Enough’s enough. Let him go home. Please, just let him go home and grieve.”

I turned to the detective and prosecutors, winked one more time—rubbing it in their faces because they knew they would lose this and had still made me do the trial—and then sat down.

The prosecutors shook their heads at the judge, indicating they were done, and the judge began instructing the jury on the deliberation process.

“I was told you were good, but I had my doubts,” Marcus whispered, leaning over to me.