This went on for at least an hour. The faces of the jurors showed the first signs of fatigue. The only one who seemed focused was the young woman with the penetrating eyes. I would have liked to know if she was listening with such visible attention because she agreed with the assistant prosecutor or, on the contrary, because she wanted to be prepared to refute her arguments.

At last my attention was reawakened by a passage that wasn’t a mere recap.

“There are still a few things to say. Notably, I must comment on the attempt by the defence to impress the court with elements that have no relevance to the matter of this hearing. Elements presented in order to distract your attention from the substantial grounds on which you must base your deliberations and come to a decision.

“I refer in particular to two circumstances evoked in a suggestive way and devoid of any, I repeat any, basis in evidence.

“The first is the assertion that Cardace fired a gun, wearing that jacket as chance would have it, a few days before the murder. This circumstance took place in an unspecified quarry, with an unspecified and obviously unidentifiable individual. A suggestion constructed deliberately to prevent any attempt to check it procedurally.”

She paused for quite a long time, a pause that was somewhat bombastic but put there at just the right moment to grab the court’s attention.

*

247“I think the defence needs to respect the intelligence of the judges and in general of all the participants in these proceedings. Do you know how much this imaginary evocation is worth from an evidential point of view? Nothing, in fact worse than nothing. It is a fairy story told simply to impress. A fairy story which you can’t and mustn’t take into account.

“The second circumstance is the vague reference to a hypothetical motive for the murder linked to a phantom fight in a disco and to the desire for revenge on the part of an even more phantom group of criminals; this is what they’ve tried to imply.

“I shouldn’t even have to deal with this grotesque suggestion because the judges have very conveniently, very correctly, already cleared the field of any stretching of the rules. I refer to the prohibition on testimony based on common rumour. But I would like to devote a few words to it, in the eventuality – and I hope I’m wrong – that counsel for the defence chooses to pick up on this topic in his closing statement.