Arguments: Tone, Pacing, and Detail

I started the next installment of Trials and Tribulations last week and discussed it in the context of football and slow motion.

We continue our treatment of closing arguments today by talking about tone, pacing, and detail in your arguments.

Generally speaking, we can't ask the jury to put themselves in the shoes of the victim, but we CAN make them visualize the crime or the wrong. Feel it.

How do we do that?

We often assume that injustice calls for fiery oratory. Passionate oratory at a high volume.

What the opponent did, after all, was an outrage and calls for a commensurate approach to advocacy!

Not so fast, my friends.

In my experience, the best arguments make healthy use of lower volume, measured tone, significant pauses, and matter-of-fact earnest descriptions of the worst details.

(As an aside, this approach is also more likely to survive appellate scrutiny).

Let the outrage speak for itself. Describe the details and pause to let them sink in. Let the jury metaphorically (or actually) close their eyes and envision it for themselves. Their emotions will be authentic and they will consider them to be ... unmanipulated.

In a federal capital case I prosecuted, I described the crime from the moment the defendant kidnapped his victim, details from the excruciatingly long 2 hour drive following the kidnapping, the fear and panic he must have felt as the vehicle turned down a desolate road in a different state, and the horror of being left on the side of the road as his life drained away from him with bullet fragments and teeth in his stomach after being shot multiple times in the mouth.

Similarly, the lawyer in this clip from the movie A Time to Kill perfectly executes this concept. Note that his volume is just above a whisper. See how he deliberately and slowly describes the scene. Watch how he pauses for effect to let his words sink in.

Make the jury lean forward as you talk, not flinch backwards...