Slow Motion and Arguments

Football and Forensics (Part 120)
Trials and Tribulations (Part 14): Slow Motion and Arguments

Slow-motion instant replay revolutionized football as a successful TV event. It slows the action down frame by frame so the viewer can see exactly how things happen.

Instant replay then became part of officiating the game.

In my 1987 college game against Bucknell, I intercepted a pass that the refs somehow missed. Back in the old days there was no instant replay to correct missed calls. Bummer.

We should view trial arguments similarly. A lot is thrown at jurors during the trial. Our job is to slow it down and analyze it like a football color commentator.

(Warning: what follows is graphic)

2000: In an Army court-martial, I prosecuted a sergeant for killing her husband – also a sergeant – in the middle of the street at 0200 in Colorado Springs. She savagely stabbed him over 125x, gutting him, nearly severing his head, and breaking the tip of the knife in his skull.

Good candidate for a defense of having “snapped” after sustaining some sort of spousal abuse? (Although there was no evidence of that).

And of course, the defense wanted to speed this event up as much as possible. Make it seem like a whirlwind of out-of-control emotions.

Evidence told a different story. It was my job to drive that home. But how?

Slow motion instant replay.

In my rebuttal argument, I slowed it down to demonstrate premeditation and rebut the claim that she snapped.

Fact by fact, I recounted the evidence to show the many opportunities she had to reflect.

When she followed him to his truck with a knife as he was trying to leave, did she have time to think and stop herself?

When she slashed his tire?

When he bent over to inspect the tire?

Before she slashed the knife across his throat?

When they were 10 feet apart and she said, "nobody is going to help you?"

When he tried to get away, she didn’t RUN after him; she walked.

What about when she pushed him down from behind?

Could she have stopped as she straddled him and began to gut him?

He was still alive and trying to crawl away but she turned him back over. Could she have stopped?

After the blade broke off in his skull?

When she was finished with a calculated attack that nearly severed his head but left his carotid artery intact so that he bled out and died slowly on the street, she stood up, looked both ways, removed her pants, and went back to her apartment, where she tried to wash her clothes.

Rhetorical question:

Does all of that sound like someone who was out of control?

As I recounted each fact, I wrote it on the giant pad of paper on an easel.

Slow it down and analyze it, frame by frame.

Slow motion replay is a killer…