-A lawyers closing argument
-A policeman/ policewoman who was questioning a person and the officer was trying to get them to snitch on their friend who committed the crime.
-A celebrities speech at a charity event
I chose the lawyers closing argument as its an experience i've been through so i will use the knowledge i know to build up this statement.
This was to help guide us to as a class begin story writing, this is my monologue which will be said from the lawyers perspective.
(Looks and Positively nods to defendant/ Jacob)
Thank you your honour, thank you to for your attention ladies and gentlemen of the jury, on this very important case. May i remind your decisions must be met beyond all reasonable doubt.
(looks to Jacob Moore one last time)
The prosecutor didn’t face a threat that night. The judge didn’t face a threat that night, and the 12 of you didn’t face a threat that night. Only one person did. And that is my client. He did what he thought he had to. None of us had to make the split second decision that he did. And yet, we are all asked to second guess him today. To Monday-morning quarterback him, if you will. It was Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendall Holmes who said that “you can’t expect calm detachment in the presence of an uplifted knife.” Now there was no knife involved in this case, but the point is the same. People have to make split second decisions in exercising self-defence. Sometimes people in hindsight should have, or could have, handled the matter differently. But hindsight isn’t the measure we use when judging a defendant’s actions. Rather we analyse what happened from the perspective of how things looked at the time to my client.
When you came to this court on November 11th 2013. I think it was, we all asked you a number of questions, and we asked the jury to keep an open mind until all the evidence was in.
The alleged victim doesn’t look so scary in the light of day, in the courtroom witness chair, all dressed up, cleaned up. But that is not the circumstance when my client used force, is it? The man came at my client in a dark alley behind a tavern, and no one knew or could have known his intentions. And my client decided that he wanted to go home that night, that he wanted to survive.
Self-defence is not just the stuff of law books. Self-defence is a defence that nature herself recognises, a recognition really that any living creature is going to act, or react a certain way when faced with a threat.
Self-defence is often something that police and prosecutors don’t really understand. No one walks up to police and prosecutors on the street and threatens them. That doesn’t happen because the system would come down on them like a ton of bricks. No, it is people like my client Jacob Moore who get messed with, who get bullied. The nobodies of this world. My client isn’t particularly big, he isn’t important around town, and he might have looked like he was fair game for intimidation, for bullying. But he stuck up for himself. He reacted. And now he is being judged. The jury system was intended to stick up for the little guy. Our forefathers knew that someone or something had to serve as a buffer between the individual citizen and the powerful government. My client has no burden of proof, the state has to disprove self-defence beyond a reasonable doubt.
My client faces a serious offence. He is charged with a violent crime. His life is on the line. You think the police would have done a more thorough job in the investigation. You really would. You would think my client would be entitled to a fair investigation before people would pass judgment on him. The police should have tried to find independent witnesses who were at the tavern that night. They did not. How come none of the bartenders were subpoenaed? Instead the police relied on the word of the alleged victim and his friends. And you know the kind of people they are. None of their stories matched. Half of them admitted to drug use on the night in question. Is that the type of scant proof that can send a man to jail? Doesn’t my client deserve better? Don’t we all? Hold the state to its burden. A conviction in this case would be a travesty. Do the right thing.
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