The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth

I caught the tail end of a documentary on VH1 Classic about Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" (a truly classic album). I am pretty sure I watched it before, but I can never turn away from a classic rock documentary. Anyway, at the end, David Gilmour (singer/lead guitar) commented that he wished that he could have experienced putting on headphones and listening to the album all the way through for the very first time, like someone who had just purchased the record. That resonated with me...

I am in the midst of a trial this week. I can't really compare what I do to David Gilmour and Pink Floyd, but I have been reflecting on the sentiment of what he mentioned. You put hours and hours of work into something to present to the public (or a jury, as the case may be), and you never quite know how it will come off. I get so geared up as I head into trial, trying to look at my "good facts", and rationalizing why I should get a conviction. I spend a day meticulously selecting jurors to hear thecase, looking for reasonable, open minded people, hopefully who will not be either dingbats or overly analytical.

But I never get the chance to hear the case presented for the first time as the jury does. I never get to focus in on the important highs and lows as they will, because we may place different importance on different factors. Just as David Gilmour could point out a million tiny things on the album that the average listener may not pick up on, I get my chance to point out the "brightline" points in my case, but I never know what the jury has their minds on at that point.

I bring this up because nothing seems to go as planned in my line of work. I prepared my case, prepared my witnesses, interviewed testifying codefendants several times...Yet when it comes time for folks to testify, there are annoying factual inconsistencies, new revelations that favor the defendant that are revealed by my own witnesses for the first time at trial...

I don't want to be misunderstood-I expect these things to happen, even if I cannot always anticipate them. But I always wonder about the presentation, about that "earphones" experience of my jury. I mean, these are people who have sworn to be fair and impartial jurors, who I believe are decent and law abiding, and who expect others to be truthful. And here they are, confronted with strong physical evidence of guilt and a myriad of essentially consistent but simultaneously inconsistent witness statements...

Like tracks on an album, I hope they can tune out some of the weaker "songs", and still praise the "album" as a whole. Still, I am mindful, for an album to be truly convincing, to stand the test of time, it has to be cohesive. I have to console myself that I didn't create the case, I just present it. As Karla stated in our family's new most-used, least-favorite, omnipresent Americanism: "(I)t is what it is...".

That pretty well sums up my week so far. I just wish people could speak the truth the first time they are asked a question, and continue that truth for the duration. I know people may make mistakes, and memory can affect the truth. It just used to be that we celebrated young George Washington who said he "cannot tell a lie", meaning he was physically and mentally incapable of lying. What do our oaths mean, and what do juries think, when they are asked to believe four liars who nonetheless tell the same story that matches physical evidence pointing to a man's guilt? Maybe someone can help me out here...