Chapter Thirty-One
Griffin’s closing argument, which Quinn watches intently now, is even more compelling.
“I don’t blame the defendant’s lawyer for acting out—he’s a young man trying to help his client,” Griffin tells the jury.
“But the judge instructed you that his outburst is not evidence.” He pauses.
“Now, this so-called alibi. Here’s the thing: It can’t refute the cold, hard science. ”
Griffin walks up the jury box, puts a hand on the railing. “Anyone here ever been to Leicestershire, England?”
He waits, there’s a shaking of heads in the jury box. “Me neither,” Griffin says, chuckling, folksy as ever. Like why on earth would a self-respecting Nebraskan ever want to cross the pond?
Griffin lowers his voice and the courtroom grows silent: “They had no suspects. But as luck would have it, during that time, there was a professor at a nearby university, a really smart guy, who made a discovery that quite literally changed the world.”
Quinn wonders where this is going, but Griffin has the courtroom mesmerized.
“This professor, he discovered that each of us has what we now call a DNA fingerprint. Each of us have distinct features in our blood that are unique to us. So, the police there heard about this and they asked every man in those villages to give a blood sample. And all of them, every single one, did so, and none were a hit. They all had an alibi: their blood.”
Griffin then let’s the silence hang in the courtroom for a long moment.
“But there was another amazing stroke of luck: Someone at a local pub overheard a guy saying his buddy paid him to impersonate him and give the DNA sample in his place. The police called in the guy who dodged giving a blood sample, asked to take his blood. And then bam”—Griffin smacks his hand on the table—“they got a match.”
Griffin increases the rhythm now: “He’d had an alibi before, but the science doesn’t lie, ladies and gentlemen.
Our eyes may deceive us, the circumstances may deceive us, but science does not lie.
And you heard from Dr. Kimura today. There were two people’s DNA on the hammer: Nadine Riley’s and the defendant’s.
” He points at Randy who is looking at the table.
And the crescendo: “Science doesn’t lie, ladies and gentlemen. Science does. Not. Lie.”