American Justice - Chapter 11

Day four of the trial.

At 9 a.m. in the E.D.N.Y. Courtroom 10, everyone stood up as Judge Anna walked in with a serious expression and announced that the trial would continue.

The judge’s assistant read out the court order, and Brooklyn looked over at the plaintiff’s seat.

Today, there was an unfamiliar person among the prosecutor’s team.

He was a sharp-looking old man with a slightly balding head, dressed in a well-tailored suit, sitting next to Coulson with a focused expression.

The old man seemed to feel Brooklyn’s gaze and turned to meet his eyes, nodding slightly at him.

“I’m the prosecutor’s assistant, Ben Stone.”

The old man introduced himself briefly and then stood up to speak on behalf of Coulson.

“Your Honor, the prosecution requests Exhibit 43.”

Brooklyn flipped through the prosecution’s list of evidence, sitting up straight.

Exhibit 43 was a knife, the one that was found in the victim’s abdomen. Brooklyn’s fingerprints were on the knife.

Ben Stone gave Brooklyn a dangerous feeling.

He was likely the “mastermind” behind Coulson’s ideas.

When they realized that the bloodstains were not helping their case, they immediately gave up on them and prepared to bring out the next big weapon.

In terms of courage alone, Coulson was far inferior to this person.

Yesterday, during the recess, Coulson was still thinking hard, unwilling to give up on the bloodstains and wanting to continue to focus on them and entangle Brooklyn.

Today, Ben Stone appeared and immediately abandoned the bloodstains, opening up a new battlefield.

Judge Anna granted Ben Stone’s request.

The knife was placed in an evidence bag and handed to Ben Stone.

He held the evidence bag and slowly turned around, letting everyone see it clearly.

The blade was still covered in deep red bloodstains, and there were faint blood handprints on the brown handle.

“We have extracted a large number of fingerprints from the handle of the knife, and after comparison, most of the fingerprints belong to the victim.”

Stone walked to the jury box and said.

His speech was completely different from Coulson’s. His tone was neither fast nor slow, and he exuded a confident and calm demeanor that made people unconsciously convinced.

“Another part of the fingerprints match those of Brooklyn.”

“We have also compared the blood handprints on the handle of the knife and found that they match Brooklyn’s.”

“Not only that, we have simulated the residue on the handle of the knife and found that the killer was holding the knife in a reverse grip, like this.”

He took out a pen, gripped it with his right hand, with most of the pen buried between his palms, and only a small part protruding from behind his little finger.

Ben Stone held the pen in a reverse grip and suddenly stabbed himself in the abdomen.

“Like this.”

“This matches the wound on the victim’s body.”

Brooklyn listened quietly to Ben Stone’s speech. He did not feel complacent about the obvious flaw in Ben Stone’s argument.

Ben Stone’s final action was to grab a pen and stab himself in the abdomen.

In fact, this does not match the prosecution’s argument, but rather supports Brooklyn’s theory that the victim committed suicide.

Brooklyn did not believe that Ben Stone would leave such an obvious loophole for him.

“We compared the weapon with the wound on the victim’s abdomen and conducted extensive experiments. We found that if the victim had held the weapon and committed suicide, the resulting wound should have been at a certain angle.”

“But the autopsy report showed that the wound on the victim’s abdomen was straight.”

He turned and pulled Coulson, standing behind him with his hands passing through his armpits, holding the pen and stabbing Coulson in the abdomen.

“If you do it yourself, your arm will have a long segment of redundancy. In order to facilitate force, the arm will inevitably bend, which will directly cause the wound to be at a certain angle.”

“If you do it like this, holding someone in your arms, the length of the arm’s redundancy can be adjusted through the distance between the two parties, making it easier to find the appropriate length for force and causing a more straight wound.”

After the demonstration, he let go of Coulson, stood in the plaintiff’s seat, and finally concluded:

“From the weapon and the wound, it can be seen that in order for the victim to cause such a straight wound, she would need to repeat suicide many times to find the appropriate angle.”

Ben Stone looked at the defendant’s seat and sat down slowly.

Brooklyn immediately stood up and didn’t even give Anna, the judge, a chance to maintain order, and spoke directly.

“I said yesterday that the marks on the knife handle were left when we were trying to save the victim. But when I was about to pull out the knife, I confirmed that the victim was already dead, so I gave up pulling out the knife.”

He had to speak immediately.

After Ben Stone finished speaking, there was already a lot of discussion on the scene, and many jurors were spontaneously imitating his actions and discussing opinions with their neighboring jurors.

If he didn’t speak immediately to reverse the situation, Ben Stone’s inference would continue to deeply affect people’s minds and leave an impression in everyone’s mind. By then, it would be too late to say anything.

This is different from yesterday.

Yesterday, Coulson told them what had happened, and people’s descriptions of others often leave less of an impression.

Today, the jurors spontaneously followed Ben Stone’s explanation and came to their own conclusions through experiments. People are much more impressed with the results they explore themselves.

Brooklyn tore a piece of paper into five pieces, marked four of them with a pen, and left one blank. He balled up the five pieces of paper and held them in his palm.

“I have five pieces of paper here, four of which are marked with a pen, and one is blank.”

He held the paper ball and walked over to the jury box, reaching out to Number 40.

“Pick one.”

Number 40 chose a piece of paper with a black mark on it.

“From a probability standpoint, the probability of choosing a marked paper ball is 4/5, and the probability of choosing a blank one is 1/5. The probability of blank is much higher than marked.”

“See, this gentleman chose a marked one.”

After showing the mark to everyone, he balled up the papers again, mixed them up, and went to Number 39.

“Choose one.”

This time, it was still marked.

He repeated it continuously, and soon most of the jury had made their selection. Without exception, the pieces of paper they chose were marked with ink.

Brooklyn approached the last juror, Number 1.

“Choose one.”

Juror Number 1 casually picked up a nearby piece of paper and unfolded it.

It was blank.

“It looks like our Juror Number 1 is very lucky.”

Brooklyn showed the blank piece of paper to everyone.

“In this little game, the probability of choosing a marked piece of paper is four times higher than choosing a blank one.”

“I think many people have bought lottery tickets. According to probability calculations, the probability of winning the first prize in the double color ball lottery is 1/17,721,088, which is 0.0000056%.”

“If you buy a ticket every day, on average, it will take 1,180 years to win the first prize once.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, 1,180 years. It’s already impressive if a human can live to be one-tenth of that age.”

“But why do we still often hear about people winning the lottery?”

“Are all the lucky first prize winners 1,180 years old?”

“Don’t we call them lucky because they hit the probability of 1/17,721,088?”

“The same reasoning applies here.”

“I think as long as there is a possibility, it should not be excluded for the ridiculous reason of being a ‘low probability event’.”