[Boston Legal][S02E02]Allan Shore在Kelly Nolan被控杀夫一案中的结案陈词

Why are we here?
Certainly not because of evidence. There isn't any.
Any witnesses see my client give her husband viagra?
Anybody see her put nitroglycerine into his wine?
No, we're being asked to assume that evil.
Well, why can't we impute the same sinister mentality to the deceased?
Because people just don't take their own lives?
We have over a million suicides across the globe every year, a million.
Suicide is a much more common and therefore plausible thing than murder,
so why are we here?
Because Kelly Nolan had a blank expression on her face
when the police arrived at the scene?
She was in shock, for God's sake.
Her huand had just died right before her eyes.
Fingerprints on the wineglass?
It was her house.
She was having wine with her husband.
Is it so inconceivable that she would touch his glass?
And if she were guilty,
don't you think she would have wiped the glass clean or washed it,
so the nitro wouldn't have been detected?
Why are we here?
Because her husband allegedly threatened to cut her out of his will two days before?
According to Kelly, that never happened.
The housekeeper says it did,
but this is a witness who admittedly loathed my client,
who admittedly concealed information from me
so that she could do more damage at trial.
She has a bias,
and the prosecution offered nobody to corroborate her.
So why are we here?
The coronary joke made to the boyfriend,
suspiciously coincidental,
but that was something she said, not did,
and she said it in jest. Let's remember,
there is no suggestion
that either the boyfriend or the housekeeper
took this remark seriously for a second.
If they did, why did they not contact the police?
There is simply no evidence
that would allow you to conclude beyond all reasonable doubt
that Kelly Nolan killed her husband, so why are we here?

But as long as we are,
what about the police?
They admittedly didn't investigate any other theory, including suicide.
You heard detective Richmond.
They immediately focused on Kelly and only Kelly
because she's the one they wanted to get.
And I don't know about you,
but I certainly find it curious that the prosecution,
instead of reprising evidence in his closing argument,
chose to focus on my client's testimonial demeanor.
What the hell is that?
He wants you to convict her of murder
because she came off as cold in the witness chair.
I saw cold, too.
But what I mainly observed
was somebody who was rigidly unapologetic.
Well, wrongly accused people tend to be that way.
How warm would any of you be
if you were falsely accused of murder,
if you were made sport of by the media,
if your privacy was violated
and naked pictures of you were posted in the internet?
People who are unrelentingly vilified tend to end up cold and hard.
Kelly Nolan has emotionally shut down.
She cannot feel, she cannot emote
and she cannot fake vulnerability
for the purpose of appealing to a jury's sympathy.
She's innocent, and she's not required to prove it.

Schadenfreude.
From the German words schaden and freude, "damage" and "joy".
It means to take spiteful, malicious delight in the misfortune of others.
We used to dismiss this as simply an ugly side of human nature,
but it is much, much more than that.
Recently, a Stanford professor actually captured schadenfreude on a brain scan.
It's a physiological medical phenomenon.
When we see others fall,
it sometimes causes a chemical to be released in the dorsal striatum of the brain,
which actually causes us to feel pleasure.
If you watch the news or read the papers,
which of course you don't, because the judge said not to, but if you did,
you would see the undeniable delicious joy
of the media and the public over Kelly Nolan's plight.
I have no doubt that you want Kelly Nolan to be punished.
She married for money. She had an affair.
She carried on naked in the pool with her boyfriend.
She's cold, materialistic, unlikable.
And it might bring you all pleasure to see her go to jail,
but as for evidence to establish that she committed a murder
beyond all reasonable doubt,
it just isn't there.
The only possible route to a guilty verdict here is...
schadenfreude.
Thank you.