A Timely Closing Argument

In a baby murder trial in which the baby finally died of suffocation, the prosecutor -- Michael D'Andrea -- "asked the jury to look at the clock while one minute ticked by -- the amount of time it would have taken [the baby] to suffocate. As the time elapsed, D'Andrea stared directly into [defendant's] face from across the defense table." Michaelangelo Conte, "Jury takes just three hours to convict mother's boyfriend in baby's death," The Jersey Journal pp. A1 & A10 (September 22, 2004).

I saw some fancy lawyering when I practiced law in Texas (many years ago). But New Jersey lawyers, it seems, have their own bags of tricks.

Some Gentle Readers out there can surely relate stories about similar forensic tricks they have seen; I doubt that Mr. D'Andrea is the first trial lawyer to ask a jury to literally watch a clock for 60 seconds or so. In civil litigation the best-known parallel, now generally frowned upon, is for plaintiff's counsel in a personal injury case to ask a jury to imagine how much suffering plaintiff must endure each second of his or her life, put a dollar value on each second's suffering, and then tote up all of those dollars and return a handsome verdict for plaintiff.