Steven Avery Jury Trial Day 24 - 03.15.2007

[bessie]

Steven Avery Jury Trial Day 24

15 March 2007
150 pages

• Closing Arguments - Attorney Dean Strang
• Rebuttal Arguments - Attorney Kenneth Krantz
• Final Instructions
• Alternate Juror

 

[ZOOL]

Beginning on page 54, Kenneth Kratz says,
...As you may have noticed throughout this trial, I have tried to be courteous. I have tried to examine witnesses with the fairness, and the dignity, and the respect for which they deserve in the courtroom. I have tried never to cut off a juror. When a juror wanted to explain an answer, I tried never to say, stop, I don't want to hear it, or the jury doesn't want to hear what the answer might be. And so this argument is different than that. It's necessarily not as civil...

Then Prosecutor Kratz proceeds situation-by-circumstance to blow a massive, firey hole in the defense's theory of planting evidence. His final pages of righteous indignation and contempt for those who would try to fool [the jury] with their "disengenuous" arguments is fascinating rhetoric. It ends with a demand for an apology from the defense for its closing argument:

...That's absurd. If this wasn't such an important decision that you had to make, it would be laughable. It would be something that if somebody told you at a party, or somebody told you at your home, you would say nobody would believe that. And nobody should. Nobody should believe this series of situations or coincidences that would necessarily lead you to find Mr. Avery not guilty (pg. 107)....And as a representative of the State, as the prosecutor in this case, I'm here to tell you folks, that if you are going to allege that some Manitowoc cop is crooked, that some Manitowoc cop committed a crime, you better have something to back it up. And when you don't, ... when common sense said, that didn't happen, these men are owed an apology. Their good name, their reputations, need to be restored to them (pg. 116)...But what I heard yesterday, what I heard yesterday, from Mr. Buting, when he suggested that perhaps it was Teresa's lifestyle that contributed to her homicide....you need to be held accountable for that (pg. 117)...

It is a rebuttal that everyone should read (ppg. 54 - 117). It's good stuff, and he hammers away at the defense's arguments point by point.