Tony Corfino stared down at his twisted hands, and slowly they unlocked. He looked up at Jake, and the doubt and fear and bewilderment were gone at last from his eyes.
"That ain't so," he said quietly. "I did it ... I know I did it ... an' I know it was wrong ... I deserve the chair!"
(Thus Man escapes himself in freedom, and is therefore never a fully predictable or manipulatable object—only a window through which we peer with blind eyes into the reaches of the universe....)
The District Attorney's summary to the jury was a model of legal craftsmanship. Boldly disregarding the broader issues raised by Jake, he hewed firmly to the line of criminal responsibility and punishment.
Point by point he reviewed the facts of the crime. Witness by witness he retraced the eye-witness testimony. He produced photographs of Tony's body being loaded from the wreckage of the car into the ambulance, and from the ambulance into the prison ward of City Hospital. He proved beyond any reasonable doubt that Tony had never been out of custody from the moment of his apprehension.
"Even the defendant admits to his responsibility for the crime," the D.A. continued coldly.
Only in his concluding remarks did the District Attorney make reference to the defense presented by Jake Emspak.
"I wonder," he asked, smiling for the first time, "if any of you tried—as I did—to carry through to its ultimate conclusion the line of reasoning presented with such detail and admitted virtuosity by the defendant's counsel? If the fabricating of replacement parts for the human body has already become a billion dollar industry, if psychiatry continues to achieve new miracles, how many people in this world could now—or in the near future—seek to escape their responsibilities by taking refuge in the argument that they were no longer themselves? At what point would we draw the line? If fifty-percent of a man's body has been replaced is he neither himself nor a new person? If fifty-one has been replaced, is he no longer the husband of his wife or the father of his children? Can he then walk blithely away from his responsibilities, proclaiming 'I am a new man'?"
A titter went through the courtroom. Judge Hayward gavelled immediately for silence, but the D.A. winked at the TV cameras. His point had been well made.