“Now, I want you to remember one thing,” Larry Sampson went on. “When the district attorney of this county goes into court and asks for a verdict of first-degree murder, the defendant is guilty. The district attorney’s office would never ask for a first-degree verdict against a defendant about whose guilt there was the slightest doubt. Unfortunately, murderers are able to secure tricky criminal lawyers to represent them. The percentage of acquittals in this country is a national disgrace. Now, I want you to remember that when you get on the witness stand, you’re engaging in a public duty; you cease to be an individual, you become a witness in a murder trial; you become a person who is testifying to certain facts, and it becomes your duty to see that the jury understands those facts, and comprehends them. Now, we have a perfect case against Mrs. Breel. She’s committed cold-blooded deliberate murder. We can prove that she committed that murder, and bring her to justice, if you keep your head. If you get rattled on cross-examination, we can’t do it. Now, let me run over the facts, briefly, as I understand them. You were going along about twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, weren’t you?”
“Well, I wasn’t looking at the speedometer.”
“But,” Sampson said, “you were in a twenty-five-mile-an-hour zone. You’re a law-abiding citizen, aren’t you, Mr. Diggers?”
“Well, yes.”
“And you’re not a speeder?”
“No.”
“Therefore, you would assume that you were keeping within the legal speed limit, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, I guess it is.”
“All right, remember that,” Sampson said. “You don’t need to give the process of reasoning by which you arrive at that conclusion. Simply state positively that you were going not faster than twenty-five miles an hour, and stay with that statement. Now then, the defendant stepped out right in front of your headlights, didn’t she?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Diggers said positively.