Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 02 - FINAL ARGUMENT - a Legal Thriller by Clifford Irving

Morgan trial in Jacksonville had gone quickly. But in memory it would always have the quality of drawn-out nightmare.
    I had risen at first light that morning and gone running barefoot along the sand of Neptune Beach. Waves shattered against the dunes, and the last of the night wind chanted through the sawgrass. When I came puffing back, Toba appeared on the beach near the house, bearing a mug of fresh coffee. She shivered in the morning chill.
    Sweat ran down my neck from my forehead. “Thanks, my love,” I gasped, clutching the coffee.
    Our street was quiet as she walked home with me.
    “Sleep well, Ted?”
    “Do I ever?”
    I meant on the night before final argument in a murder case. Toba understood.
    “Ah, but rejoice,” she said. “This is the last one you’ll ever have to do.”
    “Yes!” And I hugged her.
    “Shall I come to court? I’ve got the time today. Would you like that?”
    “Yes, come.”
    I rose from the counsel table. It was my duty to seek the end of the convicted murderer’s life. But Connie had said she didn’t want him to die. And neither did I. How could I, in conscience, seek a man’s death if I didn’t hate him? And didn’t see him as a threat to the survival of others?
    “The State of Florida,” I said calmly, “will present no new witnesses. The state rests its plea for the death penalty on the previous evidence.”
    With a perceptible scowl on his lips, Judge Bill Eglin looked down. He had been on the bench for three years; he was not new to this. But I had confused him.
    Gary Oliver strode toward the jury again, a hearty man, arms spread as if to embrace the world.
    He called Marguerite Little as his first witness. She fidgeted in the witness chair as if it might be the very chair her son was headed toward. With her wild iron-gray hair and Mother Hubbard dress, Morgan’s mother had the look of a woman let out of a mental institution for the day.
    “He always been a good boy.”
    That was the sum of her testimony, and I passed my right to crossexamine.
    A.J. Morgan, the stepfather, in a black suit whose jacket seemed two sizes too small for him, took the stand. “I always told him he was gonna go too far. He never listen to me. He don’t know what he about, that boy—”
    “Sir!” Oliver shot forward, cutting him off. “Tell us this: in your home, was your stepson violent?”
    “I don’t permit that.”
    “Outside your home, that you know of?”
    “That’s what he here for, right?”
    Oliver sank back toward the defense table, defeated by this friendly witness.
    The time came for final argument in part two.
    Rising, Gary Oliver faced the jury. “This is a young boy,” he begged. “He shot this man without meaning to. He didn’t go to that house to kill anyone, he went there to rob them.”
    From his seat at the defense table, Darryl Morgan rumbled, “I didn’t shoot no one !”
    The eyes of all the jurors swung toward him. Damn fool, I thought. You’ve accused these people of error in the most serious judgment any of them has ever made.
    The judge eschewed the use of a gavel. Calmly he tapped his ballpoint pen on the oak bench from where he dispensed justice.
    Oliver stared at his client, then turned back to the jury. “Robbery’s a crime, but not one you have to die for. The killing was bad, but ‘twasn’t meant to be. The one boy, his friend William Smith, is already shot dead by the police. One dead … don’t you think that’s enough? And you can’t really blame this boy for what his friend did to that lady’s face. Twenty years old! Be merciful! The Morgan boy will be forty-five years old when he comes up for parole, if you let him. Maybe they’ll give it to him, maybe not. But he’ll be a new man then. Give that new man a chance. Do the Christian thing! Give him the opportunity to repent!”
    After Oliver sat, wiping his forehead with his ever-present white handkerchief, Judge Eglin waved his hand at me. The state, saddled with the burden of