“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN of the jury, Judge Wilson, Ms. Lockhart, Ms. Fisher. May it please the court.” Sparks is dressed for closing argument: a light gray suit, colorful tie and pocket square and white monogramed shirt. Nevertheless, the gloom of the previous day hangs over the room. There is an absence of energy. The bell has sounded. The round is over. Still, Sterling Sparks will lie down for no man. Or woman. He confidently addresses the jury.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are not here to prosecute anyone for war crimes. This is a civil case against the defendant for defamation. You don’t have to like anyone or dislike anyone. You just have to follow the law. That is what you’ve sworn to do.
“Six times Mrs. Britta Stein has written the most heinous accusations known to modern man,” he says forcefully. “She has accused Ole Henryks of being a Nazi and collaborating with the Nazi regime against Denmark during the war. She doesn’t deny it. Indeed, she stands by it. Ole has sued her for defamation. As we have said, the words themselves are defamatory. The plaintiff’s burden in this case is to prove to you by a preponderance of the evidence that she has written those words for the public to see. We have satisfied our burden. The case would be over, but for the affirmative defense raised by Mrs. Stein.” He looks across the room to the defense table, where Catherine, Emma and Britta are seated.
“For her affirmative defense, Mrs. Stein says she is not liable to Ole because her words are true. Because truth is an affirmative defense, Mrs. Stein and her legal team must prove to you, by a preponderance of the evidence, that each of the words she wrote are true in fact. I submit to you: she has not done that.
“Oh, she has raised circumstances, scenarios from which she urges you to draw conclusions. She has laid down pieces of a puzzle in the hopes that you will take the final leap and supply the missing pieces. That you will supply the missing facts, the facts that Ole was a traitor and a collaborator. But that’s not your job, it’s hers. Where is the proof of the missing facts? Where is the proof of betrayal? You heard testimony that Henning Brondum and Kai Nielsen were executed as war criminals and collaborators. And they may have been friends of Ole. But Ole was never arrested or prosecuted. He said he didn’t go on raids with them. Where is the proof that he did? Ms. Lockhart asks you to make that leap just because he was their friend. She wants you to supply that missing evidence. But ladies and gentlemen, evidence is her burden, not yours, and she has not met it.
“She has not proven that Ole informed. No witness has come forward to say that. She has not proven that Ole collaborated. No witness has come forward to say that. Think about this trial. The defense has not supplied a single witness. Where is the eyewitness testimony? Where is her case? If any of those horrible accusations were true, wouldn’t you have heard from a witness? You didn’t see a single witness. Lacking such direct evidence, you must find for the plaintiff.” He nods and sits down.
JUDGE WILSON KNOWS that Sparks’s case has disintegrated, but he has seen juries do strange things for strange reasons. He nods to Catherine. “Ms. Lockhart?”
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Judge Wilson, Mr. Sparks, Britta, Emma, may it please the court. Mr. Sparks has asked where our witnesses are. He said, ‘You didn’t see a single witness.’ Catherine smiles. “He was wrong. You did see a witness. An eyewitness. His name is Ole Hendricksen. Did Ole Hendricksen lead the Gestapo to arrest the members of the Holger Club resistance group on that hill in 1943? Of course he did. He knew too much, didn’t he? Things that he wouldn’t know unless he was there. His was the eyewitness testimony. He knew Lukas Holstrum was shot running away. He volunteered that and never did explain how he knew. But we know how he knew. He was there.
“Ole Hendricksen brought the Gestapo to arrest Lukas Holstrum at the bookstore and then he volunteered that they were really there looking for Britta’s family that was in hiding. Like ‘little mice in a cupboard,’ remember? When asked if he was informing for the Gestapo and taking money, he said, ‘I never took any money.’ He didn’t deny informing, just taking money. He admitted to supervising weapons manufacture for the army of a foreign adversary; Denmark’s enemy. That is collaborating with the enemy and traitorous by definition.
“He did not rescue people in his father’s boat. It was Henning Brondum’s boat, and Brondum was a traitor and a collaborator. Brondum didn’t rescue Jews, he led them to the Gestapo. Perhaps Hendricksen’s relationship with Brondum and Nielsen is the most significant and damaging admission in his testimony. You saw him brag in the video about the club he was in with Brondum and Nielsen. ‘Henning, ya, we had a club.’ Remember those words. That was his confession to being a member of the Brondum Gang, the Petergruppen, founded by the Nazis to conduct counter-resistance sabotage on behalf of the German administration. He admitted that he and his wife fled Europe, secretly changed their names, and immigrated to America rather than face prosecution either for selling armaments to the Nazis or for being a member in the collaborationist Brondum Gang. Or both.
“Ole Hendricksen was not a war hero. He was a traitor. He was a Nazi collaborator. He was an informer and a betrayer. He was a man who made a choice when the Nazis came to Denmark. He bet on the wrong team. I will admit that it was sad for us all to witness Mr. Hendricksen publicly coming to terms with his fake persona, but we are compelled to conclude that his reputation was built on lies and falsehoods and finally exposed.
“Britta did not take the stand. I did not call her, and Mr. Sparks did not call her. I suppose we will never know what motivated her to write those words at this particular time of her life, but her motivation is irrelevant. The only issue for you to decide, as I said at the outset of this trial, is whether the words she wrote are true. Damning though they be, they are true. You must find for the defendant.”