As she pushed back her chair and stood up from the prosecution table, Mia tried to take a deep breath. She had listened closely to Wheeler. Now was her chance to lay out her rebuttal. Her final chance to speak to the jury. Everything was riding on what she said next. She resisted the urge to wipe her sweaty palms on the skirt of her suit. As she walked to the jury box, Charlie gave her a subtle but encouraging nod.
“Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the Seattle Police Department, the crime lab, and the DA’s office—we have done all that we can. There’s nothing else we can add. Nothing else we can show you. And do you know why? Because we didn’t make the facts. We didn’t make the evidence. He did.” She turned and pointed at David Leacham. He kept his face impassive, but she could see the hate hiding in his eyes.
The defense had called a dozen people to speak on his behalf, but Leacham himself had never taken the stand. Mia wished she could bring that up, could say to the jury, “Hey, what’s Leacham so afraid of? Why can’t he answer our questions? If his story is true, why won’t he subject himself to cross-examination?” but she could not. The right to remain silent was guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment, and she could not comment at all.
Even though Mia knew, and Wheeler must know too, that if David Leacham had taken the stand, he would have cracked like a potato chip.
“When this trial is over, you will leave with questions that are never going to be answered. And for the rest of your life, when you think about your time as a juror, you’re going to ask yourself: Why did he do that? Why did David Leacham take everything that girl had to give and then take even more?
“But having questions like that doesn’t mean there’s a meaningful doubt. What this trial boils down to is this: If you believe with all your heart and with all your gut that this defendant committed the murder, then you will find him guilty. And you, ladies and gentleman of the jury”—she swept her gaze from face to face—“better than anyone else in the world who wasn’t in the room that night, know what really happened there. And I know you’re not going to let David Leacham get away with it.”
She lowered her voice, and the jurors leaned forward, as if she were letting them in on a secret. All the jurors, except Warren. He was staring down at the floor, as he had been ever since she began talking, his gaze vacant. Mia tried not to let the sight of his seeming indifference break her stride.
“The defense has tried to overwhelm you with trivial details. Yes, Officer Childs was not wearing gloves when he first walked through the massage parlor. He answered honestly about that. He also answered honestly about not touching anything with his ungloved hands.” She was relieved to see her words met by nods.
“As for our missing witness, we can only speculate as to what has happened to her. Unfortunately, we do not know.” Out of the corner of her eye, Mia could see Wheeler readying himself to object if she did speculate. She decided to pivot to a stronger point rather than let him interrupt her flow.
“What you need to focus on is Mr. Leacham himself, and what kind of man he is. And to do that we need to look below the surface. We want to think that we know evil when we see it. We want to believe that evil is ugly. That it is friendless. That evil isn’t a member of the Rotary Club, that it doesn’t have a wife and kids and a successful business. We want to believe we can tell just by looking who is evil, because it makes us feel safer.” Mia sighed, her mouth twisting. And was rewarded when the jurors seemed to sigh with her, a quiet echo.
“The defense has paraded people before you, people who are acquainted with Mr. Leacham from his church and from his business and from his volunteer work. They all thought they knew him. They all wanted to believe that there wasn’t a secret, hidden, sick side to him. Can you imagine how you would feel if you thought you knew somebody and then you turned out to be so wrong? And meanwhile, you had perhaps let that person be around your family? Around your wife? Around your daughters? You would never want to believe you could be that wrong about anybody. But the simple truth is these people were that wrong, and they’re still that wrong.” Mia’s voice strengthened with every word.
“Now it’s time for the twelve of you to start deliberating, to sit down together and talk about what you have seen and heard. For you to reason together and come back with a verdict. It’s time for this case to finally be resolved by you, the jury. Not by the media. Not by Mr. Leacham’s acquaintances. But by you. It’s time for justice to be served for Dandan Yee.”
Her voice rang throughout the courtroom. “Because David Leacham is guilty of taking this vulnerable young woman’s life. He is guilty. And I ask you to find him so.”