claiming a Mexican drug gang did it, though he neglects to say why. Then, when he realized that exit was closed off, he tried to escape the trap by completely reversing direction, claiming it was part of a serial killing and the trainer did it.” Dylan chuckles slightly to himself and shakes his head at the absurdity of it.
“I don’t know how those poor young men died, but I do know the police in each case did not consider them murders… not even suspicious. And I also know that those deaths bear no resemblance whatsoever to the kind of death Troy Preston suffered: dumped in a closet and shot in the chest.
“I also don’t know what drives a man like Bobby Pollard to fake such a serious injury. And I don’t know how cell phones work, or what keeps airplanes in the air, or how we landed a man on the moon. And all of those things that I don’t know have nothing to do with this case.
“I do know that Troy Preston is dead,” he says, and points to Kenny, “and that this man killed him. And I am confident that you know it as well and that you will find him guilty as charged.”
Dylan has outdone himself; I have never heard him better. I feel a momentary panic that, while I’ve been focused so much on the deaths of all those football players, the jury might well see them as irrelevant.
I stand and walk slowly toward the jury. “On a December weekend almost eight years ago eleven teenagers were brought together. They came from Iowa, and Wisconsin, and Alabama, and Texas, and California, and Pennsylvania, and Nebraska, and Ohio, and North Carolina, and two from right here in New Jersey.
“Except for the two men from New Jersey, Kenny Schilling and Bobby Pollard, they were all meeting for the first time. So they spent the weekend together, and they talked. In fact, one of their talks was so secret that they asked the only adult in the room to leave so he wouldn’t hear them.
“And then the weekend ended, and they went home, and one after another they died.
“There is simply no chance that this is a coincidence. You did not hear me arguing against the DNA evidence, because that was simply a matter of mathematics, and numbers don’t lie. Well, you heard an expert tell you that the odds of these deaths being a coincidence are one in seventy-eight billion, and those numbers don’t lie either.
“But if you’re shaky on those numbers, just add in the fact that Bobby Pollard and Kenny Schilling were both geographically available to have committed every one of those murders. I should have asked the mathematics professor what the odds would be against that. I probably can’t count that high.
“So it is reasonable for you to assume that either Bobby Pollard or Kenny Schilling killed these people. That alone should tell you, after you listen to Judge Harrison’s charge, that you should vote to acquit Mr. Schilling. If it could have been either one of them, then by definition there is more than a reasonable doubt that it was Mr. Schilling.
“But that’s not all you know. You know that Adam Strickland, who was in the process of investigating Bobby Pollard, was suddenly and brutally murdered to cover up what he learned. You also know that Mr. Schilling was in jail, was living through this trial, at the time. Even the prosecution would admit that Kenny Schilling did not murder Adam Strickland.
“And most important, you know that Bobby Pollard is a liar. A liar under oath. A liar of mega-proportions. To believe that Kenny Schilling is the murderer, you must believe Bobby Pollard. I submit that no one should believe Bobby Pollard.
“Kenny Schilling had a very difficult upbringing, the kind of childhood that destroys far too many lives. It takes a very strong person to overcome it, but Kenny did more than just overcome bad luck. He went on to become an exemplary citizen, a good guy in an era and an occupation in which bad guys are all too prevalent.
“There is nothing that Kenny Schilling has ever done, not even anything he’s ever said, that would give the slightest credence to the view that he could have suddenly committed a heinous crime like this. And he did not commit this crime, nor any of the others you’ve heard about.
“Do not end another life, one that is really just beginning, and one that is