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In the Interest of Justice: Great Opening and Closing Arguments of the Last 100 Years Paperback – October 18, 2005
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This rich and rewarding volume collects more than two dozen of the most memorable opening and closing arguments made by top prosecutors and defense attorneys of the last one hundred years. Carefully selected to explore every major aspect and challenge of the legal process, these speeches highlight the tactics and strategies, colorful language, and stirring rhetoric that lawyers use to win judge and jury to their side. With a shrewd eye for courtroom stratagems and a keen understanding of the social currents that shape them, Manhattan assistant district attorney Joel Seidemann introduces and illuminates each speech from an insider's perspective. Arguments from landmark trials are included to reveal the smartest tricks of the trial lawyer's trade and demonstrate the power of an impassioned presentation to tip the scales toward the fulfillment of justice.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateOctober 18, 2005
- Dimensions6 x 0.87 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100060509678
- ISBN-13978-0060509675
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Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
This rich and rewarding volume collects more than two dozen of the most memorable opening and closing arguments made by top prosecutors and defense attorneys of the last one hundred years. Carefully selected to explore every major aspect and challenge of the legal process, these speeches highlight the tactics and strategies, colorful language, and stirring rhetoric that lawyers use to win judge and jury to their side. With a shrewd eye for courtroom stratagems and a keen understanding of the social currents that shape them, Manhattan assistant district attorney Joel Seidemann introduces and illuminates each speech from an insider's perspective. Arguments from landmark trials are included to reveal the smartest tricks of the trial lawyer's trade and demonstrate the power of an impassioned presentation to tip the scales toward the fulfillment of justice.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
In the Interest of Justice
Great Opening and Closing Arguments of the Last 100 YearsBy Joel SeidemannHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2005 Joel SeidemannAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0060509678
Introduction
Many of the cases in this book are famous. You have heard of them and probably formed your own opinions of them. They created quite a stir, and though, for some, their time in the limelight has passed, they have not left our consciousness and may not in our lifetime. O. J. Simpson, Al Qaeda moles, the Oklahoma City bombing -- for good or ill, they entered our mental lexicon as paradigms of some principle or larger ethos. They might embody different principles to different people -- indeed, each is a kind of Rorschach test through which we can discern our own worldview. Whatever that may be, they retain the power to touch a raw nerve in all of us and provoke a vivid response.
Despite overblown media impressions, most people still remain confused about what actually happened at many of the trials included in this volume. Why did O. J. win the criminal case and lose the civil one? Why did the jury acquit the cops who shot Amadou Diallo even though they fired forty-one shots at an unarmed man? Why was Sean "Puffy" Combs acquitted of all charges after that mysterious firefight at that nightclub? This book sheds light on these questions.
The first lesson herein is that events in the courtroom always differ from the media rendition. The courtroom's intense enclosed theater creates unparalleled moments of conflict and revelation, and what happens there is more human, more dramatic, more gritty than the media can convey. The truth always is. There's an old joke that best describes what the media does to reality: A mother wheels her firstborn in a stroller. When a friend compliments her on the baby's beauty, the mother replies, "You think she's pretty in real life? You should see the pictures." The media gives us the picture; in the courtroom you see real life.
This is primarily a book of great speeches by some of the best courtroom lawyers of our time, or of any time. The payoff to readers, I hope, is twofold: that they feel both the spell of a master storyteller and the sensation of being personally present at an event they've often heard about from afar. My goal is to place the reader in the jury box, face-to-face with the advocate in full flow, plying his trade, swaying a jury toward the justness of his cause.
Not all of the cases I chose are renowned or even recent. Sure, they are all highly readable and most of the attorneys are terrifically eloquent, but if that were enough, I could fill a whole other volume with different but equally entertaining examples. What is so special about the speeches compiled here? The answer may sound esoteric at first. They stand out as moments -- and I'm not being mystical -- in which a higher witness seems to hover in the courtroom. The courtroom seems to float in an eternal time zone, with the jury of the ages looking on. Maybe it's history being made, or the contagious tabloid buzz in the air, or both of those things and more. Any lawyer who has argued important cases has lived through it at least once, this sensation that the event is suddenly greater than the people involved. That ineffable feeling of transcendence is what unites the cases in this book. And in each instance the lawyers occupy center stage. Their fine-tuned awareness of the setting, of the historic moment, of the jury's -- and often even the whole country's -- mood infuses their rhetoric. At their best -- as in the pages of this book -- their words echo out into a wider consciousness.
The few relatively unknown cases that I feature here have that forever quality, too. Powerful and heartrending, they act as rediscovered snapshots of a haunting time. They are sentencing speeches against convicted murderers from an era when street crime held our cities under perpetual siege. In those years fear and senseless violence felt as inevitable as death and taxes. One more mindless murder, one more statistic, every day, for decades -- who can differentiate them now? As part of my twenty-two years in the New York County DA's office, I have had to live through those anguished courtroom scenes of impervious killers and families in agony virtually every day, or so it seemed. This is my chance to commemorate those victims.
These extracts of opening and closing arguments can be read as intact short stories in which the lawyers unfold the events of each case in a clear, linear plotline -- the best advocacy must do this anyway. To help the reader follow along, I have included an introduction and postscript to each case -- the former sets the scene and the latter explains the verdict, analyzes why one side prevailed over the other, and offers an appreciation of the courtroom skills and tricks displayed by the advocates.
This is a book of classic legal dramas, ranging from the unforgettable to the unbelievable. Both conditions apply in the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, represented here in the form of the famous opening statement by his Israeli prosecutor, who gives a harrowing history lesson on the most horrific crimes in history. Another case that reverberates through the decades is the so-called Scopes monkey trial from the 1920s, which pitted evolution against creationism and later became the centerpiece of the Spencer Tracy movie Inherit the Wind.
Sometimes, however, a trial qualifies for greatness on account not only of its high standard of advocacy but also its extreme comic appeal. The tabloid classic of celebrity sportscaster Marv Albert's prosecution for sexual assault -- in which his alleged hairpiece played a critical role -- is just such an instance. Another is the Bess Myerson case, one full to the brim with characters so absurd that Hollywood could never have dreamed up a zanier story. In other cases the media frenzy surrounding the proceedings -- as in the Puff Daddy and Martha Stewart trials -- made the courtroom feel as though it were situated in the center of the universe -- if only for a few weeks or months.
Continues...
Excerpted from In the Interest of Justiceby Joel Seidemann Copyright © 2005 by Joel Seidemann. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (October 18, 2005)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0060509678
- ISBN-13 : 978-0060509675
- Item Weight : 1.15 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.87 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #719,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #137 in Trial Practice (Books)
- #153 in Legal Education Profession
- #382 in Legal History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
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- Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2024The seller was prompt, and the item was in pretty decent condition. Highly recommend.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2015It's a very nice book. I highly recommend it to all legal enthusiasts especially trial lawyers like me.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2018Great read for trial attorneys. It’s always interesting to see other people do the job, how they structure arguments, make them. If you’re a lawyer going on a beach trip or something, this is a good quick read that’s detached enough from work to be enjoyable, but close enough to it to feel enriching.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2014On the positive, this book contains legible copies of speeches that great attorneys gave in various trials. However, to read them, you will also have to wade through the intense bias of the author, a district attorney. Not only is he dismissive and insulting to defense counsel, he makes it abundantly clear that he does not believe in or support the Constitution. His worldview is that of law enforcement, modern law enforcement, the warrior cop and heroic DA who are hamstrung by "rules" like "the presumption of innocence." His utter inability to recognize the truth of what defense counsel argues in cases such as the People v. OJ Simpson is infuriating. Had I known of his views, I would never have purchased this book. Be warned.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2017Excellent book. All litigators should read this
- Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2024I couldn’t help it. I tried a case and I got to give the closing the same day the NY Trump prosecutors did (though they got a more favorable result) and I wanted to go out and find a book like this. I’m sure I’d be better served with something like a trial advocacy textbook or, if I really wanted to be a better criminal lawyer in the courtroom, a primer on evidence or procedure, but the arguments are really the fun part.
It was a neat time to pick up this book, with two highly publicized prosecutions (both politically charged, but on opposite spectrums). I wish I could say I paid close attention to the opens and closings in those cases (because I AM interested in politics, even if only one of these cases was actually ABOUT a king political action), but I didn’t (and besides, they didn’t let people into the court in a meaningful way – something I find really interesting and not a little frustrating).
The book starts with O.J. We get the plaintiff’s opening statement in the civil crime followed by lengthy excerpts of Johnny Cochran’s (the defense) closing argument in the earlier criminal trial. Certainly, the opening is strong – the attorney lays out all of the facts and the timeline in a manner that makes it hard to doubt (and in a civil trial there CAN be doubt) that things happened as he suggests. Cochran is wild. I was a kid when it all went down and I remember impressions of the guy and the ‘If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit,’ but I didn’t realize how effectively he used that a rhetorical device and how he was able to credibly turn it all into a referendum on racist police (he explicitly compares one of the detectives to Hitler.
Next the book tackles the prosecution of Marv Albert for sodomy and assault charges. The details of the Marv Albert assault, as described in the prosecutor’s opening, were pretty gross and I guess if you want to convince a jury to hold someone accountable for their behavior, you ought to make it sound pretty unpleasant. The defense has a tough job following something like that, but the attorney doesn’t waste time with the unsavory stuff “You may not like it, but when you look at this, this is a relationship that was built on sex. That was the relationship between the two of them. Every time they would get together, they would have sex…” “And no doubt there were times that they acted out these various fantasies, not always things that you or I or tother people may agree with…” He focuses on what is so clearly the real issue: consent. But he also paints her (fairly or not, I can’t say, I’m only reading these openings for the first time) as unstable and unpredictable.
Seidemann then covers the case against Puff Daddy (look how history repeats itself!) for a 1999 shooting outside a club. The kids are saying cringe now, right? Because the start of the opening for the defense is cringe: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Sean ‘Puff Daddy.’ You can call him Sean, you can call him Mr. Combs, you can call him Puff Daddy, or even just plain call him Puffy, but what you cannot do in this case, you cannot call him guilty, because from the facts, from the evidence, from the law, you will conclude that he is not guilty.” (This was put on by Attorney Benjamin Brafman, but his co-counsel? That was a fella by the name of Johnny Cochran).
Next up, Seidemann tackles a wild and grisly murder from the seventies in which Jeffrey Macdonald, a charismatic Green Beret and doctor, killed his wife and children. After that, he has a short chapter recounting (by way of a cautionary tale), a few attempts by pro se defendants to open or close themselves (the most entertaining of these was by James Traficant, a sitting Congressman at the time he went on trial). Seidemann then made a slight detour to share a few judicial speeches made at sentencing.
Seidemann eventually gets to the opening statement in the Israeli trial of Adolph Eichman, the architect of the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Problem in Europe’. This is some pretty heavy stuff and an interesting (if dismal) read, but if you’re like me and looking to absorb some good techniques for trying defendants in a rural New Jersey County, it’s probably a bit like apples and oranges. There’s bad folks here, but I’m not likely to prosecute any of Hitler’s best friends. Seidemann writes, in his postscript, “The prosecutor finds it easier to get a conviction when the victim is blameless, while the defense finds it easier to get an acquittal when the victim or government witnesses are unsavory or unlikable.” I mean – sure – but that makes it sound like this particular prosecutor had a pretty easy job.
The prosecution’s opening on the Timothy McVeigh trial was excellent – it does a really great job of walking the jury through all of the circumstantial evidence that they would eventually put on and pieces it together in such a way that the jury can see the whole picture. The crazy plutonium case was interesting in it’s use of analogy for strict liability. The Augustin Ballinas closing is certainly a good exemplar for a civil closing when you’ve got a sympathetic victim. We get the defense closing in the United States v. Bess Myerson, Andy Capasso and Hortense Gabel case, but America’s Mayor was the prosecutor and it would have been interesting to read something from him from before his fall from grace.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2016great read
- Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2016Good choices of opening statements and closing arguments, but the author offers very little in regards to explaining why each opening or closing was actually chosen. It seemed from the description that the author would "illuminates each speech from an insider's perspective," but this hardly happens.