What is it in us that seeks the truth? Is it our minds or is it our hearts?
I had a great summation all worked
out, full of some sharp lawyering, but I'm not going to read it. I'm here to
apologize. I am young, and I am inexperienced. But you cannot hold Carl Lee
Hailey responsible for my shortcomings. Do you see, in all this legal
maneuvering, something has gotten lost. That something is the truth. Now, it is
incumbent upon us lawyers not to just talk about the truth but to actually seek
it, to find it, to live it. My teacher taught me that. Let's take Dr. Bass, for
example. Now obviously, I would have never knowingly put a convicted felon on
the stand. I hope you can believe that. But what is the truth? That, that he's
a disgraced liar? What if I told you that the woman he was accused of raping
was 17, he was 23, that she later became his wife, bore his child and is still
married to the man today? Does that make his testimony more or less true? What
is it in us that seeks the truth? Is it our minds, or is it our hearts?
I set out to prove a black man
could receive a fair trial in the South, that we are all equal in the eyes of
the law. That's not the truth 'cause the eyes of the law are humanized, yours
and mine, and until we can see each other as equals, justice is never going to
be even-handed. It will remain nothing more than a reflection of our own
prejudices. So until that day, we have a duty under God to seek the truth - not
with our eyes, and not with our minds where fear and hate turn commonality into
prejudice, but with our hearts - but we don't know better
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