This day occupies pages 235 through 272 of Volume III of the
transcript.
It continues with prosecution rebuttals and then the
defense’s last word.
Gruzenberg makes a wonderful point about the prosecution
rebuttals, leading me to call their style “the wiffle ball school of
prosecution”. They have changed their
position, mostly on whether the first blows were struck outside or not. The idea that the first blows, in the head,
were inflicted outside, comes from the fact that they went through the
cap. The prosecution theory is that
Andrey would never have worn his cap in a house, it wouldn’t have been good
manners, so he must have been outside when these blows were struck.
Gruzenberg points out that the supposed location, near the
stables, was downhill from Beilis’ office and anybody who stopped in before
noon could see it. Even a fanatic
doesn’t start a murder in broad daylight in a place that anybody could
see. The prosecution changed their
argument to say that the murder did occur inside. The defense pointed out that this means it
could have happened in Cheberyak’s apartment.
A prosecution theory that changes with the wind is not a theory at all
in the legal sense (or in the scientific sense either). We’ll call it the wiffle ball theory. If you fill a wiffle ball with water, and you
try to keep the water inside by rolling the ball randomly on the ground, it not
only doesn’t help, it makes things worse.
That’s what the prosecution has done.
Grigorevich-Barsky makes his only closing speech. He claims that there were no obstacles to
Mashkevich’s bringing in and processing Vera’s gang. He might have guessed that the government
told Mashkevich to leave the threesome alone, but he didn’t say it in court. He didn’t have a basis, because the defense
didn’t know how much information the government kept from them.
Maklakov makes a good point in his second closing
argument: How could the prosecution let
Cheberyak be guilty of so many lies? How
is it that they, experienced jurists and legislators, were absolutely incapable
of detecting her in a lie? It’s not that
hard. A moment of hesitation in
answering, a changing story, the idea that a newspaper writer could afford 200
rubles worth of wine within a month of paying 100 rubles for a trip, on a
salary of 300 rubles – it didn’t add up and the prosecution ignored that and
prosecuted Beilis anyway. It’s the
prosecution’s fault that Cheberyak pulled the wool over their eyes; they played
deaf and dumb. Why? Readers know the answer. Maklakov was no dummy, he probably knew it
too.
Point of language: the word “phrase” at the times used to
mean something said that was just to make a point, it wasn’t necessarily
true. It was a derivation from French
where phraseur meant somebody who talked grandly, just to hear himself
speak. So if you wondered why “phrase”
kept getting tossed around, that’s why.
Just a note: both times that the court has dealt with the
murder in Singaevsky’s words, Zamyslovsky has become fixated on the idea of
Latyshev throwing up. Repeating the
words, the synonyms over and over. I
don’t get it. And today, while admitting
Singaevsky told the truth when he confessed, Zamyslovsky nevertheless says he
didn’t tell the truth about Latyshev’s reaction. Zamyslovsky continues to argue all around a
big hole leaving plenty of room for a solution that fits the facts but proves
he’s wrong. Finally, Zamyslovsky engages in more of his Freudian
projection. Well, at least he’s
consistent.
To "The Verdicts"
Judge: Fyodor Boldyrev
Prosecution:
Criminal
Prosecutor, Oscar Vipper
Civil
Prosecutor Georgy Zamyslovsky
Private
Civil Prosecutor Aleksey Shmakov
Defense:
Oscar
Gruzenberg
Nikolay Karabchevsky
Dmitry Grigorevich-Barsky
Alexandr Zarudny
Vasily Maklakov
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved
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