MOUNT CARMEL HIGH SCHOOL

PROSECUTION

CLOSING STATEMENT

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,

In this state, there are three things that we the prosecution must prove in order to

convict someone of murder. We must prove that:

1. The defendant killed the victim,

2. The defendant killed the victim knowingly or purposefully, and

3. The defendant killed the victim knowingly or purposefully with an extreme

indifference for the value of human life.

Every single piece piece of evidence that you have seen or heard here today

allows us the prosecution to prove one of these three conclusions with regard to today’s

defendant, Jackie Owens, in the murder of today’s victim, Jacob Bennett. To put it

briefly, Jackie Owens killed Jacob Bennett. And here’s why we know.

The first question is, of course, “Why would Jackie Owens kill Jacob Bennett?”

Simple: money. Jackie Owens is addicted to gambling. Just consider Owens’ debts for a

moment. Jackie Owens, whose salary numbers in the millions every year, a salary that

has only been increasing over the past five years, I might add: Jackie Owens engages

in, and loses in, enough gambling to be in as much as FIVE MILLION DOLLARS of

debt. And Owens owes it to some less than forgiving people: “the wrong people”, as

Owens themself has said. And you have also heard “what happens when you play
cards with the wrong people”. In the case of Jackie Owens, as you earlier heard, they

were willing to send someone, presumably in the middle of the day, to Jackie Owens’

place of work and destroy Owens’ property. Slashed tires, to be specific. And if these

“wrong people” were willing to use knives on Jackie Owens’ property, who was telling

how long before they started using knives on Jackie Owens? Owens, needed the

money to pay off his debts, and he needed it now. But how could he get it? How? How?

How? SNAP. And then, out of the blue, like a guardian angel descending from the sky,

there falls onto Jackie Owens’ lab the one way out of this danger: the Duelling Lens

Deal, which would immediately net Owens, even after taxes, all the money Owens

would need to pay off his debts. All is right in the world again. But then Jacob Bennett

steps in. Jacob Bennett and Jackie Owens were friends: they had together pulled their

way up through the movie business into being the main partners of a successful,

profitable movie studio. Again: they were friends. But the key word is “were”: because if

you get in Jackie Owens way, well, now all you are is a bug Owens has to squash to get

where he needs to be. But how could Owens get Jacob out of the way? Certainly,

murder would make sure he stayed out of the picture for good, and Owens was even

willing to pull the trigger himself; but how and where to do it? And then it comes to him.

Casey Maxwell, Trifecta Entertainment’s junior partner, who also happens to have a

grudge against Jacob Bennett, and who also happens to have isolated boat which could

be quickly scrubbed clean of blood due to how small it is, and who also happens to

have a large gun collection. Jackie Owens didn't even have to commit the crime with

anything of his own property, because he had duped Casey Maxwell into providing

EVERYTHING. You have, after all, heard Casey Maxwell himself confess to all parts of
planning Jacob Bennett’s murder with Jackie Owens, including providing the gun with

which to murder Jacob and the location of his boat, the Hepburn, on which to murder

Jacob. I want to stress this point, ladies and gentlemen of the jury: Casey Maxwell has

confessed to all of this. He, unlike Jackie Owens, realizes that the jig is up and is trying

to make some kind of atonement for providing Owens help to commit the murder. And

immediately after Jackie Owens did commit the murder, that is, after he got Maxwell to

convince Bennett to come alone in the middle of the night on June 16th to Maxwell’s

boat, and after Owens himself came there, alone, armed with Maxwell’s gun, and after

he shouted out in anger and then shot Jacob Bennett straight through the heart, then

dragged his lifeless body away, drove it down the lakeshore and dumped it down a

ditch, and then after Owens went back and wiped Maxwell’s boat clean, spic and spam,

of almost all traces of blood, he left. Jackie Owens left the country. He left the continent,

in fact, departing mid-afternoon the very next day for Europe. Detective Ari Finch, the

lead investigator in the case of Jacob Bennett’s murder, himself considered this sudden

departure suspicious; and when we consider the true context in which Owens made this

sudden departure, everything suddenly makes sense.

Now, let’s talk about Jackie Owen’s alibi. You have heard at varying points today

the claim that Jackie Owens was at Alex Grace’s home the night of the murder having

dinner instead of being at the Midlands Marina. Now, it is certain that if this alibi were

true, Jackie Owens could not have killed Jacob Bennett; even more certain, however, is

the fact that this alibi is not true. The most immediate issue is what I just mentioned: the

claim Owens was at Grace’s home to have dinner. You have heard Owens claim that

the reason Owens and Grace were having dinner in private, as opposed to their usual
Monday-night habit of having dinner in public restaurants, is because they pair were

being constantly hounded by paparazzi and autograph-seeking fan. You have also

heard, however, that Alex Grace doesn’t recall any of this. Think about this. Grace was

a media pariah following the horrible remarks about the victims of Hurricane Katrina,

and was thereupon blacklisted by the media; you have also heard Grace say that the

whole point of moving to Midlands has been to rebuild a reputation and reenter the

media’s eyes. Why, then, would Grace not remember finally seizing the attention of

media and being approached for autographs by fans, things which Grace has literally

been working years to get? Well, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Grace would have

remembered such a thing. If it had happened, of course. But it didn’t. It didn’t, and this

was a story concocted by Jackie Owens simply to have an excuse to create the perfect

alibi. And as you consider Owens’ alibi, I want you to really consider just how

excessively “perfect” it really is. Not only does the murder just so happen to take place

on a Monday night, the one night out of the entire week that Owens has a consistent

witness to his activities, but it also “just so happens” that this night is the only night of all

these Monday nights that Grace and Owens have this dinner in private (the reason for

which, again, we have proven is fabricated); Grace also “just so happens” to send all

her hired help home early, with it “just so happening” to end up as a consequence that

Grace can now purport to be the only witness to Jackie Owens’ actions that night.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this chain of events is more concocted and

unbelievable than if it had come straight from the pages of a crime novel; and we the

prosecution, furthermore, have even more concrete evidence that it was indeed

concocted. For starters, we have the inconsistencies between Grace’s and Owens’
accounts. We’ve already discussed the inconsistency of the reasoning for having a

private dinner. Furthermore, Jackie Owens conjures up exact images of the food he ate

that night and claims that it was a four-course meal; Alex Grace, the one who spent

several hours cooking that same food, “just so happens” to not have the slightest inkling

as to what Grace actually cooked, Grace claims it was a five-course meal. And through

the work of Detective Ari Finch, we have concrete reasoning for the concocted nature of

this story. You have heard in one of the police-wiretapped phone calls that Grace and

Owens were engaged in an activity which would be “just another acting role” for Grace

to play. Now, Alex Grace has been in Midlands for a while now, and you have heard

that Jacob Bennett has in that time not allowed Grace so much as a role as an extra in

any films at Trifecta entertainment. Alex Grace, therefore, has no current roles to be

acting for; the only thing she could be acting for is helping Jackie Owens fabricate an

alibi. And Grace has concrete reasoning to be doing so. Jacob Bennett, after all, was

the only one at Trifecta entertainment preventing Owens from bringing Grace back into

the spotlight by casting Grace as a lead in a movie. Grace helping to cover up Bennett’s

murder would allow Owens to finally offer Grace a coveted lead role. Which Owens did,

by the way, almost immediately after “hearing” of Bennett’s murder. It is obvious that

Owens’ “alibi” for the night of the murder is nothing more than an inconsistent,

unbelievably far-fetched story which Owens has convinced Grace into acting out for him

by promising Grace personal gain. And Jackie Owens did this because Jackie Owens

killed Jacob Bennett.

And now, having laid bare Jackie Owens’ motive and opportunity for committing

the murder of Jacob Bennett, the direct evidence of the scene of the crime ties
everything together. Hunter Baxamusa, the amateur astronomer who witnessed the

crime, saw a man get out of a taxi. We hold that the man who got out of this taxi was

Jacob Bennett: after all, Detective Finch found video evidence that Jacob Bennett

departed from his place of work in a taxi. It therefore stands to reason that the murderer

is the only other figure who arrived at the Marina, the one who arrived in a Maserati

Quattroporte. Now, I ask you, members of the jury: how many Maserati Quattroportes

have you ever seen driving around? I would wager probably none at all. I would further

wager than Jackie Owens is the only one in the town of State Center, the only one in

the entire state of Midlands, probably, to be driving around a car as high-end as a

Maserati Quattroporte. This is damning evidence that Jackie Owens was that murderer

at the Marina. Hunter Baxamusa furthermore related to us Jacob Bennett’s surprised

yell upon seeing the person who met him at the Midlands Marina. The fact that Bennett

released this surprised yell upon seeing this unidentified person proves that he was not

expecting to see this person at the Marina, and the fact that this unidentified person

addressed Jacob Bennett by name proves that the two were familiar with each other.

Jacob Bennett coming upon someone he knew but wasn’t expecting is perfectly

consistent with Jacob Bennett coming upon his friend Jackie Owens instead of his

expected partner Casey Maxwell. Now, consider the matter of the fingerprints.

Fingerprints were found in the boat from Casey Maxwell, from Bobby Maxwell, and from

a third, unidentified person. It stands to reason that these are the fingerprints of the

same unidentified person whom we just discussed. We can say that these are the

fingerprints of a murderer. We can also say that these are the fingerprints of Jackie

Owens. Jackie Owens, while being questioned by detective Finch, did not contest the
fact that his fingerprints can be found on Casey Maxwell’s boat. And the only

fingerprints his could possibly be are the fingerprints of the figure whom we have

identified as Jacob Bennett’s murderer. Everything points to Jackie Owens.

I said at the beginning of this closing argument here that we the prosecution need

to prove three things in order to convict someone of murder. We need to prove that:

1. The defendant killed the victim,

2. The defendant killed the victim knowingly or purposefully, and

3. The defendant killed the victim knowingly or purposefully with an extreme

indifference for the value of human life.

With regards to convicting Jackie Owens of the murder of Jacob Bennett, we the

prosecution have proven all three.

1. Jackie Owens killed Jacob Bennett. He had urgent reason to do so, his alibi for

the night of the murder is obviously concocted, and the evidence points to Jackie

Owens being the figure of the murderer at the scene of the crime.

2. Jackie Owens committed this murder personally, pulling the trigger with his own

finger. Furthermore, Owens purposefully planned this murder with Casey

Maxwell.

3. And finally, Jackie Owens held an utter indifference for human life: because if

Jacob Bennett had to die for Jackie Owens to pay off the gambling debts, then,

to Jackie Owens, Jacob Bennett had to die.

We the prosecution request that you the jury enter a guilty verdict so that Jacob

Bennett’s grieving wife, Mariah, can finally gain closure and know that her husband’s

killer will not walk free.

Thank you.