ODDS OF LOVE - SEASON THIRTEEN

Episode 88

" My client," Claire Lowen said crisply as she stood up addressing the jury for closing arguments," Dodie Angeletti is not a cold calculating monster that sat out to run down a child or hit another car. She is just like you on  the jury or Judge Norland or Mr. Patterson or Mr. Simms or myself. Mrs. Angeletti is a human being who made a mistake that she does regret making. She will regret making it for the remainder of her life. She is already paying for the mistake. She lost her job. She is separated from the children and family she loves and that loves her. The family and children that need her. She is being attacked online and on the media daily. She doesn't deserve to be tossed away in a cold cruel prison cell for years and years based on one mistake she made in a moment of fear. "

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" The defense," Paul Paterson said sternly as he stood before the jury box ," would like to delude you that the defendant is as much a victim as Jamal Duncan , Alan Kendall, Gordon Kendall. They claim she is a victim of reverse racism. They claim she made a mistake. No. Reverse racism does not exist and is a tool of racists themselves. And a mistake is my forgetting my lunch at home on the kitchen counter. A mistake is not knowingly running down an innocent young boy and leaving him with brain damage. It is not hitting a car and leaving a prominent doctor dead and his promising athlete son paralyzed for the rest of his life. Dodie Angeletti did not simply make a mistake. She committed a crime. Remember who the real victims are in this case. Jamal Duncan. Alan Kendall. Dr. Gordon Kendall. They are the victims. I speak for the real victims. And so do you. I ask you, beg you, to go in the jury room and decide among yourselves to convict Dodie Angeletti of each of these charges. Because she did not make a mistake. She committed a crime that left a man dead and two young lives shattered and two families damaged forever. I'm asking you to do your duty without thinking of the nonsense the defense put out as a distraction in this case , without thinking about what is being said on social media and podcasts and the news. I ask you to  do your duty and convict Dodie Angeletti before she decides to make another remorseless supposed " mistake". Only next time it could be you or me who joins Jamal Duncan and Alan Kendall and Dr. Gordon Kendall as victims of her.

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Judge Richard Norland stood before the jury box in his impressive black robe and seriously earnest face, instructing them of their own responsibility in the deliberation process.

" I expect each of you to regard this process as seriously as a heart attack," he said firmly. " Please take it seriously and make a decision of guilt or innocence based on all the evidence you have seen and heard in the courtroom. God bless you. I release you to your hotel rooms for the night. Tomorrow morning you shall begin the deliberation process. Thank you. "

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Keisha sank into her brother's arms in an exhausted heap.

Ariel reached for Nicholas's hand instinctively and he squeezed it warmly.

Glory closed her eyes and prayed as Andrew held her tightly.

Dodie sat in her seat and her lips trembled slightly.

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As Gerald drove himself and Alfred home they were silent. Then Alfred spoke finally, saying," I don't think she shouldn't be punished but I don't want her to go to prison. She's my sister. I do love her. "

" I know. "

" I shouldn't have said what I did, Gerald. I just shouldn't have. "

Gerald shook his head. " You told the truth as you know it about your sister. That was all you could do. You did nothing wrong. Dodie did the wrong. "

Alfred turned his head to look out the window and remembered himself with his sister growing up so long ago.

( " I love you, Alfred ! ," young Dodie called out. )

( " I love you too, Dodie ! ," he murmured back. )