7.Prosecution Rebuttal Closing Argument — Thomas J. Fallon

MR. FALLON: Thank you. Let me begin by making two points crystal clear. We are here and we're here for one reason; there's no issue, there's no doubt, we're here because the defendant has a constitutional right to have us prove him guilty. That's why we're here. That's what we've done. There's no mystery here. There's no issue here.

Point number two, for all that stuff that Counsel showed you on the screen, and for all this testimony, I think there's one thing that's inescapably clear about the defendant, while not the sharpest knife in the drawer, he's clearly low average intelligence, he's a mainstream student, he's got two special classes.

All right. And I think Counsel probably misspoke, but let me clarify something. He wasn't reading as a five-year-old, he was reading as a fifth grader. Let's just keep that clear. Because he had some difficulties in reading, which certainly makes one wonder as to what books he was reading by the way. But we'll get to that.

First point, and I want to make this point because I think it's significant and it feeds into the whole question of suggestibility, or I -- should I say, the absence thereof. And those are the statements to Kayla Avery.

Now, let's think about that. She's telling us in a statement, in which she denied on the stand, but she had a conversation with the defendant in December about body parts and people being pinned up. And while she thought he said "chair", we got pinned up, and we got body parts in a fire, we got blood coming out of concrete floors; right?

Now, think about that. She was so upset, so moved by that revelation that she went to her counselor in early January. Now, if you were 16 years old, if we were in a situation like this, what would be the most disturbing images for the experience if you really had experienced it? It would be those images of a woman pinned up. Of body parts in a fire. Of blood coming out of a concrete floor.

Those are the things that would stick with you in your memory. And I tell you that because you know what? That's why he confessed. Because he couldn't live with it. And it started to eek out in his discussion little by little. Peeling the onion, little by little, to his cousin first. His peer. Followed by all that trauma that winter. The loss of weight. The tearful sessions. sitting at a birthday party and he's in tears because he's by himself. Why? It's not because he lost a girlfriend, it's because he couldn't live with it.

And when we get to the discussion of the interrogation, that's the angle the officers took. That's why he confessed.

All right. Theme two, the absence of DNA or the absence of evidence. Well, it's been a while since I had my human anatomy class, but there was certainly a question about why there isn't just oodles of blood all over that room if there was someone's throat cut. But think, now. Think about that description the defendant gave you on the videotape. As I said, across the front of the throat. And I believe -- my recollection is it was above the Adam's apple.

Now, the last time I looked, the carotid artery, or the jugular vein, which it seems to be -in common parlance, are on the sides of the neck. You're not going to have a whole lot of blood splurting (phonetic) around with a cut across here. Which, by the way, is the correct testimony of Mr. Stahlke from the crime lab. The blood spatter expert.

Sure, if you cut somebody on their carotid artery, you're going to have blood spurting. If you cut them across here, there isn't going to be a lot of blood. And that's also consistent with, and also makes the defendant's version credible because he wasn't entirely. sure that he wanted to cut all the way through. As he said, he put his fingers up like that and showed you a small cut. Not a laceration. , Not a severed artery or vein.

There's not more evidence in that room because the bedding is burned. He tells us that. The defendant is cleaning up. What's he going to do? Not put bedding back on a bed? He's got to sleep. He doesn't know when and if the police are ever going to come. He's cleaning the room. He's going to put fresh bedding on there.

And, remember, he's got four days to clean up. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. That's four days. The police show up on Saturday. Four days to clean that house. Four days to clean. He already knows about bleach. We got bleach all over the garage. You think it takes two seconds to wipe down some handcuffs? Absolutely not. Counsel was saying, well, why didn't they wash the handcuffs? Well, there's a difference between handcuffs sitting around for four days in the exclusive possession of Steven Avery and a bullet that neither one of these guys knew existed being found four months later in the garage that she was able to obtain a profile from.

And probably most importantly, and let's talk about this, just because there is no DNA profile, just because there were no fingerprints of the defendant present doesn't mean he wasn't there, doesn't mean he didn't do it. As Ms. Culhane told you, very easy, it's still fragile. DNA degrades. DNA gets cleaned up.

Mr. Riddle told you fingerprints entirely dependent upon the nature of the substance and to atmospheric conditions, weather conditions. After all, what did he tell you? They're 98 percent water. That's why there's no prints.

On a car hood sitting outside for four days, which, by the way, last time I looked that car hood isn't exactly like your brand new car off the showroom such that it's going to hold a print. I'm surprised the defense didn't try to sell you a bill of goods and say, jeez, why didn't they test the car seat for prints?

I'm not going to even address the hairs in the vacuum cleaner. That -- that's ridiculous.

The best example for the absence of evidence, even though we know someone was there, is Steven Avery. He's driving the vehicle. He drives it down there; right? He's opening the doors. He's driving the vehicle down there. His prints aren't on there either, are they? They're not. We know he's there because his blood was there, because he left his blood there.

Counsel will say, well, why didn't he clean that up? Because he didn't think he had to. Because he was going to crush that car. That's what he was going to do with that car. Don't have to worry about cleaning up the car. Another day or two, that car would have been gone.

And, finally, why is there no defendant DNA there? Well, the last time I looked, I don't think anyone said Brendan Dassey was actively bleeding. There's no cut on him such that his blood would be found anywhere.

All right. Let's talk about interrogation. First of all, let's keep in mind this is a gruesome rape/murder. This isn't your average retail theft, your average burglary, your average anything. The interrogation conducted by these officers is nothing short of exemplary, skilled, talented, pointed and directed, as I suggested, to appeal to his sense of guilt. They heard. They knew. They had that feeling.

As Counsel tell you, they've got three times the experience that he has years on this earth. They appeal to that sense of guilt. They had that hunch that he wasn't going to be able to live with it, and they were right.

People who are innocent don't confess in the detail provided to the extent this defendant provided it. They don't do that. This isn't your walk in off the street I -- I killed. JonBenet Ramsey. We're about as far away from that idea -- And I'm not quite sure where Dr. Gordon's coming from, but I'm sure glad he's going to Missouri.

People who are innocent don't confess. The defendant confessed because he was guilty. Because he did it. An innocent person is going to deny the suggestion. They're not going to admit to this. Not to the degree that the defendant did. Now, let's keep one other thing in mind. I'll listen to that argument, it makes my blood boil, because those officers treated the defendant a heck of a lot better than he treated Teresa Halbach.

Now, let's clear up this corroboration issue. The defense, in their opening comments on argument, suggested to you that we needed to corroborate everything in his statement. That's not true. That's not the law. We need -- As Mr. Edelstein corrected his colleague, we need only prove beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of those offenses; the murder, the rape, and the mutilation. We don't have to corroborate. We don't have to prove every single, solitary thing. We'd be here for the next six months.

We're required to prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of the offense. The facts that make him guilty. So let's look at some, what I would characterize as, irrefutable corroboration. And it comes in facts that are either known only to the killers or facts that weren't discovered until after the defendant provided them. How about that Teresa was shot in the garage? Sure, the officer said, well, who shot her? Wiegert asked -- he got tired, he got inpatient, he says, well, who shot her? He said, he did. Who's he? Steven. Where? In the garage. Where did that come from? With what? A .22 caliber. More than once in the head. And in the left side of the head.

And that the clothes were burned. That was not discussed.

The officers had found some rivets. That's true. And they knew it had -- there was at least one gunshot to the left side of the-head from Dr. Eisenberg's initial report. But who else would know that? You don't know that unless you're there. That wasn't suggested, because if it was, you can bet Counsel would have shown that little tape to you. Even though he doesn't want to take anything out of context, I didn't see any of the answers or any of the setup to any of those questions that he flashed on the screen so -- so interestingly.

How about some facts discovered after he talked. That was more than one shot in the head. You recall, it was later on, as Detective Wiegert told you, that they learned that there was at least another gunshot in the head. They didn't know more than one on March 1.

How about the location of the bed? Counsel would have you believe that because the defendant's version of all -- of the placement of all the furniture is somewhat different than Jodi Stachowski's, that he shouldn't be believed. Again, core details versus peripheral. What's important. What's not. The location of the bed is the critical fact. In other words, you can look down that hallway and see that bed, and that's the point.

The other critical fact is we know, because when the search warrant was executed the bed wasn't there. The bed was underneath the gun rack, also signifying that room was cleaned and moved in an effort to thwart the investigative efforts, in an effort to cover up this crime.

In fact, as you heard Detective Wiegert tell you, jeez, we didn't think that made any sense. We just thought that was just one of those things we couldn't explain until they went and they talked to Jodi Stachowski and they said, well, by the way, before you traded off to jail, where was that bed? She said, under the window, on the wall by the door.

All right. And after -- after he talked, they execute a search warrant and what did they find? They find the bullets. Nobody knew those bullets were there. Nobody knew for sure until he said they were shot -- she was shot in the garage. And they go back, well, let's go look for bullets. And lo and behold, they find a - bullet with Teresa Halbach's DNA.

What else did they do? They went back and they said -- Counsel will say, we'll, make a big deal out about how they suggested to him that he went under a hood. Well, let's take their argument at face value. My response is, so what? They went and they swabbed the hood and, jeez, guess what? Steven Avery's DNA is on that hood.

Let's talk about successful resistance. There were many examples. Think back. Many times the officers -- well, what about those wires hanging in the garage? Did you guys use those? Did you do anything? Did you string her up? Do you use those? Nope. Nope. He never bought into that. He never adopted that.

He said, no, there was never any blood on me from Teresa. Nope. He resisted knowing anything about what happened to the hair that he cut off her head. They tried to get him to say, well, you've got it. Steven's got it. Where is it? He didn't know. He didn't adopt that suggestion.

He didn't adopt the suggestion when the officers pressed him, well, you were the one -- how could you see that stuff in the burn barrel? How did you know that was a cell phone and all that stuff if it's in a bag? How could you have known that? You were the one who put it in there, weren't you? He didn't adopt that suggestion.

And when he finally admitted to the rape, they went back at him again and they say, well, you saw Steven rape her, too, didn't you? You were there when he did it; right? And he said, no. No. He didn't adopt that. But you know what the most important suggestion resisted here? And that's the suggestion that he shot Teresa Halbach. And you all know why he was asked that. Because he finally did cough up the fact that he held the knife and then he cut her throat. So the next logical question is, well, you also shot her too; right? And they went at him several times during that, and not once, once the "royal you" and the "individual you" were cleaned up for him so that

he understood, he never said that he touched or shot that gun. He resisted suggestion.

And while Counsel has him one foot away from the institution, his presentation on the witness stand is far from that. I don't know about you, but he seemed to resist my suggestions pretty well on cross-examination. At least to the extent, well, you saw body parts in the fire; didn't you? No, I didn't.

He resisted several of my suggestions, but most of them he just said, I don't know. We'll come back to that in a moment.

Well, the defense called Dr. Gordon. I don't know what more we can say about Dr. Gordon, but I took a couple of things, if you want to believe them at all. Here's a guy who's using this test which is normed, developed on Europeans. A test he just recently got himself, he said, after a year of trying. So it's not like he's used this test a lot either.

The test about Anna Thompson on holiday in the south of Spain who loses 50 pounds of traveler's checks. What is a kid from Mishicot, Wisconsin going to relate to that? Counsel says, well, it's only one sentence. Sure. It's only

Then Dr. Gordon uses the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence. And as we heard, the Wechsler Scale of Intelligence has 11 scales, but you can give somebody the short version, the Reader's Digest version, because it's got four scales on there, and to give you an idea as to how he would probably test out if you took the time to run the whole test; right?

Well, our esteemed Dr. Gordon only bothered to run two scales out of a four on the abbreviated test. So he's abbreviating the abbreviation. No matter. And, then, he has the nerve to try to mislead you by using the scoring criteria for the DSM-4, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Diseases and Disorders, and apply it to the Wechsler test, when the Wechsler has its own scoring criteria, all in an effort to make the defendant to be less intelligent than he is.

I could go on about Dr. Gordon. But the one thing Dr. Armentrout said that really made sense, two words; so what? As Gordon said on cross-examination, he's -- he's more -- he's

suggestible to telling a confession. Could be telling the truth. Could be telling -- I can't say. I don't know. So what?

All right. We come now to the defendant. Counsel talked about the presumption of innocence and the reasonable doubt. The defendant takes the stand, says, I didn't do it. I made it all up. Believe me.

And when I asked why -- repeatedly asked why did you do this? Why did you do that? He said, I don't know. He must have said, "I don't know" 30 times, which, interestingly enough, is about how many times the officers told him to tell the truth during that interview.

While a defendant is presumed innocent, he is not presumed believable. He is not presumed credible. When he gets there and he tells you, I don't know. I didn't do it. I made it all up.

I want to play for you one brief clip, and ask yourself, do people confess to rape, to murder, and mutilation if they didn't do it, and then apologize for it?

MR. FALLON: There's your motive as sad as it is. Just as Teresa's lifeless body was consumed by that fire on Halloween night, the defendant's presumption of innocence has been consumed by the fires of his own desire. He wanted to know what it was like: His presumption of innocence has been destroyed by the fires of his own guilt.

There's only one verdict here for each count, and that's a verdict of guilty. And we ask you to bring that verdict. We ask you to bring justice for Teresa. Thank you.