The last time that we talked about the performative aspects of closing arguments, we focused on those arguments as examples of framed narration (i.e, as stories within stories). Over the next few pieces of the discussion, we’ll look at other literary aspects of closing arguments and the “readerly” expectations of jurors as members of a specialized audience.

Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories popularized the notion of crime and its detection as a function of “means, motive, and opportunity.” In “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez,” the young detective, Stanley Hopkins, finds himself (putatively) possessed of the “facts” but lacking an interpretation of those facts that would supply a motive: “I can’t put my hand on a motive. Here’s a man dead — there’s no denying that — but, so far as I can see, no reason on earth why anyone should wish him harm.” Holmes, of course, later makes it all clear.

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