Terry Kindlon's Pink Sneakers & Wedding Dress.

While Assistant D.A. Michael McDermott did a good job at presenting an overview of the prosecution’s case during the opening of the Porco trial, I found Terry Kindlon’s opening for the defense more interesting, at least from an oratorical and linguistic point of view. While he may not be Frank McCourt, clearly Kindlon has inherited the Irish language gene.

All of the quotable quotes in the opening statements came from Kindlon. Here are a few of them.

“And as I listened to Mr. McDermott talking, I said to myself, as I have said before, well, I guess here we go again, we are going to talk about the nod and then we are going to slime this guy, until you can’t see him, until there is nothing but a great big piece of green slime sitting here.

That’s not proof. That is not proof. That is a bizarre grotesque fairy tale is what that is, that the Grimm Brothers, if they were smoking crack, couldn’t think up.”

“If I were to bring into this courtroom the boxes full of papers that this generated-you know what a banker’s box is-I might have 55 or 60. We had to put an office aside to cover the boxes. It’s 56 or 60 boxes full of nothing, like my younger brother calls a bread sandwich; there is nothing in there.

But they generated it, they churned it, piled it up, stacked it up into the ceiling, and there is nothing in there. There is no evidence whatsoever in this case that Christopher killed his father and injured his mother. What there is, if you could weigh it, is about six tons of wishful thinking.”

Finally, here is my favorite quote:

“If I were wearing a wedding dress and pink sneakers out here, I would basically be the human equivalent of Christopher’s jeep.”

You wouldn't think that Kindlon would want to mention how conspicuous Christopher's jeep was. After all wasn't that part of what the prosecution was doing when they brought in toll collectors to testify. But the visibility of the jeep also works against the prosecution. If Christopher carefully planned the attack on his parents, as the prosecution contends, then as Kindlon says why would he park such a conspicuous vehicle at his parent's house the night of the attack.