You Don't Know Me

But here’s the thing of it, yeah, why would I have kept it if I had just shot someone with it? That is just stupidness. That is probably the thing that annoys me the most. He, Mr QC, thinks I am stupid. To him I am dumb, with no thoughts going on in my head. Shoot up some next kid and keep a fifty quid gun on me in case I want to use it again? Come on man.

In fact he is the one who isn’t thinking. Why did I walk past Jamil and tell him he was a waste man? Has he thought about that? Like I keep saying, look for the reasons. The reasons will show you the way. What he says, I’ve written it down, ‘… is all the worse for this fact. It was an apparently chance encounter with a stranger that led to this callous act.’ Chance encounter with a stranger, is that what he thinks? I will let you and him into a little secret. It wasn’t no chance encounter and it wasn’t no stranger. I knew him. I knew Jamil. I don’t mean I knew him like maybe his family did. I mean I knew him. I think it’s time I told you some shit.

I don’t know.

Look I’m tired and I’m not thinking straight. I know you lot think it’s my own fault. I should have kept my barrister for the speech. Maybe you’re right. But the fact is that when it is your life on trial you will do everything you can to save it. I’m fighting for my life right now. Yeah I can go through all the evidences like I been doing. In just a little bit of time I been through like four of them. Four rubbish points the prosecution is convicting me on. And I still want to say what I got to say about the other four. But that ain’t enough really and truly. You need to know like a fuller story of what shit went down. What was going on in my life. How can you understand it otherwise? How can you understand me if you don’t know about me? How can you judge me?

Throughout this trial, I been listening and you been listening. And you been looking at evidence and I been looking at you. I see your faces when you see a bit of evidence. You got this look like, ‘You are fucked mate.’ And I agree with you in a ways. Some of the next evidences do fuck me a bit. But it ain’t about whether I was wearing some next hoodie or using my phone near a boy. It’s about did I commit a murder. And I did not do this murder. It weren’t me. It was someone else.

Long adjournment: 16:45

IN THE CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT  T2017229

Before: HIS HONOUR JUDGE SALMON QC

Closing Speeches:

Trial: Day 30

Wednesday 5^thJuly 2017

APPEARANCES

For the Prosecution:     Mr C. Salfred QC

For the Defendant:         In person

Transcribed from a digital audio recording by

T. J. Nazarene Limited

Official Court Reporters and Tape Transcribers

6

10:15

Okay, so do I just carry on from yesterday then?

As I was saying yesterday. I knew the dead boy, Jamil. But on the street people never called him Jamil, they called him JC. Maybe because he was thin or maybe it was his Jesus beard. But JC is what I knew him as. He was one of them plastic gangsters. He was skinny as a twelve-year-old girl but he was always acting like he was a big man. I knew him from around the area and that but I also knew him for another thing. He knew Kira, my girl. You could say that everything that happened to me – this case, the murder – it all goes back to Ki.

What can explain to you lot about Kira? Kira is like the most beautiful thing you ever saw. She is the sort of person who if she walks down the road ten boys will be staring at her like Rihanna just walked past them. She has these grey eyes that lock on to you when she looks at you. And if she is looking at you, doesn’t matter that she has these long legs and a walk that makes you think she is swaying in the wind, you be looking her right in those eyes. Locked in. Wide grey eyes that reach all the way to the edges of her face. Grey eyes are quite unusual anyway but on a black girl, doesn’t matter that she’s mixed race, they stand out like cat’s eyes. On her though, they don’t jump out like that, they just kind of fit. They match her wide mouth and her high cheeks. They match her skin. The eyes belong to the face and the face could have no other eyes but those.

I saw her for the first time eight years ago during the time that Bless and Mum were in hospital recovering after Dad. I had just been in for visiting time and I was feeling proper low. The specialist had just been and said that Bless would always have that thing where the side of her face drops. Don’t look at her man, please!