You Don't Know Me

The search of my flat. The police arrested me because they heard a rumour that I was involved in the shooting. They searched my flat and found a Baikal handgun. They found a black hoodie with white Chinese-style writing on the back. They found my phone, which matched the cell-site evidences. They found my passport. They found an e-ticket for a flight to Spain. They found cash, thirty thousand pounds in my rucksack. They found the firearms discharge residue that the prosecution has been going on about, in my car and on the hoodie. They found me.

The police say that the bullet which killed the boy, Jamil, must have come from my gun. Ballistics. You remember the guy who came with all his charts and whatever. That bullet came from that gun he says.

They found a tiny particle of the dead boy’s blood under my nails.

They found a few of my hairs in his car.

Open and shut innit? Enough said. You can go home now thank you very much for your attention. And if you did convict me on that you would probably go home and sleep all nice at night. I know that. But you have been sitting here for four weeks doing this case. What I was hoping was that you wanted to make them weeks count for something. But then I thought, I ain’t so sure.

Maybe to you lot, this is just a thing to do innit? A nice break from your lives. You can get up every day and put on a clean shirt and come into this place and look at papers or whatever and nod or shake your heads. You can listen to him, the prosecution. You can listen to this Judge here and feel like you are doing something. You can be all respectable. And when you leave here, after this case is done, you can go back to your lives to do whatever it is you do. But I don’t disappear, you know, when you lot go home. I’m still here. I’m still a person innit? When your little boy who is maybe four or five years old right now and just starting school grows up, I’ll still be in a prison cell. When he gets to like ten and starts his first day at big school, I’ll still be doing my time. When he leaves and gets a job or goes to uni: I will still be here. Doing my life sentence. Because you didn’t look hard enough. Because you didn’t do your job. That’s all I’m asking. Just listen to my story – I am innocent. I promise you, if you look hard enough you’ll see it for yourself.

Just look at the evidence. That will tell you all you need to know. And trust me there is enough there to make you see what I am saying is real.

Break: 11:15

2

11.28

Before I was arrested for this murder I had a job. Well not a real job with pay as you earn and all that, but I had something that I did to bring in the dollars. I weren’t no gangster either – what my thing was, was selling wheels. Cars. I love them. There’s nothing you or anyone else can teach me about cars. I like the old ones. I like the new ones. I like the V8s, I like the naturally aspirated ones, I like the turbo-charged ones.

Anyway, what I realized was that most people don’t always know what they got when they selling their cars. This one girl was selling what she thought was an old Vauxhall Carlton that used to belong to her boyfriend. But what she didn’t know was that it wasn’t just any old Carlton that was maybe worth about three hundred quid. This was a Lotus Carlton. A three point six litre twin-turbo three hundred and seventy-seven horsepower Carlton. Nought to sixty in five seconds. Top end, one hundred and seventy-six miles per hour. Twenty grand of anybody’s money even though it’s twenty years old. See I check my shit before I buy. And I tell you what else, most of the people when they buy from me, they check their shit too. You can’t be selling no bangers to the people round where I live. They want to go over the thing with a magnifying glass. Every dent’s a discount. Every bit of optional extra is extra, you get me?

So this has to be the same thing here innit? Are you just going to take what the prosecution say on their say-so or are you going to look at it carefully and check under the bonnet? Is it proper quality what the prosecution is selling you? Or is it just some made in Taiwan rubbish?

So look at the first piece of evidence. The dead boy was shot in the same area I live in. What I say about that is, so what? He was shot in the same area that all the people who live in that area live in. This is just a nothing argument and it’s a nothing evidence. Do I even need to go on about this any more?