I don't own Law & Order.
"We find the defendant guilty."
"Wait. What?" Abbie gasped. The tension in the courtroom of the moment before the verdict is read broke, and people began to move around, but Abbie was still caught in a web of confusion and shock, not yet sure of what she had just heard. She looked to Jack, waiting for him to say something, but he did not need to. The fearful, guilty horror on his face was enough to verify that they hadn't believed her. They had bought the prosecution's rhetoric, believed the horrible adjectives Cutter had used to describe her, not cared that she was the victim here, that the man she had killed was a vicious, evil killer who had killed, who had enjoyed killing, who would have killed her had she not managed to stop him. They hadn't understood what it was like to know that you were about to die and there was nothing to do to stop it, and then suddenly there is a way, and you take it, pay the horrible price to stay alive. Killing someone was the last thing she'd wanted to do, but if she hadn't, the crime scene photos Cutter had paraded before the jury would have been of her, not of Matt Bergstrom. But the jury didn't believe any of that. They had just announced that she was the murderer, that she was going to jail. The irony did not escape her- in every other trial she had ever been part of, "guilty" was the verdict she had hoped for.
The bailiff approached the defense table to take Abbie away, and Michael Cutter also came over to the defense table. "I bet that deal looks good to you now," he said to Jack as the bailiff put Abbie in handcuffs.
Abbie strained to hear Jack's response, but the bailiff was herding her away, so she couldn't hear his words, only the guilt in his voice.
TBC
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