Reaction to the Trial

Through the trial, the prosecution and defense argued to an extreme about Mark Twain's intent when he wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the main argument being "Was Twain a Racist?"  Both sides constructed and embellished arguements to convince the jury of the  verdict they wanted to hear. They had to write opening and closing statements and create questions for the cross examination. All this preparation was to be the starting ground do r making their beliefs in the trial the verdict of the jury.

As the literary expert, my role was to know Twain's true intent and to know the ins and outs of his satirical mind. This was not an easy task as most believed. I had to research every cross examination of the book, find examples of other satire that had been misinterpreted, and prove to the jury that it was a factual error that almost every reader was making. During my questioning, we used quotes from. The main source of evidence, TheAdventures of Huckleberry Finn. I feel as if we had gone more in depth with our quotes we could have gotten through to the jury better than we did. Many of the passages were in Jim's dialect and were difficult to understand and not to mention read. At times I felt myself believing the prosecution because of their formalness and many sources they seemed more credible than we did. But I knew what this was just a false belief and it wouldn't stop me from proving Mark Twain innocent.

The verdict was no surprise to me. I knew that the defense had a strong case although i did feel that the prosecution carried the trial through very professionally. I feel as if some of the jury members may have been a little biased by what Mr. Provenzano had at sated about the satire in the book and how the prosecution had only one this trial once in all his years teaching this unit. They had prior knowledge about the book and their opinions may have be formed before the trial even occured. I thought that we did a good job convincing the jury of Mark Twain's innocence. Listening to Dana's closing statement at the end made me worry for my lawyers. She presented it so well i thought they were going to win over the jury in that instant. Thankfully my lawyers stayed strong and delivered their closing statement with equal force. I feel that the defense won not because of the jury's previous knowledge on the book but also on how the lawyers delivered the case.