"You watched the video showing her visible hands and her crying in pain, and then you wrote an official report claiming her hands were concealed and she made no complaint of pain. Isn't that true, Officer Mallerie?" For demanded.
Mallerie staggered, sweating profusely under the courtroom lights. "I... I wrote what I remembered, not what the camera saw."
"No," Cho corrected fiercely. "You wrote a lie to save yourself."
Closing arguments concluded on Monday morning, and the jury retired to deliberate.
For nine nerve-wracking hours across two days, Aaliyah and Simone waited in a private room inside the courthouse. Simone held her daughter's hand, neither of them speaking, both feeling the overwhelming weight of the moment.
At 3:45 PM on the second day, a buzzer sounded. The jury had reached a verdict.
The jury was dead silent as the jury filed back in. Mallerie stood at the defense table, his hands trembling slightly, his lawyer standing beside him.
The courtroom clerk read the verdict aloud: