Marin County Bar Association
August 29, 2017
By Charles Dresow
Robert F. Kennedy
A careful study of political speeches can provide the trial attorney with outstanding examples of verbal advocacy and persuasion. Like great speeches, effective closing arguments are not read from pieces of paper or repeated from power point slides. They connect with their audience. Like great speeches, effective closing arguments are made while looking your audience in the eye and capturing their hearts through careful word choice and persuasive argument. They do not make apologies and they create an emotional surge in the jury that leads them to deliberate in your client’s favor.
Robert F. Kennedy’s powerful speech the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated remains relevant today and illustrates the direct and effective language needed for a great closing argument. His word choice was clear and on point with the purpose of the speech. Through use of direct and unifying language, he led his audience towards a common purpose. His language, theme and purpose are so clear that today’s reader remains emotionally connected with the speech. Attorneys can learn much from it.
On April 4 1968 Martin Luther King was murdered. Across the country, cities began to burn. Robert Kennedy was campaigning for President. He learned of the assassination prior to boarding his plane to give a speech in Indianapolis. Upon arrival, he was advised that the police could not guarantee his safety and that he should cancel his speech. He gave the speech anyway. Upon ascending a flatbed truck with a microphone, Mr. Kennedy asked an aide if the crowd knew of Dr. King’s death. Then he began:
I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.
In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black—considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible—you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization—black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.
Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.
So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love—a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
Kennedy’s speech creates a powerful bond between speaker and audience with the use of a simple device: “we.” Using “we” in a closing argument can create a similar bond with the jury and conveys that their decision is a shared experience with the speaker. Kennedy’s word choice is crucial to the effectiveness of his speech, just as it is in a closing argument. He creates a rhythm with his words. He uses “I” to make a request of the audience or share a personal story, then he uses “we” to create a bond of shared purpose and then uses “us” to further strengthen that bond of shared goals with his listeners. He distills the options open to his audience into clear choices and suggests, rather than orders his audience to join him in making the right choice. He never speaks down to his audience, never tells them what do. Rather, through careful use of language and imagery he persuades them to follow his lead away from violence.
Kennedy did not use power point slides or read from a tablet. Given without notes, his speech is an amazing piece of oral advocacy that still resonates to this day. It provides a brilliant example of the same techniques that can help to build an effective closing argument.
Charles Dresow is a partner at Ragghianti Freitas LLP. His practice focuses on representing those accused of crimes.
Listen to Senator Kennedy on April 4, 1968:
https://youtu.be/BCrx_u3825g
https://www.sfpa.com/admin/website/system-pages/?pageId=1851105
