A jury not of his peers

It was a modern presentation, the latest thing in simplified, image-based evidence, and Mr. Cramer seemed to have keyed it to the mind of a sophisticated 10-year-old. (His own children were at the back of the room, watching Daddy do his work.) The prosecution's nifty charts and graphics had thrown Lord Black's defence team into a tizzy of activity over the weekend, trying to dream up visuals of their own.

Mr. Genson, on the other hand, did not have graphics in the same league as the government. He is not a shining light of the new holy way: He's a criminal attorney. He's also 61, and has weird blond hair, which is no kind of hair for a serious man to have. He sports a chin beard and suffers from dystonia, which makes him use a cane and limp and deliver his remarks from a stool, but gives his arguments a strange physical energy.


Mr. Genson decided to use old-fashioned words, and old-fashioned logic, to present his case. "Members of the jury, can you see my hand?" he said, holding it up. Several nodded. "Well," he said, "no, you can't, until I turn it and you see the other side."