Well, it was perhaps ambitious to expect a verdict in the Murder Inc trial yesterday, though both defence and prosecution lawyers did run through their closing arguments. A number of hip hop stars were in attendance to show their support for the Lorenzo brothers at the centre of the case, with some commentators suggesting defence lawyers positioned the likes of Jay-Z, Russell Simmons, Ashanti and Ja Rule in strategic places in the court room to make sure the jury could see them.
Despite setbacks earlier in the trial, prosecutor Carolyn Pokorny seemed upbeat as she ran through her case that accuses Murder Inc bosses Irv and Chris Lorenzo "Gotti" of laundering money through their record company for convicted drug lord Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff. According to SOHH.com, Pokorny seemed to focus much of her closing argument on the actions of Chris Lorenzo rather than his brother Irv, the actual top man at The Inc, suggesting that the prosecution will be happy if they can make just one brother take the rap for the alleged money laundering.
Pokorny opened her address by getting straight to her point: "They laundered money. They took dirty, filthy street money from the drug trade. They took Supreme's dirty money and gave clean money back. This is what this case is about. Bad money going in, clean money going out. You heard all this talk about hip-hop, Jay-Z and Russell Simmons. This talk about street credibility. The defense wants you to look at that because they don't want you to see the money laundering."
She then summarised her case so far - the payments made to McGriff's Picture Perfect Entertainment company, and the payments the Inc made to Holloway House Publishing on McGriff's part. The large cash withdrawals made by Chris Lorenzo, the number of McGriff's criminal associates with connections at the label, the four witnesses who claimed to have seen drug money going through the company and all those possibly incriminating text messages. One of those text messages seemed to arrange a meeting between McGriff and The Inc's book keeper. Pokorny: "What in God's name is the biggest drug dealer in New York doing interacting with their bookkeeper?"
It was a question not answered by the Lorenzo's defence lawyer Gerald Shargel, though, to be fair, that was possibly because he was too busy picking holes in the prosecutions case. "I'm not going to talk about Russell Simmons, Jay-Z and Ja Rule. I'm not going to talk about Hip-Hop", the lawyer said at the start of his opening address, "I don't want to stand here for two hours to make my argument. This case is so weak that it's a shame that these two men are standing here". Shargel claimed that there were many contradictions in the testimonies of the prosecution's main witnesses, inconsistencies the prosecution had chosen to ignore in a bid to build a case. Not only did the testimonies contradict with each other, but sometimes with the facts - one, Donell Nichols, claimed that $500,000 in cheques went into the bank account of the aforementioned Picture Perfect Entertainment, when the bank statements say only $65,000 was paid. Citing those contradictions, McGriff again questioned the credibility of the witnesses on which the prosecution's case arguably depends - in particular dissing Nichols and one Phillip 'Dalu' Banks, citing the latter's criminal record and the former's reputation as being a "pathological liar".
As the case now reaches its conclusion it will be left to the jury to decide on the future of the Lorenzo brothers - they could face twenty years in jail if found guilty.