Gentlemen, murderers do not talk that way. Criminals are not so situated as to have committed this great and monstrous wrong and then have had that superb quietness of spirit and that confident feeling that wrong had been done her in the charge that is made, and the assurance within herself that, God knowing it, she is free and pure. Gentlemen, as you look upon her you will pass your judgment that she is not insane. To find her guilty you must believe she is a fiend. Does she look it? As she sat here these long, weary days and moved in and out before you have you seen anything that shows the lack of human feeling and womanly bearing. A word more. There must be no mistake, gentlemen. That would be irreparable. There can be but one mistake which nobody can ever right, and for which there can never be any atonement to her. If you make a mistake as against the commonwealth that is something which the future may correct, but if you go wrong as to this woman now, and go to the length of saying that she is guilty, and you have done it upon insufficient grounds and the improper findings, the case and the woman have gone beyond your control, and, so far as you can know, beyond the power of man. To condemn her as guilty of the diabolical crimes that have been described to you, when there remains any reasonable doubt in the minds of any one of you of the true verdict, would be so deplorable an evil that the tongue can never speak its wickedness. We say, the crier utters it, God save the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the prayer is heard in the prosperity of the old bay state, but little it amounts to if we hear some one pray to God for his guidance of the old commonwealth that when we have a prisoner in charge we forget that we can do a good deal toward saving the commonwealth and all her people. It will be little worth preserving if the innocent are to be executed and one calamity and wrong step fast upon the heels of another, and that, too, under the forms of law made as well to shield the innocent as to punish the guilty.
Do I plead for her sister? No. Do I plead for Lizzie Andrew Borden herself? Yes. I ask you to consider her, to put her into the scale as a woman among us all, to say as you have her in charge to the commonwealth which you represent, it is not just to hold her a minute longer, and pleading for her I plead for you and myself and all of us that the verdict you shall register in this most important case shall not only command your approval now, unqualified and beyond reasonable doubt, but shall stand sanctioned and commended by the people everywhere in the world, who are listening by the telegraphic wire to know what is the outcome as to her.