The Vindicated With The Monstrous

Twenty

It's all a machine, Lauren said as she stood tall in front of the judge, who then instructed everyone to take a seat. Lauren tuned out everything they began to say, none of it was important anyway, every trial opened the same way, all of them function the same way. What a well oiled machine the criminal justice system was and everyone around her doesn't even realize that they are just working for it.

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my name is Allyson Hernandez and I am the prosecutor in this case."

Lauren tried her best to stifle her yawn, not because she actually cared about how she looked to the jury but because she didn't particularly feel like dealing with Normani's wrath. She let her eyes wander to catch a glimpse of Camila who was sitting in the same seat as last time, in the first row behind Ally, right beside Dinah and Abigail's parents. This was the first time Lauren had gotten a chance to steal a look of her, she was trying to drown out all of her surroundings as she had walked in because this official first day of trial was more chaotic than any other day in court so far. The room was so packed with not one place for someone to sit down in the actual courtroom, so the decent amount of press left had to stand in the back of the room, and that wasn't even counting the insane amount of reporters who simply opted to wait in the halls outside. Lauren didn't even look at them, she didn't want to make eye contact with one of them because that would be to look at them as an individual, as a person and she didn't want to do that. Lauren can't even tell you what one of them looks like because to her, every one of them looked the same, they all were the same.

"On October 17, 2015, the defendant, Lauren Jauregui lured an innocent and unsuspecting Abigail Jones into the woods of Central Park, where she then brutally beat her to her death. Abigail simply went for jog that evening and the cost of doing her daily routine, something we all have, was her life, or at least that is what, the defendant" Ally then pointed from where she was standing, right in front of the jury box, to Lauren, "Lauren Jauregui decided. Lauren Jauregui decided that she could dictate when someone's life ended, make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, this was a crime of rage but she knew very well what she was doing. You see, Lauren is not insane, nor is she one to make a rash decision, something we will show with testimony of our psychologist; this was cold blooded, premeditated murder, plain and simple."

Lauren chuckled lightly, which caused Normani to immediately turn to her, scowling in disapproval. Oh c'mon, Lauren thought, she couldn't be the only one that thought a district attorney calling premeditated murder plain and simple was kind of funny. Lauren gave Normani a small innocent smile to which Normani only rolled her eyes in return and turned her attention back to Ally's opening statement.

"We have multiple friends of the defendant, people who are close to her and know her well, who will testify to her strange, apathetic personality; she is a woman who is most definitely capable of ruthlessly taking a human life, for no reason and with no sympathy."

Yes, Lauren is also actually not human, she is simply a robot in disguise. A small smile broke onto Lauren's face but she kept fighting against it so that she wouldn't get Normani's attention. The longer Lauren was sitting there she found that everything just seemed to get more ironic. Ally was standing up there, reciting a memorized statement that made harsh and negative assumptions on Lauren's character while continuing to give the jury a composed, almost genuine looking smile, clearly trying to make herself likeable to in turn get them to unconsciously agree with what she was saying; nothing about what Ally was doing was natural to Lauren. She was actually quite the opposite, she was the manufactured one.

"Now, you may be asking how do we know, for certain, that Lauren Jauregui committed this crime? Well, it's all in the cold hard evidence. We will present you evidence that she was in the park with the victim at the time of the murder, through her cellular activity, with which we also have a cellular expert coming in to verify for you. On top of that, to lock in the defendant's guilt, we have fingerprints and dna evidence found on the victim. So clearly that is not the question you should be asking yourselves ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the real question you should ask yourselves is are you willing to face the grieving family of Abigail Jones and tell them that Abigail's gruesome death, an abrupt and tragic end to what could have been a long and successful life, does not deserve justice?" Ally's demeanor was now much more stern, she paused to glance along the two rows of jurors in front of her as she pointed to Abigail's mother who was sitting up front at the far right end of the row Camila and Dinah were, trying to hold back her tears as she hid in her husband's chest. She gave jurors time to take in the scene before she continued, "Because that is what you might as well say to them if you do not return a verdict of guilty."