Two Minutes

At the end of the trial, Czajka interrupted the prosecutor’s closing statement by asking: “Will you be much longer?” When the prosecutor finished his closing, Czajka left the courtroom, presumably to deliberate his verdicts. But just two minutes later, Czajka returned to the courtroom and asked a technical question related to a photograph. He then rendered his verdicts.

How do we know Czajka “deliberated” for only two minutes? The Court Clerk’s notes indicate that the prosecutor began his summation at 4:10 P.M., and that Czajka rendered his verdicts at 4:20 P.M. Therefore, the summation and deliberation combined took a total of ten minutes. The prosecutor’s summation spanned a full eight transcript pages. Because it takes about one minute to read through each transcript page (out loud, at a normal pace), the summation would have taken about eight minutes, meaning that Czajka “deliberated” for a grand total of just two minutes.