Closing Arguments

SNOW HILL, Md. - In his closing statement to the jury in the murder trial of Steve Molin, States Attorney Beau Oglesby summed up the states' case with an effective and damning recapitulation of the evidence against the defendant.

He started by posting a photo of a smiling Emily Molin for the jury to see.

At the very beginning of the trial, Oglesby reminded the jury he used the words "Uncomfortable, unthinkable, unimaginable, inconceivable," to describe what Steve Molin was accused of. But in answer to the question "can a son kill his mother?" the answer, in this case, was clearly yes.

Oglesby scoffed at the notion that Molin "loved" his mother. Sons who love their mothers don't allow them to sit around in "urine-soaked" diapers or let family cats eat their food off their plates.

Mrs. Molin, 85, had dementia and had to be court-ordered into a nursing home where she could get the medical and personal care she need. And that both frightened and infuriated her son, said Oglesby.

Molin, Oglesby said, was "quick to anger" and "often agitated" after his mother was removed from his care. And he was worried about losing his home and livlihood. And so on the evening of Aug. 31 last year, he picked his mother up at the Sterling Nursing home in Media and without the permission of her legal guardian, drove her to Maryland where she ended up dead on a dark country road.

As for Molin's story that his 85-year-old mother fell out of his truck and he accidentally ran over her, not once but twice, Oglesby told the jury, "I suggest to you that is impossible... I submit that his version of events... defies physics, science, medicine. It defies common sense."

If Mrs. Molin had fallen out of the truck that night traveling 35 to 40 m.p.h. "there would be evidence of that happening." But there is no such evidence.

At the death scene, Molin is "cool, calm and collected."

"She fell out of the car," he tells police.

Said Oglesby, "He had just accidentally run over his mother multiple times and he sticks to that story like a dog with a bone."

He asked the jury to recall the testimony of Lt. Edward Schreier, the states crash expert. If Emily Molin had fallen out of that truck she would have tumbled and slide 80 feet forward in the same direction. Molin couldn't have stopped any faster than 162 feet. That means he would have had to have backed up 80 feet to run over his mother again.

Oglesby also reminded the jury how Mrs. Molin's injuries were not consistent with a fall from a moving vehicle.

"The only evidence that she fell out of a moving vehicle is Molin statements."

Again Oglesby said, "impossible, inconceivable and unbelievable."

He reminded the jury of Molin's past statements about how he would rather she his mother dead than in a nursing home. And of his depressed state on the night of his mother's death. And what he allegedly told a fellow prison inmate after his arrest: "She had something I wanted. She wouldn't give it to me. I was mad at her. She had to go."

After Oglesby's 40-minute closing, Defense Attorney Burton Anderson, did very little to controvert the evidence presented against his client.

He suggested that Molin's behavior at the accident scene was nothing less than cooperative. He did his best to answer questions and explain what happened but Worcester county and state police had "jumped the gun" and developed their own theory of what happened after mistaking smudges on the back of Molin's truck for his mother's hand prints.

After those smudges were sent to the state crime lab and the results came back inconclusive, "the whole theory of thier case came tumbling down."

Anderson claimed that the reason why Steve Molin was in Maryland that night was because "He simply wanted to spend time with his mother."

"The state," said Anderson, "has mistaken his love with anger... He wanted to take his mother in bosom of his chest," and out of that nursing home, "because of love and compassion, not vengence."

He talked about the people who came down and testified to Molin's good character and devotion to his mother. And then asked the jury consider the lesser charge of manslaughter if they ended up believing that Mr. Molin had been "negligent" in causing his mother's death.

It was, all and all, a pretty weak performance. During most of the trial he did nothing to challenge the findings of police or the testimony of any of prosecutions witnesses.

He did nothing to show the jury that Molin's behavior at the scene that night, his demeanor, might have had something to do with a mental disability that people who have known him for year have recognized. Anyone who listens to him speak and observes him for more than a few minutes would quickly realize there is something off about him. That he is slower than most people.

But even some of his staunchest supporter and old friend who testified on his behalf, listened to Oglesby closing found they could no longer believe Molin's story.

Harry Collinson, of Aston, was a sequestered witness so he couldn't listen to the evidence at trial.

Monday he said he would "bet his house" that Molin would never intentionally harm his mother. But after listening to Oglesby closing this morning, he has much stronger doubts.

"Compelling," was how he described Oglesby closing.

The best, he said, he was hoping for was a verdict of murder in the second degree.

The jury is out. How long, remains to be seen.