"Stacy Vollmer was last seen practicing alone on the school tennis court that Friday at around 9:00 p. m." "The clothes she was wearing were found in her locker." "Her body was discovered near the football field by the landscaping crew the following Monday morning." "Can you tell us the exact location of the body?" "She was dumped in a flower bed, wrapped in a shower curtain." "CSI arrived an hour later, excavated the body and began processing the scene." "Dr. Robbins, can you tell us how Stacy died?" "Beneath this laceration," "I found a complex fracture of the occipital bone." "Multiple shards of bone were driven into the occipital lobe of the brain, resulting in massive bleeding." "The cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage, consistent with a single, sharp blow to her head." "A search of the defendant's home yielded a laundry hamper containing the clothes he wore the night of the murder." "Did you find any blood or DNA on the clothes?" "No." "We determined they had been bleached." "Isn't bleach used to destroy blood and DNA evidence?" "Objection: argumentative." "Withdrawn." "What else did you find in the house?" "Human hairs consistent with the victim were discovered in the drain of the bathroom sink." "DNA was extracted and was also matched to the victim." "And based on this evidence, police arrested Marlon West." "That's correct." "Thank you, Mr. Stokes." "No further questions." "The State now calls Hannah West." "Your Honor, defense reiterates our objection." "She's a 12-year-old girl." "We've been through this already, counsel." "The defendant's sister is being called as a hostile witness." "That means the district attorney is permitted to ask leading questions." "Be nice." "Now, Hannah, isn't it a fact that on the night of Friday, December 2, 2005, your parents left you and your brother, the defendant, home alone?" "They went away for a..." "Yes or no, please." "Yes." "And isn't it also a fact that you and your brother were not together between the hours of 6:00 and 10:00 p. m.?" "Well, Marlon - he didn't really..." "Yes or no?" "Yes." "Thank you, Hannah." "I'd like to say something..." "No further questions, Your Honor." "Cross-examination?" "Absolutely, Your Honor." "Uh, Hannah, wh-what were you trying to say?" "Objection: calls for a narrative." "Overruled." "You go ahead, Hannah." "You say what you need to say." "Marlon didn't kill Stacy." "I did." "And I was wearing this when I did it." "Good news is Judge Crawford denied the defense's motion to dismiss." "Of course he did." "She's just a mixed-up kid trying to protect her older brother." "All the evidence points to Marlon." "Yeah, and all the jury's going to remember is a little girl in a bloody shirt confessing to murder." "That's reasonable doubt on a silver platter." "All right, then we have to prove that Hannah could not have done this." "Exactly." "We'll need a week to reexamine the evidence." "Judge gave the D.A. a 72-hour continuance." "Come on..." "Best he could do, Nick." "Now you go do your best." "Everybody thought Stacy was so... special." "She thought so, too." "She wasn't." "Stacy was a stuck-up bitch and a miserable person." "I just put her out of her misery." "I killed her and I put her in the ground." "That's all I've got to say." "The judge suppressed the video because a child advocate was never brought in, even though Marlon had waived his rights." "We really didn't need a confeson out of him." "The case against this kid was solid." "It started out as a prank:" "a sabotaged showerhead." "pH tests later revealed the presence of a strong base substance which was later identified as sodium hydroxide." "Sounds like Marlon packed the showerhead with elemental sodium." "A high school chemistry favorite, yeah." "Just add water, and instant kaboom." "Those out-of-order signs must've been part of his game." "You funnel the victim to the right showerhead." "Did you process the?" "Yeah, I matched the spindle marks on the paper to a laser printer in the high school library." "Accessible to any student." ""Multiple fragments of metal penetrating the skin and dermis" ""as deep as the superficial musculature of the back and neck"." "The showerhead explosion didn't kill her." "No, no, it did not." "What happened to the shower curtain?" "Well, the vic was injured, disoriented." "She grabbed the first thing she could to cover up and ran." "The intermittent blood trail started in the locker room and headed down a hall." "So Marlon followed her out just to hear her squeal?" "Or chased her out, yeah." "There's no way to know." "Either way, she ended up at the bottom of the stairs." "The size of the blood pool indicates that the fatal wound occurred there." "Do you have any physical evidence that would conclusively rule Hannah out as a suspect?" "Well, yeah- she's four-foot-three and 65 pounds." "The crime just required more strength than she's got." "How old is she?" "Twelve." "In high school?" "She's a high school senior." "She skipped six grades." "She's a prodigy." "Which means she has the brains for murder." "Yeah, but not the brawn." "The body was moved from the high school building across a football field and then hastily buried." "The vic's car was then driven two miles from campus and parked in front of the house of a kid named" "Scott Baird, Stacy's boyfriend" "I think possibly to frame him." "Was he ever a suspect?" "No." "He plays varsity hoops." "He was out of town on an away game." "I found blades of grass with blood on them near the vic's car- nondescript tracks headed towards the next-door neighbor's house." "Marlon West." "Yeah." "This kid's been in trouble before." "Multiple fights, threats." "It just got out of hand this time." "Marlon West killed Stacy Vollmer." "His little sister's just trying to exonerate him." "Hey, Nick." "Hodges, did you get the soil analysis back on Hannah's shirt?" "Matches the site of the body dump." "Really?" "So does this make Doogie Howser-ette your killer?" "Uh, I kind of doubt it." "Don't be so sure." "It's not easy." "What isn't easy, Hodges?" "Being profoundly gifted, knowing that everybody knows that you're always ten steps ahead of them." "It's a lot of pressure." "Some days, you feel like you're just going to snap." "I know the feeling." "In his confession," "Marlon basically said that Stacy deserved to die." "He was alone in that opinion." "Everybody loved Stacy - parents and students." "4.0 GPA, varsity tennis team, homecoming queen." "She even took a public virginity pledge with some of her classmates." "Did they have those in your high school?" "No." "Do you believe that Marlon killed her?" "I was looking right into his eyes when he told me he did it." "There's no doubt in my mind." "Two confessions, one crime." "We don't get that a lot." "When did you last speak with Marlon?" "The day the police ce to my house and arrested him." "You don't visit him?" "My parents won't let me see him in jail." "Bad environment." "Marlon didn't put me up to this." "He was trying to protect me." "It would've been wrong to let him be punished for something I did." "You don't think I could have done it." "Neither one of you." "That's a big job for a little girl." "Not if you have the right tools." "Smart kid like you... knows your brother's suffering." "You feel bad, you want to help, so you fabricate some evidence." "If you thought that the evidence was fake," "I wouldn't still be in jail." "Aren't you going to ask me why I did it?" "Would you like to tell us?" "I throw off the curve." "When I'm in a class, people who usually get A's, suddenly get C's." "Stacy was applying to Harvard." "She wanted me to dumb myself down." "I said no." "She didn't like that." "Uh... babies use the wall dryer." "So you killed her because she messed up your hair?" "No." "I'm used to pranks like that." "I get them most every day." "But Stacy... didn't stop there." "She had to take it to another level." "And she used Scott to do it." "Scott Baird, Stacy's boyfriend." "I was his tutor." "You know, I was really pissed off at Stacy when I heard about e whole... hair dryer thing, but her... her friends had put her up to it." "Stacy wanted me to give you something." "It's a peace offering." "I think you'll look great in it at the Spring Formal." "Oh, you are so going." "You like him." "He's on the basketball team." "I'm 12." "I'm not allowed to like him, but..." "I went anyway." "Over here." "The pictures were up on MySpace that night." "I got a ton of e-mails." "You put dium in the showerhead to get back at her?" "A prank for a prank." "I thought that there'd be a few sparks, that she'd freak out and that'd be it, but the nozzle exploded." "Stacy ran... and fell down the stairs... and died." "I tried to cover it up." "You miscalculated." "I guess I did." "Got the DNA results on the blood from Hannah's sweater." "Stacy." "Hannah." "So she fabricated evidence, and put her own blood on the shirt." "Maybe, maybe not." "The soil on the shirt wa consistent with the dump site." "Hannah could've been at the scene." "She could have cut herself burying the body." "Or she could have gone back to the field at any time within the last four months and rubbed her shirt in the same kind of dirt." "And counted on us to make the match?" "Well, that's just plain scary smart." "I mean, my daughter's a few years older than her, and the most important thing on her mind right now is how much belly button to show off at the mall." "Never thought I'd be grateful for that." "You have to understand." "My child's not capable of murder." "I assume you mean Hannah." "Of course." "Well, Marlon's your child, too." "Marlon's from my wife's first marriage." "He's more like his father." "This is Marlon's room." "No kidding." "It's pretty much the way I left it." "The bleached cloes were in the hamper." "But the real action... was in here." "Shared bathroom." "Very Brady." "Pulled Stacy's hairs out of the sink trap the first time through." "And I found some burn marks around the bathtub drain." "pH tested positive for sodium hydroxide, so..." "I figured Marlon probably did a test run." "The scope of the warrant only covered Marlon's room and other common areas of the house." "I popped my head in here." "Nothing in plain sight at the time." "Was this here before?" "It wasn't in plain sight." "I didn't check it." "Looks like Hannah won the science fair with a project about sodium." "Hannah's just trying to help Marlon." "So they're close?" "No, not really." "Sometimes I think if they didn't share a bathroom, they wouldn't see each other at all." "What do you mean?" "They're on different academic tracks." "Never take any of the same classes, and travel in completely different social circles." "From what we understand," "Hannah doesn't really have a social circle." "The other students bore her." "Hannah spends most of her time with her teachers." "And Marlon?" "I guess..." "I guess he spends most of his time alone." ""Rainbow party"?" "!" "Yeah, it's a party game where boys get the girls to wear different colored lipsticks while they have oral sex." "Boy with the most colors wins." "Supposed to be trendy." "So much for "Spin the Bottle"." "Carrie." ""Weird high school girl" ""gets humiliated at the prom, only to exact her revenge"." "Hann wanted us to find this." "Maybe." "Question is, did she read the book before... or aft the murder?" "We had Hannah's I.Q. tested when she was eight." "It's 177." "She really is one in a million." "Hannah's special." "She's an indigo child." "Indigo child?" "A new breed." "Hannah doesn't just see the world, she sees through it, through people, with an intuition none of us can comprehend." "She's compelled to help others, whether they're worth helping or not." "Ah, the shower curtain the vic was wrapped in." "Yeah, I had Mandy run the unknowns from the original case against Hannah's prints." "She got a match." "Okay." "But Hannah uses those showers after gym class." "This curtain was used in the handicapped shower." "Why would she do that?" "Probably hiding her body." "She's 12." "She hasn't reached puberty." "Undeveloped teen girls are very self-conscious." "Four... fingers, closely spaced." "Grabbing, maybe." "Could be from Hannah dragging Stacy's body." "Hannah weighed 65 pounds." "Stacy about a hundred." "Dead weight." "Plastic slides on grass." "It makes it easier." "It's certainly possible." "D.A.'s not going to like the sound of that." "Sodium demonstration is always a real crowd pleaser." "It's ended up in a senior prank more than once." "I keep it over here, under lock and key, but, unfortunately, the lab's always getting broken into." "It's certainly possible Marlon got the sodium from here." "Everyone have their goggles on?" "Which is precisely what I told the cops four months ago." "You need gloves to handle elemental sodium." "Of course." "It burns skin." "We keep it in kerosene to stabilize it." "Do you think it's possible that Hannah could have stolen it?" "Hannah would never do that." "I'm just wondering if it's possible." "She obviously has access to this room." "Ms. Sidle..." "I've had my share of good students over the years, but Hannah..." "Sometimes, right in the middle of a lecture," "I'll catch her staring at some little thing in the yard - a tree, a squirrel... and all I can think about is how much I wish" "I could see it the way she does." "If Hannah came up and asked me for a chunk of sodium, I'd give it to her, just to see what she would do with it." "The victim's car." "Originally impounded... in front of Scott Baird's house." "Traces of blood and soil consistent with the crime were found in the front seat." "Now, if Hannah's the killer, she had to drive this car." "Well, it's got adjustable seats, tilt and telescoping steering wheel- it's certainly possible." "We go soil and blood on the carpet." "That was in the report." "But this wasn't." "I'd say the killer moved the seat." "Yeah." "12-year-old killer, huh?" "Starting to look that way, yeah." "I bet that Grand Theft Auto had something to do with it." "Mm, I don't know." "I don't think Hannah's really the video-game type." "Never know." "Between you and me, I actually think it's a ton of fun." "Print is a match to Scott Baird." "Isn't that the victim's boyfriend?" "Two people confessed to the murder, and now you're accusing my son?" "Kids do stupid things." "Marlon covers for Hannah," "Hannah covers for Scott." "Dad..." "Don't say a word." "DNA confirmed your fingerprint in Stacy's car, in Stacy's blood." "Scott loved Stacy." "We all did." "And when whoever killed her parked her car in my driveway to frame my son," "I understood why you had to talk to him." "But this?" "That's it." "We're leaving." "Come on, Scott." "This is the only chance you're going to get." "If you walk out that door, you're under arrest." "I want a lawyer." "I want to talk without my dad." "This is ridiculous." "I asked you guys to rule out one suspect, now we have three." "He's willing to talk," "I'd say we caught a break." "The father's going to sue." "Oh, I'd put money on that." "Okay, Scott." "You said you wanted to talk." "Let's talk." "This doesn't get back to our families, all right?" "My dad's a deacon, and Stacy's dad is, too." "They'll never understand." "They won't hear anything from me." "I was pressuring Stacy to have sex." "She kept resisting." "It was that stupid virginity pledge that she had taken at the high school." "I Id her that I loved her, and that nothing should get in the way of that." "Not even God." "I take it that convinced her." "Yeah." "I mean, really?" "You really do?" "Yeah." "I love you." "I love you with all of my heart." "There was a little blood." "Not a lot, but..." "After, she... she started feeling guilty, so" "I went back into the front of the car and I tossed the condom." "And... then I... wiped my fingers under the seat." "Hodges, Stokes." "Listen, there's a bloody fingerprint in the back freezer from Stacy Vollmer's car." "Pull it and test it for spermicides and lubricants." "We need it quickly, all right?" "I'm on it." "If it tests positive, it will clear him." "Yeah." "Which means we're down to Malcolm and Hannah." "Right back where we started." "Stacy said that she was afraid that God would punish her for having sex." "I told her that was crazy." "Guess I was wrong." "Archie is not getting much off of Hannah's computer." "Most of her files are encrypted AES-256." "It's going to be nearly impossible to crack." "What do you mean by "most"?" "Well, it's not much, but apparently Hannah had IP access to the laser printer in the high school library." "Same one that printed the "Out of Order" signs for the shower." "If she printed those signs, it shows intent." "Ah, teen lust." "Starts with some chemistry, and then you mess around with some biology, and once you have some experience "under your belt,"" "then you introduce the physics." "Apparently, chivalry is not dead:" "the bloody fingerprint tested positive for nonoxynol spermicide." "So much for the boyfriend." "If we can't pin this on Hannah or Marlon, they could both walk." "You could flip a coin." "I have a better idea." "I bet you really liked high school." "Yeah, playing football, chasing girls, books when I wanted to learn something - what's not to like?" "Hey, guys." "This is Darcy, my wife Tina's niece." "Hi, Darcy." "You were right; she's about Hannah's size." "More or less." "Stop talking about me." "Hey, that's the best part!" "That's what the pause button's for." "It's time to work, it's child labor day." "Okay." "Crime started right here." "Think you could reach that?" "It's kind of hard to sabotage a shower head you can't touch." "Depends on what's behind the curtain." "A stool." "Just like the one in Hannah's bathroom." "Try this." "Hannah had access to the chem lab, and she knew how to handle sodium..." "Stacy would not have known what hit her." "Or where she was going." "Stacy landed here and bled out from the trauma to her skull." "Darcy, why don't you put those headphones back on?" "Like I didn't hear what you guys just said?" "Hannah could have done this." "Maybe." "But the next part, that was the toughest." "It's too heavy!" "Come on, you're almost there!" "It's building character!" "It's slow going, but you're doing it." "Yeah, so far." "That's okay." "Look, even if she makes it to the grass, you think she could've pulled the body the entire length of the football field?" "There were scratches on the shower curtain- the body was dragged at least part of the way." "There's no way Hannah pulled it the entire distance." "Not by herself." "They did it together." "So... did I help the dead girl?" "If Marlon and Hannah committed this crime together, then they're probably still working as a team." "It's all part of the plan:" "he confesses, then she confesses." "Muddy the waters enough, they both get off on reasonable doubt." "Well, if we can't get one to implicate the other, we're screwed." "I don't get it." "What's wrong with you people?" "You want me to confess?" "Again?" "Fine, I will." "Marlon, you need to confirm that you're willing to talk to me without a parent or lawyer present, just a child advocate." "I already said that was okay." "I killed Stacy, what else do I have to tell you?" "Well, the truth works for me." "I like the truth." "Look, I don't need a lawyer, and I don't need my parents." "I just want to do what's right." "Hannah, taking the blame for something you didn't do may be noble, but it doesn't make it right." "That's deep." "Okay." "It happened like this:" "Stacy humiliated me, I wanted revenge." "Yeah, and you knew that there was no way you were ever going to get it by yourself." "You moved the body, you buried it..." "I know I did;" "I was there." "What's the problem?" "Well, the problem is what happened in the locker room." "I mean, you're not the kind of guy who puts sodium in a shower head to get back at somebody." "You just trip them in the hallway." "So you think I'm too stupid to have done it." "Great, join the club." "I don't think you're stupid, Marlon," "I didn't say you were stupid." "But this is Hannah's game." "The whole way." "I broke into the chem lab." "I stole the sodium." "Me." "All by myself." "It takes skills to handle a chemical like that properly." "And, quite frankly, man, you just don't have the skills." "Your prank went bad, and Stacy ended up dead." "That's what I said." "Marlon helped you bury her." "No." "Why won't you believe me?" "Marlon wasn't there." "Stay away from Hannah." "She had nothing to do with this." "No, no, she had everything to do with this." "You two were working together from the beginning." "Just leave her alone." "Marlon helped you move the body." "He didn't!" "You expect me to believe that a little girl like you lugged a hundred pounds of dead weight the length of a football field by yourself?" "No, of course not, that's why I had to use the cart." "What cart?" "The electric cart." "The one the landscapers were using." "It was just sitting there, right outside the door." "Wait a minute." "I got something." "Let me clean up this image." "I see a cart, Sara." "So Hannah could be telling the truth." "It's enough for reasonable doubt." "Great." "Thanks, Warrick." "The evidence says either one of them could have done it, but I think they were in it together." "Okay, I'll proceed against Marlon for the murder and bring charges against Hannah for conspiracy." "Another trial?" "You sure you want to go through all this again?" "Stacy's parents and the community will have my ass if I don't." "Well, then maybe this is good news." "I was just going over Sofia's notes from the original investigation." "The night of the murder," "Hannah and Marlon's parents had left them alone in the house." "Pizza was delivered to the residence around 9:00 p. m." "That's right around Stacy's TOD." "So, did anybody talk to the delivery guy?" "Yes, and at the point that Sofia did, a month had passed." "Now, the delivery guy's at the house all the time." "He recognized photos of both kids, but he could not be sure which one answered the door." "But one of them did answer the door." "So that means they were not together at the time Stacy was killed." "Yeah." "So much for conspiracy." "We're right back where we started." "Where we are is in the crapper." "Look, I have to disclose the cart." "Defense is going to eat me alive." "Marlon's your guy." "He's your guy - just because Hannah wasn't there doesn't mean she didn't help plan this." "Well, I sure hope it's Marlon, because he's the one we have on trial." "I stand by the case we filed." "I agree." "The girl's just trying to protect him." "Sara?" "This was more about brains than brawn." "I think Hannah did it." "Two out of three." "In my world, that's called an acquittal." "High school." "Even if you're popular, or a jock, or a brain... it can be hell." "Everybody here remembers what it was like... what it was really like." "Now take a look at Marlon West." "Take a good, hard look." "Not popular... not a jock... not a brain." "Now imagine what it must be like to be Marlon West day after day after day in the sociological pressure cooker of high school." "This imposing, struggling outsider like Marlon resenting someone like Stacy Voler, who made it look so easy to be popular, athletic and smart." "That strong resentment was already festering when Stacy made Marlon's sister the object of a typical high school prank." "And that is when Marlon, his resentment boiling over, crossed a line:" "He stalked Stacy." "You've seen and heard evidence illustrating the elaborate pains he took to rig a shower head to torture Stacy, how he forced her to run and fall, and watched her die in a pool of her own blood." "You know, for the first time in his life," "Marlon feels like a hero." "He's not invisible anymore." "He's a killer... and he is guilty beyond all reasonable doubt." ""Reasonable doubt"." "You know, I'm not surprised to hear the prosecution say those words, because its case offers nothing but reasonable doubt." "Access to sodium?" "!" "Marlon couldn't find sodium on a periodic table of the elements, let alone a locked supply closet." "Access to library printers?" "Do you really think a kid like Marlon spends any time in a library?" "The shower head - yes, Marlon's tall enough." "He could reach it, but he still would have had to have handled a volatile chemical with expert safety precautions in order to orchestrate an explosion." "I meanladies and gentlemen, do you know how to do that?" "I don't know how to do that." "Right?" "You'd have to be... a genius." "Marlon?" "Not a genius." "You know, one of the underpinnings of our justice system is that it is better to send a hundred guilty men free than to imprison even one who's innocent." "Marlon West is an innocent man." "Reasonable doubt compels you to find him not guilty." "Defendant shall rise." "Madam Foreman, what is the jury's verdict?" "On the sole count of murder in the first degree, we, the jury, find the defendant, Marlon West... not guilty." "So noted." "Court orders the defendant released from custody." "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for your service." "Court is adjourned." "Sign here." "Hey, there." "Did you come to say bye?" "No." "Actually, you and I are going to be seeing a lot of each other." "If you thought the DA wouldn't prosecute a 12-year-old for murder, you were wrong." "He wants justice for Stacy and her family." "Of course." "He's a totally linear thinker." "Most of you guys are." "Shame on you, Ms. Sidle." "Come on, Hannah." "You don't need to listen to this." "Mom, just give us a second." "You were saying?" "Here." "Hannah, with your gifts, you could've done anything you wanted, and you picked murder." "You can't take that back." "You're worried how I'm going turn out." "Of course I am." "I know it seems like a really long time, but... in five years, the Stacies of the world would've been behind you." "Let me guess." "You were a smart kid in school." "Maybe you feel we're a little bit alike." "There aren't many people like you." "That's what my parents always say, too." "The last four months, all they cared about was the effect of the trial on me... not Marlon." "It's been that way ever since I was 14 months old and started spelling words with plastic letters." "It's so unfair, and nobody ever sees it." "He doesn't deserve to go to jail." "If I get convicted, what's the worst-case scenario?" "I mean, I'll be out in five years with an undergraduate degree." "There's no "Son of Sam" law in Nevada- that was ruled unconstitutional- so I'm free to write a book about all this." "The story'll be worth millions." "Freaks are always good box office." "You're not a freak." "When's the last time you had to sit down to be eye-level with a murder suspect who was standing up?" "Hannah, you are smart." "So I've been told." "But you're not smart enough to get away with murder." "I think I am." "A lot of people are smart enough to get away with murder." "You probably are, too." "But you have to be really smart to make people think things happened that never did." "What do you mean, exactly?" "Please don't worry about me." "I'm going to be fine." "I didn't kill Stacy." "Marlon did."