to offer any explanation for this evidence. Closing arguments On August 28, 1979, both counsels delivered their closing arguments before the jury. James Blackburn argued first, beginning by contrasting the injuries inflicted upon Colette, Kimberley, and Kristen with those suffered by MacDonald. He then outlined the medical testimony which listed the sole serious injury MacDonald had sustained as the pneumothorax wound to his chest, stating that even if the prosecution conceded the wound was potentially life-threatening, the wound was the sole serious injury he had sustained. Referencing the life-and-death struggle MacDonald claimed to have engaged in with the alleged intruders, Blackburn stated the evidence indicated a struggle had occurred in the MacDonald home, but this struggle was between "only one white male and one white female. The white female was Colette and the white male was her husband." Blackburn then poured scorn on the character witnesses who had earlier testified MacDonald had been a good husband and father, then returned to the evidence, stating: "If we convince you, by the evidence, he did it, we don't have to show you he is the sort of person that could have done it." He then closed his initial argument by stating: "I can only tell you from the physical evidence that... things do not lie. But I suggest that people can, and do." The following day, Bernard Segal and Wade Smith delivered their closing arguments on behalf of the defense. Segal focused much of his closing argument upon the "campaign of persecution" his client had been subjected to by the legal system for almost a decade in an attempt to frame him for the murder of his family, describing the prosecution's case as a "house built on sand". Portraying MacDonald as a loving husband and father, Segal then emphasized MacDonald's insistence from the outset that four intruders had been responsible for the murders. Segal spoke for over three hours, using virtually all of the defense's allotted time. Blackburn and Murtagh agreed to forfeit 10 minutes of their allocated rebuttal time to allow Smith to make an argument to the jury. Following a brief recess, Smith appealed to the jurors to question the lack of an obvious motive for MacDonald to have committed the murders. He referenced the family photographs of MacDonald enjoying the company of his wife and children in the years, and even weeks, before their deaths, stating: "It makes no