Wednesday around 5 p.m., government prosecutor Sean O’Shea running on high adrenaline made his closing rebuttal. “They say we did it (conducted the investigation against Titan Sports) because we don’t have respect for wrestling,” shouted O’Shea, who then dramatically turned 180 degrees and pointed at defendant Vince McMahon. “You know who doesn’t have respect for wrestling? Vince McMahon, who used wrestlers like slabs of meat and pumped them up with steroids for profit.”
The forty courtroom observers sat with their jaws dropped, the defense attorneys tried to keep their cool, and Vince McMahon sat in stunned silence, probably trying with all his might not to stand up and shout, “Who do you think you are?!”
The timing was straight out of a courtroom movie, the climax coming out of nowhere as the usually calm and methodical prosecutor broke out of his shell to lash out against the defendant. Some court room observers felt O’Shea’s closing rebuttal to the defense’s closing summary was so powerful, so poignant, that he was playing possum all along, hustling the defense into thinking he was going to let them get away with what he called their illogical arguments and smoke-screen distortions only to lash out at them when they would have no chance to respond.
At one point during the defense’s closing summary, as Titan attorney Jerry McDevitt swaggered across the courtroom making his closing arguments, government investigator Tony Vilente turned to O’Shea with a big smile on his face, perhaps saying, “They’re playing right into our hands.”
O’Shea, who few believed had a strong case against McMahon coming into the day, hit a ball to the warning track. It was up to the WWF to catch the ball or let it sail just over their glove into the stands for the homerun the prosecution needed. At the time, it appeared they may have let the ball slip past their glove. That “hit” was what O’Shea called “the smoking gun” – a two-by-three foot blow-up of a memo Linda McMahon wrote to Pat Patterson.
The letter alone, O’Shea argued, was enough evidence for the jury to find the defendant guilty. The letter read: “I spoke to Vince about the fact that the State of Pennsylvania is probably going to launch an investigation into the use of all illegal drugs including steroids… Although you and I discussed before about continuing to have Zahorian at our events as the doctor on call, I think it is now not a good idea. Vince agreed and would like for you to call Zahorian and tell him not to come to any more of our events and to also clue him in on any action that the Justice Department is thinking of taking.”
There were other heated exchanges. Brevetti asked in her closing summary, “Do you feel you’re being asked to do something good here or are you being pushed to get McMahon.”
O’Shea angrily responded: “We didn’t say, ‘Be like Hulk Hogan, take his vitamins,’ all the while they were pumping him up with steroids. They’re big, rich, powerful – they’re corporate drug dealers. Just because they’re rich doesn’t give them a free pass.”
O’Shea’s vitriolic closing statement seemed to pump life into what Brevetti called a “dead on arrival” case. O’Shea would find out two days later it wasn’t enough.
