Brenda Carneal, grandmother of the police sergeant’s victim, told CNN’s In Session Ryan Smith that defendant Ron Killings lied on the stand when he testified in his own defense today. She also said she forgave him, because she understood that she had to if she wanted to get on with her own life. Her wisdom is vast. I wish all crime victims would understand that the justice system isn’t about vengeance.

But Ms. Carneal also said she wished Sgt. Killings would admit what he had done, and that her granddaughter was a “child he’s treating like nothing.” That’s exactly what I thought, too. In fact, that’s how the whole State of Tennessee is treating this child victim.

What I Heard—It Isn’t What the Killings Jury Heard

Ms. Caneal was a witness to the incident. She saw the officer throw two whiskey bottles away. She informed a responding officer who, she claims, told her, “Get your ass across the street or I’ll arrest you.”

She isn’t testifying in this trial, because the State has decided it would violate the officer’s rights if the jury knew what he had done as soon as he got out of the car after the accident. (Compare this with the Trooper Higbee trial in which the victims’ grandfather was permitted to testify about what the responding officers said to him. What’s the difference? IMHO, the only difference was the gender and race of the grandparent.)

• Sidebar: Ms. Carneal later donned rubber gloves and retrieved the two liquor bottles. With them she found a receipt, which she gave to her family’s lawyer. The receipt proved that Killings had purchased the liquor a few hours earlier. They apparently retrieved surveillance videos from the liquor store, which showed Killings was the buyer. OK: So, State of Tennessee, explain to me why this isn’t relevant to a charge of reckless homicide?

The State also, apparently, has decided that the local medical examiner doesn’t need to bother to testify against the officer.

The State also, apparently, has decided that they don’t wish to reprimand or demote an officer who was speeding to a crime scene while talking on his personal cell phone with a friend, another officer.

The Defendant Testi-lies

As I watched Killings try to convince the jury he was genuinely distraught at the child’s death, I thought about the testimony of Trooper Higbee, whose sorrow was so intense that he actually expressed his regrets to the victims’ mother who was sitting in the courtroom. You could tell he could barely choke back the tears.

Killings, though, let the tears rip, and he didn’t say a single word to the victim’s family.

Among the allegedly callous behavior Killings sought to justify on the stand was his failure to render any aid to the child other than to put a coat over her torso. According to him, "I didn’t want to do any CPR, because I knew she had some damage.” Hmm. Is he sure it wasn’t because he had alcohol on his breath? I realize he meant he didn’t pound on her chest, but you can give artificial respiration without causing any further “damage.”

The jury is the finder of fact: In part that means they can judge the sincerity of tears. If I were on the Killings jury, I would try my best to assume his tears were real—but I’m afraid I’d have some reasonable doubts.

The greatest doubt of his guilt, as far as I’m concerned, came from a defense witness who saw the child crouch in a sprinter’ stance before she darted out into the road, almost as if she was trying to race the car.

Unfortunately, the prosecutor’s cross-examination of this witness was ghastly. He ought to have called her as a state’s witness, and rather than trying to discredit her memory, he ought to have asked if she saw Killings “walk into the grass, too.”

The problem for this jury is the same problem all juries have: no one tells them what really happened. There’s a good chance this jury will find Killings not guilty because of reasonable doubt. But I am absolutely certain that when they learn about the liquor bottles, they’re going to be furious.