Episode 8 Transcript
Closing Statements
Sequestered: A Juror’s Perspective on the Murder Trial of Jasmine Pace
Episode 8: Closing Statements
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Before we begin, please be advised that this episode contains graphic descriptions of violence as presented during the trial. Please take care while listening.
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The Last Day of Testimony
It's Monday, January 20, 2025—day seven of the trial.
But before we get there, let's just rewind real quick back to Sunday, our one and only day off during sequestration. We got to sleep in—only a little though. Instead of the usual 6am knock on the door, we all enjoyed an extra 30 minutes of rest. Small victories.
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Breakfast today was from seven to 7:30, and by 8:30 we were loaded into our two vans, ready to embark on our first excursion: Ruby Falls.
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As a sequestered juror, I didn't have much to say in my itinerary, but when our handlers whisked us away to Ruby Falls, I wasn’t mad about it, either. After days of sitting in a courtroom, the idea of a subterranean adventure felt oddly fitting.
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Ruby Falls
Deep beneath Lookout Mountain lies Ruby Falls, one of the most extraordinary underground waterfalls in the world, hidden 1,120 feet below the surface. This 145-foot cascade tumbles through a limestone cavern, glowing under an otherworldly display of colorful lights. It’s as dramatic as it sounds, and after nearly a week of legal proceedings, a little theatrical lighting felt right on brand.
Discovered in 1928 by Leo Lambert, Ruby Falls was named after his wife Ruby, which is adorable. Getting there is an adventure in itself. Patrons descend 260 feet underground in a glass-front elevator, which feels both exciting and slightly alarming when you remember how deep you’re actually going.
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From there, you wind through narrow, twisting passageways lined with stalactites, stalagmites, and ancient flowstone formations. The deeper you go, the cooler the air gets. And for the record, there are no bathrooms down there, so take it from me when I say: Plan ahead.
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Just when you start wondering if this was a terrible idea, the tunnel gives way to a towering chamber, and there it is—Ruby Falls cascading from above, its mist swirling in the glowing artificial light. It’s breathtaking, almost surreal, like stumbling into a hidden world that’s been waiting in silence for centuries.
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Jurors’ Verdict: Ruby Falls is guilty of being one of the coolest, weirdest, and most unexpectedly cinematic places I’ve ever been during sequestration. Highly recommended. (But also hit the restroom first.)
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The Tennessee Aquarium
After a leisurely lunch at Mayan Kitchen, which has great tapas, by the way, our next destination took us from the depths of the earth to the depths of the ocean—the Tennessee Aquarium.
This place has a reputation for being one of the best aquariums in the country, and after stepping inside, I can see why. The aquarium is split between two massive side-by-side buildings, one for freshwater and one for saltwater. Each experience starts at the top floor and winds downward, floor by floor, drawing you deeper into each ecosystem.
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Without question, the standout exhibit was the Secret Reef, a multi-story saltwater tank designed to replicate the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, a protected reef system 100 miles off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana. Unlike many coral reefs struggling due to climate change, this one remains a thriving underwater ecosystem home to manta rays, green sea turtles, and several species of sharks.
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As I stood in front of the towering tank, a majestic sea turtle glided through the water above me. It was mesmerizing, the kind of scene that makes you stop, take a breath, and forget, even just for a moment, everything else happening in the world above. I could have stood there for hours.
If our morning at Ruby Falls was about uncovering hidden natural wonders beneath our feet, this stop was about looking outward into a world that exists far beyond us, one that keeps moving, whether we’re paying attention or not.
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Jurors’ Verdict: The Tennessee Aquarium—a stunning glimpse into the ocean’s quiet power, worth every second.
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Back to Court
After a brief respite, Monday came quickly. The courtroom doors reopened, and the weight of the trial settled back onto our shoulders.
What we didn’t know yet was that today would be the last time we’d hear from the attorneys, their final arguments, their last chance to shape how we viewed everything we’d seen and heard.
Because after today, the trial wouldn’t belong to the prosecution or the defense anymore. It would belong to the jury.
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This is Sequestered: A Juror’s Perspective on the Murder Trial for Jasmine Pace.
I’m Sara, Juror #11.
Each episode, I’ll take you inside the courtroom, behind the scenes, and into the weighty moments of this trial as we honor Jasmine’s life and navigate the complexities of seeking justice.
Let’s begin.
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Day seven began like the others: breakfast, security, back into the jury room. We had no idea what the day would hold, but it didn’t take long to find out. Inside the courtroom, the final pieces of the case were starting to fall into place.
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The state was given the opportunity to respond to the defense’s case, but they declined. With no rebuttal, the defense formally rested its case at 9:42am.
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But before the trial could move forward, the court had to address one final legal battle—one that could alter how the jury weighed the case.
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The Charges We Would Be Allowed to Consider
Defense Attorney Weiss pushed for the inclusion of voluntary manslaughter, citing testimony from a neighbor who had heard a woman scream and an argument that suggested a crime of passion rather than premeditated murder. Weiss framed it as a possible case of self-defense, an impulsive act rather than an intentional killing.
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But DA Cody Wamp stood her ground and pushed back, arguing that Tennessee law is clear: Murder can only be reduced to voluntary manslaughter if the victim’s actions provoked the defendant. And according to the prosecution, there was no evidence that Jasmine Pace had done anything to provoke Jason Chen that could possibly justify a lesser charge.
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Here’s Judge Patterson denying the motion for self-defense:
“Right on this particular issue, what we do have is that the defendant, I believe, is six one—large individual. The victim’s size is barely five feet, around 100 pounds. The only evidence of anyone having a deadly weapon is the defendant. There's no evidence the defendant was put in a reasonable state of fear where he could have believed that self-defense would have been justified. So I don't think that self-defense has been fairly raised by the group the court's heard, but the request for self-defense instruction be denied.”
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The Charges We Were Asked to Consider
Shortly after this, the jury received detailed instructions on the charges against Jason Chen. There were six possible verdicts related to Jasmine’s death, ranging from first degree premeditated murder to criminally negligent homicide.
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On top of that, we were given a second, separate charge—abuse of a corpse. For each charge, we were instructed to reach a unanimous decision, starting at the top. If we didn’t agree on first degree murder, we were to move to the next charge down, then the next, and so on until we found consensus.
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The same process applied to the abuse of a corpse charge.
I didn’t have the guts to look around the room at this moment. For me, the pressure was building, and I’m sure my fellow jurors could feel it too—the weight of what was coming next. It was real.
These jury instructions were long, repetitive, detailed, and honestly, this was probably the first time I felt sleepy while court was in session.
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Still, they were important. Judge Patterson was laying out the exact framework we were expected to follow when we entered deliberations—what each charge meant, how to weigh the evidence, and what a unanimous decision would require.
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Here is Mary Beth Maygram from News Channel Nine, summarizing these instructions.
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Potential Verdicts
Mary Beth Maygram from News Channel Nine detailed the potential verdicts the jury could reach during deliberation:
“First, what we can do is go over some of the potential verdicts that the jury could come to when they do reach that deliberation phase. So all of these charges for count one, Jason Chen can either be found not guilty of all of them or guilty of one of these counts. So it’s:
First degree premeditated murder
Second degree murder
Voluntary manslaughter
Aggravated assault
Reckless homicide
Reckless aggravated assault
Criminally negligent homicide
Assault or reckless endangerment.
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The jury can also, you know, go ahead and find him not guilty of all of those charges.
Now he’s also facing a second count that will be guilty of abuse of a corpse or not guilty.
When it came to those jury instructions, it is, you know, the jury’s job in these cases to determine the guilt or, you know, the innocence of the defendant. In this case, one thing that Judge Boyd Patterson said is that absolute certainty is not required, but moral certainty is, and that the statements the jury doesn’t believe are supported by the evidence presented in this case, those should be disregarded by the jury.
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The jury is free to believe all, none, or some of the witness testimony that we've heard in these seven days of this trial. They can consider the reputation of truthfulness or any sort of special reasons that a witness may have to be honest or dishonest in this trial. They can also decide who they believe or what testimony matches the evidence that was presented in this case.
They also do not have to believe the opinion of the expert witnesses. If there is a part of that testimony they believe, they can choose to go ahead and believe that portion while disregarding the others. If there's any sort of disagreements to the testimony we've heard so far, any form of contradiction, the jury may be able to decide what they believe in that case.
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One thing that they also mentioned, Meg, you mentioned that Jason Chen did make the choice to not testify today. The jury cannot use that. They cannot use Chen’s choice to not testify as guilt, because it is the responsibility of the state in this case to prove his guilt.”
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The Final Arguments
We had heard every piece of evidence. We had seen the surveillance footage, reviewed forensic reports, and listened to expert testimony. Now it was time for the final argument—the moment the prosecution laid out exactly why Jason Chen was absolutely guilty of first-degree premeditated murder and abuse of a corpse.
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Assistant District Attorney Paul Moyle stepped forward. His words were powerful and his delivery was sharp. I closed my notebook and sat up straight in my chair.
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Assistant DA Paul Moyle’s Closing Statement
“What’s in the bags? Matter of perspective. One person in the courtroom was contained in Exhibit 138, six, found on the banks of the Tennessee River in Hamilton County. Was an inconvenience, something that needed to be gotten rid of, discarded like a piece of trash, something that you don’t care about. But to other people in the courtroom who you’ve heard from over the course of this week, something to be cherished, something precious, something that you’d be willing to go to the ends of the earth to find and bring home safe. What’s in the bag? Jasmine Pace.”
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There was one person in that courtroom who saw Exhibit 138, six—the suitcase found on the banks of the Tennessee River—as an inconvenience, something to be discarded. But Jasmine Pace’s family saw it differently. To them, she was everything.
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I had to give Moyle credit for how he explained premeditation. In the end, it was this analogy that clarified it for me and ultimately shaped my decision in the jury room.
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He compared Jason’s decision-making to something we’ve all experienced—approaching a yellow traffic light.
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In that split second, you have to choose: hit the gas or tap the brake. It happens fast, but it’s still a decision, a conscious choice, to keep going or to stop.
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Jason’s decision was no different. It was quick, but it was deliberate, and the consequences were irreversible.
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Moyle’s Analogy
We’ve all approached the traffic light. Why it was turned yellow. See and hear as someone approaches this traffic light, they have a choice. You step on the gas, you step on the brakes. You consider, what time of day is it? Are there pedestrians? What’s the traffic required? Are you running late? Is there a need to get where you’re going quickly? All things that your mind processes in an instant. You make the conscious choice to either hit the brake pedal or to go hammer down.
And as we’ll see, silver car when faced with that decision, just like Mr. Chen, accelerated. Kept going. Did it stop?
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I want you to keep that in mind as we start going through the proof. What opportunities did Mr. Chen have during this to take the off ramp, away from violence, away from murder, away from 60 stab wounds?
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It’s important to know the timeline. How long does it take to choose to kill this Jasmine Pace? Mere seconds.”
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The Moment of Decision
It all came down to a moment of decision—do you slow down, or do you hit the gas? Jason Chen didn't just keep going, he accelerated. He had so many opportunities to stop, to de-escalate, to walk away, but every single time, he made the same choice. He chose violence. He chose control. He chose murder.
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That's when DA Moyle walked us through the timeline.
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11:42 pm: Jasmine arrived at Jason's apartment.
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2:11 am: A neighbor heard a scream—a woman's voice, sad but assertive, and then silence.
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2:18 am: Jasmine's phone sent a location pin to her mother, Katrina Bean. A signal, a warning, maybe even a final attempt to be found.
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3:00 am: There were no signs of a struggle, no more cries for help—just the steady hum of a garbage disposal and a washing machine echoing through the silence.
Premeditation doesn’t always look like planning. It can happen in an instant, and once that moment arrived, Jason didn’t hesitate.
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Moyle's Argument
“A pin of her last location to her mother, Miss Jasmine Pace, sends it to Katrina. Now there's two options, sure, but circumstantially, we know that it's Jasmine that sent that message, because there's only two options. It's either Miss Jasmine Pace in a cry for help, letting her family know where she is, or it's Mr. Jason Chen using the phone sending a message to Jasmine's mom. For what purpose? To get caught? We know he doesn't want that to happen.”
I've always believed that Jasmine helped solve her own murder by dropping that pin. It was a split-second decision on her part, but one that said everything—something was wrong.
After that, DA Moyle shifted his focus—not just on what Jason Chen had done, but on what he did next. Because after Jasmine was gone, Jason got to work, not in panic, but in strategy.
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4:04 am: Jasmine’s phone came back to life, not because she was using it, but because Jason was. He was trying to access her bank accounts.
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Later that morning, Jason opened Tinder and started chatting with other women, just hours after killing Jasmine.
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He went to Walmart and bought cleaning supplies.
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11:00 am: Jason sent a photo of matcha tea with the caption, “Slept like a baby.” A twisted joke, considering Jasmine’s body was lying lifeless just a few feet away.
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The Brutality of the Crime
Then, Moyle turned to the brutality of the crime itself. Jasmine had been stabbed 60 times, and each of those wounds required two deliberate movements—one in, one out. That’s 120 choices.
Moyle painted Jason not as someone acting in a moment of chaos, but someone in full control of their actions—from the bank access to the iCloud attempts to the casual messages on Tinder. This wasn’t someone spiraling. This was someone calculating.
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Moyle’s Breakdown of the Stabbings
“60 individual stabs to this size woman’s world, Jasmine Pace’s body at the time.
She was insane, if I said it was Anna’s office. That means stab, action one, removing, action two. Each stab, in and of itself consists of two distinct movements—the movement plunging the knife blade in, and the movement removing the knife blade out.
Back in, out, 120.
120 times he had to move his body to be able to inflict the number of injuries that we see on Jasmine Pace’s body.”​
The Suitcase Footage
At 5:59 pm, Jason wheeled a suitcase out of his apartment.
“Then we fast forward to 5:59. You’ve seen it. Mr. Chen emerges from his apartment with a suitcase. Watch as he tips it over, how heavy it is, pulls him to the ground. Watch as he struggles to go around the corner towards the light post right there, because it’s not closed.
He’s not going on some trip. It’s a person. It’s Jasmine Pace. 98 pounds, five foot, two inches tall, this rolling suitcase.”
He drove to Suck Creek Road, a place he had scouted out already twice that day, and dumped her body.
He wasn’t frantic. He wasn’t panicked. He was in control.
And then just hours later, he logged on to Call of Duty with his friends.
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The Shackling
Next, Moyle moved on to talk about how Jason shackled Jasmine’s body.
“That’s all it took. Having her in the fetal position with one arm chained to her right leg on the inside.
And let’s think about it. Why on the inside? If it is as the defense would have you believe that Jasmine Pace was cuffed up while she was dead, right? Why on earth would they apply one shackle to the elbow and the other one to the left leg?
She’s not moving, she’s not going anywhere. You’d make it so that it matches, right?
You want to be in as tight of a package as possible, into this teeny little suitcase. It’s not designed to hold a person.
She’s not moving. Cuff the hands together, shackle the two legs together, pull them together. You wouldn’t go haphazard—right hand to right leg, and then attach a cuff here and attach the shackle to the left leg.
That’s indicative of she doesn’t want to be shackled. He’s just slapping the shackles on whatever he can find, whatever he can get his hands on.”​
Moyle’s Final Argument
As he delivered his final argument, DA Moyle laid out what he believed to be the clearest proof of premeditation—Jason Chen’s own actions.
He argued that Chen wasn’t out of control or acting in the heat of passion. Instead, every move Chen made was calculated:
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From restraining Jasmine
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To carrying out the attack
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To covering his tracks afterward
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And most importantly, when he had the chance to stop, he didn’t.
Everything he does is calm, it’s collected, and most importantly, it’s rational.
Everything he does is to avoid, and that’s to escape capture.
Everything he does leading up to the attack by shackling and restraining Jasmine Pace is to make it easier to accomplish the act itself.
That is premeditation. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t have it written down on some sheet of paper, ‘Today will be the day that I killed Jasmine Pace.’
All that matters is he took steps to commit the murder. He committed the murder, and during the commission of the murder, you need to tell me that during any one of those 60 stabs, he never once thought ‘I should stop.’
No. Like the car approaching the yellow light, it was hammer down. Keep going. Don’t stop.”
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The Prosecution's Final Words
Then Moyle pulled up the photo of the autopsy again.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chairman, law would kill this case. He acted intentionally. I intentional, the number of wounds, his restraining the victim before the attack, his conduct afterward—all shows calm reflection on the task at hand. And that's why he’s still too. First, go find him guilty for snuffing out this Jasmine Pace’s life on the 23rd of November, 2022. Thank you.”
The prosecution had made their case, arguing that Jason Chen's actions were calculated, premeditated, and intentional. And now it was the defense's turn.
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The Defense’s Turn
Oddly, it wasn't Defense Attorney Weiss resting his case. Instead, the defense's co-counsel, Amanda Morrison, took the floor. Morrison did not dispute that Jason Chen killed Jasmine Pace. Instead, she challenged the idea that this was a planned act of murder. Morrison asked the jury to consider something different—that Jason's actions weren't cold and calculated, but rather a tragic moment of uncontrollable emotion.
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Amanda Morrison’s Opening Statement
“On November 22, just before midnight, Jasmine Pace came to Jason Chen’s home, 110 Tremont Street, apartment 210. It's undisputed what happens between 12 o'clock and two o'clock.
We know Courtney Brewer was awake. She's awakened. She described a female scream. What we know is that Courtney couldn't describe what was being said. She couldn't answer any questions about what the argument was over.
She described it as something that you couldn’t decipher. Emotions are up, pulses are up. Everyone’s laughing. Jason Chen’s scared. Jasmine’s upset. Jason’s upset. And Jason killed Jasmine. He got a knife and 60 times, Jasmine missed out.”​
Morrison didn't deny what had happened. She acknowledged the brutal reality of Jasmine's death and admitted outright that Jason was responsible.
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It's still pretty wild to hear a defense attorney make these kinds of statements, but I knew there would be a catch eventually. And then Morrison pushed back on one key point—that point being the idea that Jason had planned this murder ahead of time.
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Morrison Challenges Premeditation
“What's been disputed is the state's allegation that this is premeditated. You, as a jury—you have the most important job. You're going to retire to a jury, and you're going to be looking at all of this evidence. You're going to be looking at all of the testimony, recalling the testimony that you've heard from all of the witnesses: Investigator Crawford, Dr. Cogswell, Courtney Brewer, CSU investigators.
You're going to be going through mounds of evidence, days of testimony, and like the general attitude during jury selection, you get to use your common sense. You get to apply what you know to the facts and the evidence that's been given to you.”​
The state painted a picture of Jason Chen as cold and methodical, making calculated decisions every step of the way. But Morrison argued the opposite. Jason wasn’t thinking rationally at all.
In fact, she said, his behavior after Jasmine's death proved it.
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Morrison’s Argument Against Rationality
“What we know is that from just after two o’clock in the morning, everything that Jason did showed that he wasn’t acting rational.
Rational people don’t shackle individuals and put them in garbage bags. They don’t shackle the individual, put them in the garbage bag and put them in a suitcase.
They don’t go the next day to Walgreens and Walmart to get cleaning supplies. They call the police. Everything that Jason Chen did was disgusting.”​
Morrison suggested that Jason panicked and that his irrational, scattered choices were proof he hadn't planned anything in advance.
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She turned to face the jury box and said, if Jason had truly premeditated this murder, why did he leave so many mistakes behind?
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And in that moment, I swear, she locked eyes with me.
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I mentioned this in an earlier episode, my seat was front row, third in—basically center stage, and as she spoke, her gaze didn’t drift. It was steady, direct.
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Was it intentional? Was she trying to sway my thinking, make a connection? Maybe, maybe not. But I felt it.
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The Argument Against Restraint
Then she went after one of the prosecution’s strongest arguments: that Jason restrained Jasmine before he killed her.
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If that were true, if the shackles were applied before the stabbing, it would be a powerful indicator of premeditation.
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But Morrison pushed back. She argued, there was no proof of that sequence, no evidence that the restraints were there before Jasmine’s death.
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Morrison continued building her case, focusing on the timeline and how Jason Chen handled Jasmine’s phone.
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“He left breadcrumbs everywhere. He got Jasmine's phone, used her. The state has asked you to believe that Jason had full control of her phone from two o'clock on, but they don't want you to think for a moment he, yet again, made a mistake. Tries to not share a location. Stop sharing a location, and drops a pin. They want you to believe that Jasmine was shackled when she was being stabbed.”
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Morrison aimed to dismantle the prosecution’s theory of premeditation. She argued that Jason's attempts to manipulate Jasmine’s phone weren’t the actions of someone in control—they were mistakes, errors made by someone panicking.
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The Shackles Argument
Morrison continued, challenging the claim that Jasmine was shackled before her death.
“Doctor Cogswell was asked very specific questions, questions that you can remember. You can look back for your notes and recall his testimony and discuss this among yourselves. There were no ligature marks on Jasmine's wrists. There were no ligature marks on Jasmine's ankles. There were no cuts. There was no bruising.
The state would like for you to believe that's because she couldn't move, she couldn't break the shackles, she couldn't break handcuffs. The reason they aren't there is because they were not applied so that Jason could stop her, they were applied so that he could fit her into garbage bags before putting her into a suitcase.”​
Morrison insisted that the shackles weren’t applied before Jasmine’s death. Instead, she argued that Jason used them after the fact to position Jasmine’s body so it would fit inside the suitcase.
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Questioning the Evidence
To be fair, that point has always been a bit of a question mark for me. On day five, the medical examiner, Dr. Cogswell, testified that there were no ligature marks or abrasions on Jasmine's wrists or ankles—at least nothing that would clearly indicate she had been shackled while alive or during a struggle.
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But given the extent of her injuries, it's hard to know which one of the 60 stab wounds might have incapacitated her first. It would be extremely difficult, maybe even impossible, to rule anything out with certainty, especially considering that all of her injuries were consistent with her being in the fetal position at the time of the attack.
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Morrison’s Focus on Legal Standards
Then Morrison shifted. She turned away from the evidence and toward the legal standard we as jurors were expected to uphold—beyond a reasonable doubt.
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She challenged us to consider, did the prosecution actually prove that Jason had a moment to reflect? Because that, she said, is what premeditation requires.
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“The law is clear. We're not asking you to believe that Jason had hours, days, or months to plan, but you have to know with moral certainty that he had a moment to reflect, and that he didn't.
It's the state's burden to show you that he had that moment of reflection and that he chose to disregard it and to continue to engage in acts that killed Jasmine Pace.
Ladies and gentlemen, that’s not here.”​
Burden of Proof
She reminded the jury, it wasn’t Jason’s job to prove he didn’t plan this murder. It was the state’s job to prove that he did.
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“Premeditation means that the intent to kill must have been formed prior to the act.
What we've heard for days is everything Jason has done after this. It's not— you go into the jury room and determine if there’s post-meditation, it's premeditation.
Everything that Jason did before—
It’s not necessary that the purpose of killing pre-exists in the mind of the accused for any definite period of time.
The state says each of those actions, 120 movements, that Jason should have the ability to reflect. They haven’t shown that he did.”​
If the jury couldn’t be sure that Jason intended to kill Jasmine ahead of time, then Morrison pleaded for us to consider the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.
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Voluntary Manslaughter Argument
Morrison pointed to Tennessee law, which allows for voluntary manslaughter if the killing happened in a state of passion.
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“Specifically, voluntary manslaughter requires that the killing result was a heat of passion. The state’s witnesses talked about—they talked about the individual that inflicted these wounds in that state of excitement.
Right here in your jury instructions. That is something for you to consider.
It does require—there has to be a state of passion that's produced by adequate provocation.
You heard yelling on the floor below—that was enough to wake an individual at two o'clock in the morning, so loud that she couldn't even make out what was being said.”​
Morrison pointed to the yelling heard by Courtney, the downstairs neighbor, as a key piece of her argument. She claimed it was evidence of a heated argument, not a calculated plan, that Jason acted not out of control, but out of passion.
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And ultimately, she suggested that Jasmine provoked him. It was a heavy moment, a deliberate shift from accountability to justification.
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But Morrison didn’t ask us to excuse what Jason did. In her final words, she acknowledged the brutal reality of Jasmine’s death, and she said Jason should be held accountable, but for the right charge.
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“This has been a hard case. Jasmine deserves justice. You have given District Attorney Shen the benefit of a fair trial. Your attentiveness has been very clear throughout your office, and I make special appreciation in reviewing this evidence. We ask you to return a verdict of voluntary manslaughter.”
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The State’s Final Rebuttal
And just like that, the defense rested. They had made their case not to deny what Jason Chen had done, but to reframe it. They argued he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer, but a man who lost control. That this was a moment of passion, not premeditation.
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And now it was the state’s turn.
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District Attorney General, Coty Wamp, stood before the jury one final time. You could feel it. This was her last opportunity to cut through the noise, to bring everything back into focus, and she came in sharp, confident, direct, unapologetically fired up.
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She told us the defense hadn’t even stuck to the story they laid out in their opening statement because they couldn’t, because the evidence didn’t support it, and instead of clarity, she said they had tried to muddy the waters.
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DA Wamp wasted no time getting to the point. She argued that the defense’s opening statement was meant to “muddy the waters” and confuse the jury, rather than present any real evidence. Her approach was sharp, confident, and direct.
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“In opening statement, I told you that we would give you the dots, and we would help you connect them. Every single fact we mentioned in opening statement we proved beyond a reasonable doubt, every single fact we committed to we proved to you beyond a reasonable doubt, because that's what opening statements are for, to give you the evidence you're about to see. And then you heard from Mr. Chin's attorney who committed to a very specific story. Remember, we didn't just talk about that story, right? We backed off that story because, oh, that story doesn't work anymore. We're going to talk about that story. This entire trial has been muddy the waters. It has been muddy the waters to confuse the jury. The Opening statement from the defense was meant to confuse you. It was meant to have you thinking about other things, possible, defenses that the state disproved. Not only did you not hear evidence of what they said in their opening statement, the state outright disproved it.”
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Right after that, DA Wamp walked over to the podium, grabbed a thick folder of papers, and gave it a shake. It was the transcript of the opening statements. Hearing the defense’s words read back to us by the state in the final minutes of this trial was powerful. This was our entire job as jurors—to sift through what was true and what was not.
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Refuting the Defense’s Claims
Wamp systematically broke down the defense’s claims from their opening statement.
“Let's talk about what we committed to in opening statement as Jason Chen's attorneys. They met on Tinder, wrong. You have text messages. They met on Bumble, simple thing, but we're just starting with the untruths that the state disproved. They traveled to Chicago together that summer, wrong. End of October, you have text messages that show that he asked her to go to Chicago. You heard that you will see messages where you'll see that one of them likes one of them more than the other. Oh, that Jasmine liked him more than he liked her. Wrong. You never saw proof of it. In fact, you have all the messages that they didn't want to show you. They wanted to put them in evidence, and then just hope that maybe you waste your time reading them. So what did I do? I put them on the screen for you.”
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Wamp’s approach was relentless. She continued to refute claim after claim made by the defense, emphasizing that the state’s evidence had consistently disproven the defense’s theory.
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The Timeline and Adequate Provocation Argument
“The only adequate provocation you ever heard in this trial was an opening statement, which is not evidence.”
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Wamp argued that the defense’s story of provocation wasn’t backed by any credible evidence. She referenced the testimony of various witnesses and experts, including Courtney Paglino Brewer, who helped the state nail down a timeline.
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“Courtney knows it. Courtney looked at her phone at 2:11am after she heard a scream of a woman in, quote, distress. And here's the kicker, they want you to believe this fabricated story that there's no proof of.”
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She then revisited the defense’s claim that Jasmine attacked Jason with a wine glass, asserting that there was no evidence to support that theory.
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Wamp’s Final Argument
DA Wamp closed her argument with a plea to the jury, asking them to remember who this trial was truly about.
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“Victims matter. Jasmine Pace is not just some girl listed in an autopsy report. She is not the photos that you have seen. Don't minimize her to a name on an indictment. She's a person. She had family that loved her. She was a friend, she was a granddaughter. Please don't minimize this trial to the trial for him.”
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She then asked the jury to do their duty by finding Jason Chen guilty of first-degree premeditated murder.
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“I'm going to ask that you take all this information, all the notes you've made this week, all of the closing argument information, you're instructed to go back there and begin with first-degree premeditated murder. Go back there together and find him guilty, please.”
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General Wamp closed her argument by asking us to remember who this trial was really about. And not only will I remember, I will never forget that this was the trial for Jasmine Pace. That's why we were there. Jasmine is why we were there. She's who we were seeking justice for.
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And now the start of that task, the real job of a jury, was just moments away. But before we could begin deliberating, Judge Patterson had one final official duty: selecting the alternates.
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If you remember from the first episode, 16 jurors were selected for this trial. We knew from the beginning that four of us would be chosen as alternates, but until now, we had no idea who. Still, all 16 of us were expected to remain fully present throughout the entire trial.
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The reason for having extra jurors in a case of this magnitude is simple: if someone experienced a personal emergency, was exposed to media coverage, or became unable to continue for any reason, they'd be excused. But that didn't happen. Our group made it all the way through.
So now, with no clear criteria to go by, the selection would be made at random—literally, names drawn from a plastic cup. Can we just pause to take in the weight of that?
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On January 9, 2025, 16 people were plucked from their lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and shipped off to Chattanooga to serve on this grand jury. We didn't really have a choice in the matter. Some of us were excited. All of us were nervous. But every single one of us chose to show up.
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We sat through days of testimony, graphic evidence, legal language, and emotional testimony. And now, four of us would be plucked again—only this time, they'd be silenced. No deliberation, no voice, no opportunity to fulfill what we'd all come here to do.
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A clear plastic cup was handed to the judge. Inside, 16 tiny folded slips of paper. One by one, names were drawn:
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Juror 12
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Juror 5
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Juror 6
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Juror 16
The alternates were thanked for their service and asked to leave the courtroom. Immediately, each of them stood, rose from those blue, squeaky office chairs, and awkwardly shuffled out of the jury box—stunned and confused.
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The extra chair that had to be put in for Juror 16 every time we entered the jury box was left out for good. This time, they were gone. And without skipping a beat, Judge Patterson moved straight into the next portion of the trial, reading through the formalities of our upcoming duties as a jury.
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He explained that we would receive a copy of these instructions once we were in the jury room for deliberations. I tried my best to follow along, but honestly, my mind was scattered. We had just lost a piece of our group, and now the most significant part of our job was moments away.
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For the first time, we would finally be able to talk to one another about this case. As you know, up until now, we had been strictly admonished every single day not to discuss the trial with fellow jurors, not to look up any information, not to form opinions out loud. And now suddenly, that wall was gone.
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We were just minutes away from saying anything we wanted about this case. For the first time.
I'm saving the details of our deliberation and the verdict for the next episode, but I want to close with something special: a journal entry from Juror Number 5, one of the four names drawn as an alternate.
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When I heard her name called from the judge, I muttered to myself, “Oh no,” because it was so clear to me—she was our foreperson. She had that energy, that presence, that ability to lead with clarity and care. I even remember telling her on our way out of the hotel one morning that she looked like a famous author or something. I just loved her style, her perspective, her way of moving through the world.
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She was committed to this case. Oddly enough, just a couple of nights before, she predicted that she'd be one of the alternates. She said it almost casually over dinner. So when Judge Patterson actually read her name, I was shocked, because in so many ways, she felt like the heart of the group.
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It came down to a raffle, more or less—nine days of obsessive note-taking and eyes straining, eyes always dry and tired and red-lined by the time we left. 87 hours in courthouses in total, and the judge pulled just four jury names and numbers out of a black cup.
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Juror Five was called second, despite the fact that I had told my boyfriend before I even left that, best case scenario for me, morally and ethically speaking, would be the alternate route. I felt immediately like an outsider, like I didn't belong.
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I felt uncomfortable having my full name read in the courtroom, and I kept my eyes down as I walked from my chair on the very end of the jury box, passing by the remaining 14 folks who I had felt at the very least on the same team with over the course of the trial.
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At most, I had ideas of being jury foreman after being told that by three other people. First, the CHR coordinator at my work said he thought it was likely when I turned in my notice for jury duty in the first place. Then Juror 11 said she thought I would be while watching me respond to questions during voir dire.
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Finally, jokingly, Juror Four would say something like, "Sounds like Foreman talk," the times I would try to help organize group decisions in the jury room, such as how much time we should take off for the upcoming MLK holiday weekend. We all decided on just one day after everyone put anonymous votes in a cup I had placed by the coffee machine.
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We all wanted to get back sooner to the people and the dogs that we love.
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Now, here it is Monday. It's MLK Day. A president is being inaugurated. California is on fire. It's snowing in Florida, and one of the deputies told us that TikTok was briefly taken offline.
Over breakfast, I asked, "They would tell us if it was the apocalypse out there, right?"
A few hours later, and the same process I used to pull the weekend vote is essentially the same process that was used to pick alternates.
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I'm an alternate, and I'm escorted out of the courtroom with three other alternates down the hall, about five doors away from the real jury room.
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We sit and wait for their deliberation. I try to read as two other alternates play a card game, but my mind races.
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What did I do wrong?
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Did I ask the wrong questions?
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Am I in trouble?