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comcast business. powering possibilities. top of the hour now on cnn newsroom. good to have you. i'm victor black well. >> and i'm bianna golodryga. any minute now the jury will return from lunch and receive instructions from the judge. >> just before the defense was getting ready to begin this morning, a judge dismissed a juror for discussing the case with people outside the jury. >> you have had some discussions with some folks not on the jury, which is going to require me to remove you from the jury. i'm not suggesting that you intentionally did anything wrong, but that in order...

Situation. and i think that's why murdaugh took the stand, to give -- to humanize himself, to give himself a chance to create that reasonable doubt. >> we saw his defense attorney get emotional and nearly moved to tears. is that something that's commonplace that you've seen before? >> not at all. you know, we're under the mason-dixon line so we're in the south too. but that level of emotion and that folksy way both attorneys have taken in this case, it is uncommon to what i am used to. >> so there's one section of the hours of the defense, their closing arguments, there's one section that i wa...

Evidence in this case linking alex murdaugh, no smoking gun, no video, no eyewitnesses per se. there is, though, the defense pointing out again if you have reasonable doubt, you can't just convict somebody of murder because you're suspicious of them. >> diane gallagher, thanks so much. let's hand the last sentence to stephanie rawlings-blake, former defense attorney. let's start with the defense and your assessment of their closing? >> i thought the closing was, as was stated, very emotional, emotionally charging. it was the defense attorney's attempt to human ease murdaugh. it was his attempt...

Evidence. in your experience do juries prioritize those types of mistakes, or is it more about the narratives? >> they weigh all of the things. but when you have a big case like this and you have the defendant actually get on the stand, i think that will be weighed a lot more than the missteps that were made in this case. again, we know that there's no real physical evidence. this is all -- for the most part cir circumstantial. so murdaugh took the chance to tell his story and let that fill the gaps. >> stephanie rawlings-blake, thank you. the fbi has thwarted an alleged plot to kill jewish ...