with him?”

“He beat me, Mr. Gilmer.”

“Yes, but you were convicted, weren’t you?”

...

“Robinson, you’re pretty good at busting up chiffarobes and kindling with one hand, aren’t you?”

“Yes, suh, I reckon so.”

“Strong enough to choke the breath out of a woman and sling her to the floor?”

“I never done that, suh.”

“But you are strong enough to?” (Chapter 19)

By bringing up Tom’s past incarceration and getting him to admit his strength, Mr. Gilmer is attempting to make it logical for the jury to believe that the defendant is capable of the crime he is accused of. But Mr. Gilmer’s words indicate more than the points in his legal argument. His choice of words speaks to the other way in which Jem might have meant “the usual”—specifically, the usual way society thought of and treated African-Americans.

Mr. Gilmer begins his cross examination by addressing Tom as “Robinson,” not “Mr. Robinson.” Sheriff Tate was addressed as “Mr. Tate,” and even Bob Ewell, a social outcast (but a white one) was shown the same courtesy. However, as an African American, Tom is addressed as an inferior.

The racism is even more blatant when Mr. Gilmer asks how badly Tom had hurt his opponent in the fight.

“What did the nigger look like when you got through with him?”

Even in a court of law where the rules of etiquette are strict, a racial slur is accepted as commonplace.

Next, after portraying Tom to be violent, Mr. Gilmer plays into another facet of the racial stereotype.

“Had your eye on her a long time, hadn’t you, boy?”

“No suh, I never looked at her.”

“Then you were mighty polite to do all that chopping and hauling for her, weren’t you, boy?”

Mr. Gilmer insinuates that Tom’s motivation for helping Mayella was a forbidden attraction. This suggestion speaks to the prejudice common at the time, the one Atticus mentions in his closing argument when he refers to

... the evil assumption—that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber.

After painting Tom as a violent sexual predator and obviously capable of rape, Mr. Gilmer pounds the final nail into Tom’s coffin when Tom gives an honest, but unfortunate answer.

Mr. Gilmer smiled grimly at the jury. “You’re a mighty good fellow, it seems— did all this for not one penny?”

“Yes, suh. I felt right sorry for her, she seemed to try more’n the rest of ‘em—”

“You felt sorry for her, you felt sorry for he?” Mr. Gilmer seemed ready to rise to the ceiling ... Mr. Gilmer paused a long time to let it sink in.

Tom admits to pitying Mayella Ewell and claims that this feeling was his motivation for helping her. While this may seem to establish Tom as a “nice guy,” at the time, a black man feeling sorry for a white woman was considered wrong. You only pity someone you see as less fortunate than you, and white society in the 1930s would never tolerate an African-American man feeling that he was in a better position than any white person. That is why Mr. Gilmer pauses. He wants to let the idea linger in the courtroom so the white jurors would take offense to Tom’s presumption.

So it would seem that Jem’s description of content of Mr. Gilmer’s closing argument as “the usual” means both the expected arguments of a prosecutor and the conventional prejudices of white society at the time.

During the trial, Mr. Gilmer certainly proved himself as a less skillful lawyer than Atticus from an objective standpoint. However, in terms of the case and the sensibilities of the jury, his condescending tone and inherent bias against Tom made him far more effective. Mr. Gilmer builds his entire case around making Mayella and the Ewells seem like unfortunate victims and making Tom seem as though he was simply acting on his nature. He frequently refers to Tom as "Boy" and addresses him with a derogatory tone, no doubt appealing the sense of racial superiority he shares with the jury.

From this, we can infer that Mr. Gilmer's closing argument would have been much of the same, simply reiterating all that he had attempted to prove before. He would likely reiterate Tom's history with crime and violence, no matter how minor it was. He would also try to leave an impression of Mayella as a victim who would never recover from her shocking ordeal to ensure the harshest possible sentence for Tom. In short, Gilmer would have had to do little other than reinforce the status quo. He would have likely underplayed the importance of the trial, implying that the verdict should be so obvious that his job should be unnecessary.