But she still occasionally woke from dreams in which she could hear Matthews ordering her to kneel.
She had begun therapy several months earlier.
Her therapist had helped her understand that knowing the legal and factual context of an assault did not prevent the body from remembering fear.
Some days, she felt strong.
Other days, the sound of a police radio in a grocery store made her heart race.
Healing was not a straight line.
It did not arrive automatically with federal indictments.
It required time.
And it required allowing herself to be a person rather than a symbol.
When she entered the courtroom, she saw Matthews seated beside his attorneys.
He looked older.
His face was pale.
His shoulders were slightly hunched.
For a moment, she remembered him standing over her in the park, enormous and certain.
Now he looked like an ordinary man waiting for a decision.
That did not make what he had done smaller.
It made something else clear.
Authority had allowed him to cause extraordinary harm.
But authority had never made him extraordinary.
The prosecution presented the park videos in sequence.
First, the wide recording.
Then the footage from a woman near the fountain.
Finally, Ethan Brooks's video.
The courtroom watched as Matthews approached Simone.
His commands were audible.
Her questions were audible.
The moment she lowered herself to her knees was unmistakable.
Then came the slap.
Several spectators flinched.
Simone looked straight ahead.
She had prepared herself to hear it again.
The prosecutor paused the video.
"At this point, was Ms. Carter handcuffed?"
A forensic video specialist answered.
"Yes."
"Was she making any threatening movement?"
"No such movement is visible in the footage."
The specialist carefully explained the limits of the recordings.
He did not claim to know every thought or intention.
He described the visible actions.
Then the prosecution played the footage of Matthews near the gym bag.
The jurors leaned forward.
The image was enlarged.
The movement of the officer's hand became clear.
A packet appeared.
It moved toward the bag.
Moments later, Matthews announced that he had found suspected contraband.
The courtroom was silent.
The defense challenged the interpretation.
It argued that the footage did not show the full contents of the officer's hand before he approached the bag.
It questioned whether the packet could have been evidence collected earlier.
Those were questions the jury had to consider.
But prosecutors presented additional evidence.
Records showed no documented earlier discovery of the packet.
The officer's account changed between the arrest report and later interviews.
The chain-of-custody documentation contained inconsistencies.
And independent testing did not support the claimed handling history.