Robert Tanenbaum - Falsely Accused

Karp allowed himself a moment to soak in the atmosphere of the federal courtroom, so different from the rotting premises of the county courthouse, where he had spent nearly all of his professional career. Here all the woodwork was beautifully tended oak, unimproved by etched graffiti; the murals told their allegories of justice triumphant unmarred by peeling paint and mildew stains. Even the judge, the Honorable Joseph C. Craig, seemed to draw from the august surroundings a dignity greater than that of his confreres of the lower bench, reflecting the acknowledged fact that decisions about serious money were inherently grander than deciding whether Joe had stabbed Phil forty times over a ten-dollar bet.

Of course, Craig would’ve been dignified anywhere, Karp thought as he studied the judge, a thin, small man in his middle sixties. He had a large head carried on a slender neck, and a long, thin nose that looked red and damp at the tip. With his sharp, bright blue eyes peering out of their nest of wrinkles, he seemed like nothing so much as a heron, a heron staring down at a pool full of frogs before deciding which one to have for lunch.

This was the first day of jury selection and would probably be the last. Federal jury selection was an expeditious process compared to that in the state courts, and Karp was happy that it was. The judge asked the basic questions that might disqualify jurors for cause, and the lawyers’ questions had to be submitted in advance. Karp was not himself a voir dire maven, although he knew that many lawyers believed it to be among the most critical aspects of a trial. Many lawyers said they could pick a plaintiff’s jury or a defendant’s jury; some lawyers didn’t try cases at all but merely advised others on how to select. In contrast, Karp’s belief was that once you had disposed of frank prejudice or special interest, all juries were more or less the same. His only selection rule, which he had learned at the feet of the old bulls of the long-lost Homicide Bureau, was “no singletons on a felony jury.” You shouldn’t, if you wanted a conviction, have one black, or one woman, or one of any identifiable caste, because the odd man out was more than likely to feel isolated and threatened and therefore to vote against a convicting jury, hanging it. This rule did not, of course, apply in a civil case.

And you could outsmart yourself with a too-clever selection strategy. Gottkind, for example, was now asking Mr. Delaney whether he felt that physicians were more credible than other people. A stupid question. What sort of answer did he expect, “Yeah, sure”? Delaney, if selected, would perhaps start the trial in the belief that the defense counsel thought him a jerk. Karp left one ear open and studied the next information sheet. They needed two more jurors to make up the six-person panel, plus two alternates, and Karp expected that this group of twelve veniremen or the next would suffice.

Gottkind finished with Delaney, and Karp rose again, to smile at, and briefly question, the next prospective juror. Her name was Sonia Delgado, a restaurant manager, who had also never gone to the bar of justice for any reason, but was clearly a person of Hispanic ancestry. It was obvious by now that Gottkind thought that a largely Hispanic panel would be favorable to at least one of his clients, Angelo Fuerza, at that time the highest-ranking Hispanic on the City’s payroll. Karp briefly wondered whether he should use one of his peremptories on Mrs. Delgado, and decided not to. For all he knew, Fuerza might be the spitting image of her despised first husband.

When the questioning of the current lot was complete, both Delaney and Delgado made it on to the panel, and that was it for the panel itself. It was now the second day of May. The suit had been filed the previous August. Judge Craig had studied all the motions submitted, the opposing interpretations of state statute and the precedents of constitutional law, and judged that the case had merit under law. He declined to dismiss; he had ordered the facts to be tried; and here they all were, only two hundred and seventy days later. Blinding speed.

As Judge Craig prepared to address the lucky winners, Karp turned to his client and said, “Murray, I heard something pretty disturbing the other night. Are you aware that there’s a corruption investigation going on out of the D.A.’s squad that involves the medical examiner’s office?”

Karp watched the other man’s face carefully as his words registered. He thought he saw puzzlement and dismay only; there was no telltale flush of uncovered guilt.

Selig said, “What investigation? What’re they investigating?”

“Some Latino kids, early part of last year, up at the Two-Five, died in custody. You guys did the autopsies and passed them as suicides, two of them, and the third as natural causes.”

Selig’s brows remained corrugated. “Yeah, I recall the incidents. I didn’t do them myself, but they were done under my supervision by competent people. The hangings were genuine. The marks made by a suicide hanging are completely different from those made by strangulation or garotting with a cord. It’s Autopsy 101-a no-brainer. Who told you we were being investigated?”

“Marlene, actually. She got it from a reporter friend of hers who’s looking into the deaths.”

Selig shook his head vigorously. “I’ve never heard anything about it,” he said, and then, seeing the doubtful look on Karp’s face, added with more heat, “I swear it, Butch! I never heard anything about any investigation-in general or in regard to those autopsies.”

Karp nodded and swallowed hard. He did not think Selig was lying, although that did not, unfortunately, mean there was no investigation. Selig, he had discovered in the past nine months, was a thoroughly decent man, but one whose reserves of observation and focus were entirely consumed by the narrow demands of his profession. At his work, literally nothing escaped his attention. Away from the steel tables, nearly everything did. It was actually possible for Selig to have missed being investigated.

Karp patted Selig on the shoulder and said, “It’s okay, Murray. I believe you. But something may be up and I need to check it out. I’ll let you know what I find.”

The new prospectives were seated. Karp turned his attention to the information sheets once again.

A short walk and a world of class away from the Federal Courthouse, Marlene sat in the chair provided for witnesses in Grand Jury Room B, in the New York County Courthouse, and told an assistant D.A. and the twenty-three members of the grand jury what Rob Pruitt had done to her. Pictures were exhibited of her damaged face. After she was done, Harry Bello got up and told his fable. There was no cross-examination, since grand juries have neither defense lawyers nor judges. They belong to the district attorney and represent the limpest possible trip wire against arbitrary prosecutions. Almost always, when the D.A. so requests, they bring in a true bill of indictment, and they did in this case, in less than five minutes.

Marlene lingered to share some thoughts with Ira Raskoff, the kid A.D.A. in charge of the case. Although most of the people who man the trenches in the D.A. last as long in the memory of the office as faces seen from a departing subway train, there were exceptions, and Marlene was one of them. As was Butch Karp. Marlene traded shamelessly on her notoriety and her husband’s still bright and fearsome rep to fix in young Raskoff’s mind that this particular case was not your ordinary bullshit barroom assault charge, of which he cranked through dozens each week, but special, and that its outcome would be observed. This particular defendant was going to do hard time, at least three years, which result would redound to Raskoff’s favor with the grandees of the Felony Trial Bureau, while failure to obtain it would have dire consequences. Raskoff got the point and promised to keep Marlene informed.