Robert Tanenbaum - Justice Denied

“The witness states that the amount of blood was too little for those tests.”

“Yes, but I’ve located articles in the Journal of Forensic Medicine -”

“Mr. Freeland, the witness has stated that those tests are not accepted by his profession.”

“Yes, Your Honor, but-”

“Mr. Freeland, do you know what an expert witness is?”

Freeland flushed, coughed, and said, “Of course, Judge.”

“I don’t think you do. An expert witness is assumed credible when speaking within the confines of his expertise. You have spent half an hour questioning him about the validity of tests that he says are garbage, despite repeated objections by the People, which I have sustained. If you wish to challenge the expertise of the People’s witness, the appropriate measure is to call an expert of your own. Do you plan to do so?”

“Uh, no, Your Honor, not at this time. But, Your Honor-”

“Be quiet, sir! Let me ask you, have you ever tried a homicide case before?”

Freeland’s face was brick now. “Uh, no, sir, this is my first.”

“It’ll be your last in my court if you don’t stop wasting my time. Unreasonable delay and contentiousness for its own sake are not acceptable strategies in this court.” Martino paused for a beat. “And I want to say that if you can’t cut it, I will have you replaced as counsel by reason of incompetence.”

Points for the judge, thought Karp, moving back to his seat. The threat of removal for incompetence would be particularly telling when counsel was the new head of the local Legal Aid Society office. He looked over at the defense table. Freeland was thumbing through notes and making marks. His color was back to normal, and he seemed relaxed for someone who had just had his shorts fried by a judge.

Marlene let the phone ring. It was lunchtime, and she was feeding the baby mashed bananas. But when the message machine clicked on and she heard the voice, she abandoned Lucy in her high chair and raced to the phone.

“Ms. Ciampi? I’m so sorry to disturb you at home, but I thought it was important.”

“No problem,” said Marlene. “What’s up, Mr. Sokoloff?”

“A gentleman called on me today. He presented himself as an associate of Mr. Ersoy’s, with similar contacts. He said his name was Nassif.”

“What did he want?”

“He had some things to sell. A very nice figured reliquary in silver-Armenian, fourteenth century. And some Byzantine coins ranging from the ninth to the fourteenth century. The reliquary is real, I believe, but the coins are not.”

“What did you do?”

“I, ah, said I had to consult with some potential customers. I invited him to call on me tomorrow.”

“Very good, Mr. Sokoloff, that’s very helpful. Look, I need to talk to some people and then Ill get back to you.”

Clever man, thought Marlene after he had bid her good-bye. Just the right move to dispatch any lingering doubts about the complicity of Sokoloff Galleries in a set of art frauds that may or may not have led to a murder.

Marlene got on the phone then and spoke with V.T. and then with Rodriguez, the art fraud cop, setting up a sting. Then she called Sokoloff back and told him what he had to do.

Lucy during this period had managed to cover herself and every object within range of her flinging power with a thin slime of sticky banana. Marlene laughed, hugged the child to her, stripped both Lucy and herself, and plunged the two of them into the bathtub.

In the afternoon, Karp presented his last official witness, Tony Chelham, the jail officer for whom Russell had identified his blue shirt. This was critical because all the witnesses who had seen Hosie Russell fleeing the murder scene and entering 58 Barrow Street had seen a man in such a shirt: the Digbys from Lexington, the actor Jerry Shelton, and James Turnbull, the leather shop owner. Karp brought those forward during the remainder of the afternoon. They all did well, both on direct and on cross. Freeland’s only option, since they had all obviously seen someone, was to suggest that whomever they had seen, it was not the defendant.

He implied that, to the Digbys, all black people looked alike. He implied that Shelton, a homosexual actor living in Greenwich Village, was probably besotted with drugs as a matter of course-he actually asked whether Shelton had been smoking marijuana on the afternoon in question. He implied that Turnbull, who had spontaneously identified Russell in the police station and had attacked him as the murderer, had been put up to it by the police, which implication Turnbull, a man of immense dignity and presence, passionately rejected.

It was not a particularly good cross, thought Karp. Freeland appeared to be drifting; a lot of his questions didn’t lead anywhere in particular, as if he was just going through the motions. It didn’t help him that the witnesses were all solid citizens. Attacking such witnesses tended to piss off the jury, composed of the similarly solid.

After Turnbull stepped down, Karp said, “Your Honor, that is the People’s case.”

Martino excused the jury, Freeland made the expected motion to dismiss, which was rejected, and Karp was through for the day, at least with trials. He went back to his office and caught up on paperwork until seven, ordered take-out Chinese, ate it, and clumped off to the jail to take a shower.

He tried not to think about the trial. There is a certain letdown after the presentation of a major case, and it was entirely possible to drive oneself into a frenzy of doubt about the various errors that could have been made, and which might even now be bubbling in the minds of the jurors, cooking away at an acquittal.

The case had weaknesses, of course: no witness had turned up from the crowd who had actually followed Russell from the murder scene to 58 Barrow, although the police had seen dozens of people doing so. The guy on the bike-who had told Thornby that a man was hiding in that building-was a particularly unfortunate no-show, and the cops, urged on by Karp, had tried strenuously to locate him.

And, of course, Freeland still had his turn at bat. Karp had no idea what the defense was going to present; Freeland had flatly refused to tell Karp who his witnesses, if any, were going to be. There was no point in speculating.

Karp turned off the water and reached for his towel. He found himself, surprisingly, wanting the trial to be over. The whole thing irritated him: the stupidity of the crime, the arrogance and fatuousness of Freeland, the enforced isolation, the goddamned cast; he even regretted getting to know Russell in these after-hours meetings.

Here he was, mopping, as Karp emerged. Karp nodded curtly and began to get dressed.

“You got any smokes?”

“Sorry, I forgot,” said Karp. He sensed Russell staring at him, but he did not acknowledge it, or make any effort to start a conversation.

“Hey, man,” said Russell after some moments, “I heard some things.”

“Uh-huh, like what?”

“You know, stuff. Around the jail. Like you might wanna know about.” Russell had his pathetic sly expression on.

“Uh-huh. So, you going to tell me?”

“I could. Depends on what I get.”

Karp pulled his sweats on. Water had dripped down inside his cast and was itching. He said, “I got nothing to give you, Hosie.”

“You sure about that? This, what I got, it’s a big case.”

Karp got his crutches under his arms and stood. He looked Russell in the eye. “Well, here’s the thing, Hosie. First of all, like I said a while back, there’s no way I’m going to discuss your case in any way whatever without your attorney present. If you have something you want to deal for, he’s the guy to see.

“Second, right now I’d say that if you gave me the guy who did JFK, you’d still be looking at twenty-five to life. The time to deal is past. You decided to go for the trial, and you got the trial. They find you not guilty, you walk; you’re guilty, it’s the max. That’s how it works.