Robert Tanenbaum - Fury

After an hour-long, meandering opening, Louis wrapped it up by pleading with the jury "to find for my clients…to the tune of $250 million dollars…yes, a lot of money but what price tag would you put on freedom? What price would you attach for being scooped off the street like so much dog feces as a teenager and then spending the best years of your life rotting away in a prison cell? What price would that be worth? You need to send a statement, a strong statement, to the government that this sort of injustice will no longer be tolerated. Thank you for listening."

With that Hugh Louis sank into his chair like an electric toy running out of juice. Sykes reached over and patted him on the shoulder, and, loud enough for the jury and audience to hear, said, "Thanks, Hugh, thank you for telling the truth."

"Mr. Karp," Judge Klinger said. "Are you ready to proceed?"

Karp glanced up from his notes and nodded. He rose from his seat, wincing a little as he placed weight on his bum knee. He walked calmly to the podium, where he put his notes, and then looked at the audience.

"An interesting opening statement by Mr. Louis," he said. "In fact, if I didn't know anything about this case and was listening, I might be inclined to believe him."

At their seats, the plaintiffs nodded and smiled. "That's right," Sykes said. "The truth shall set you free."

"Except," Karp said, "it was a pack of lies and utter nonsense."

Louis erupted from his seat, spilling the cup of water he'd just poured. "Objection, your honor! Argumentative and…um…unprofessional."

Klinger was glaring. "Mr. Karp, you've been at this a long time, and you know as well as I do that was inappropriate."

"Since when is the truth inappropriate, your honor," Karp replied.

Klinger's face colored angrily. "You've been warned, counselor."

Karp looked back down at his notes as Klinger instructed the jurors to "ignore that last statement by the defendants' attorney." He smiled back at the jury-secretly pleased that he'd planted the seed. Now it was time to move on.

Calmly and matter-of-factly, he ran through the events of the night before Tyler was attacked. The assaults on Coney Island. The attack that nearly killed the elderly Korean man "by Jayshon Sykes, who had a piece of steel rebar in his hand and cracked an elderly man's skull like it was an egg. And before you hear Mr. Louis tell you again about this fight that ended badly, the ninety-three-year-old victim was five foot four and weighed 120 pounds, Jayshon Sykes was six foot three and close to two hundred. I don't think he was afraid."

Louis jumped to his feet. "I object, your honor, this is not a criminal trial with my clients facing charges. They have been exonerated. This is a civil trial to determine whether the conduct of the agents of the City of New York, that is, the police, rose to the level of malfeasance that would entitle my clients to remuneration."

Karp paused and waited for Klinger to sustain Louis's objection. When she did, he continued. "Well, Mr. Louis is correct-this, unfortunately, is not a criminal trial. But I will demonstrate to you, the jury, that the convictions of these men were valid and therefore, the assistant district attorneys and the police officers who worked on this case did their jobs correctly, ethically, and well. That other jury wasn't mistaken-they knew that there was a missing defendant whose semen had been found on the clothing of Ms. Tyler-but they also knew the truth. Those four men"-he pointed at the plaintiffs' table-"raped and nearly murdered Liz Tyler in a way so heinous, so depraved, that it defies any hint of human compassion."

Karp walked out from behind the podium with his hands in his pockets as he strolled over by the jury. "But I will do more than prove the first jury was right. I will show you how ludicrous the plaintiffs' case is. Heck, they haven't even thought through how the cops could have conspired to frame the plaintiffs when they, the cops, didn't even know if Liz Tyler, who was in a coma, would wake up. And if she did wake up, would say, 'Hey, you got the wrong guys.' So are the cops going to frame people knowing the victim might very well come out of her coma and expose them as frame artists? Further, I will demonstrate to you-through videotapes and witnesses-that these four…what did Mr. Louis say, 'innocent young men'…didn't behave like browbeaten, frightened teenagers. Far from it, they actually bragged in front of numerous witnesses about what they did."

Karp turned around, meaning to gather his thoughts, but caught Liz Tyler looking at him. Tears trickled down her cheeks, but she had a slight smile on her face. He smiled back.

"If this was just about money, and there was any chance that they'd been wronged by the system, I'd say give it to them," Karp said. "But there are a few problems with that. First, they weren't wronged. Second, it goes much deeper. If you let them get away with this, it could destabilize the entire justice system that Mr. Louis professes to champion. Never again will a jury believe a police officer when he takes the stand. Nor will a jury accept as trustworthy a confession offered into evidence. All the good detective work will just be thrown out the window.

"And third…" He paused and glanced sideways at Tyler again. "This is about justice. Not for four bloodthirsty, depraved thugs. It's about an injustice they did to a young mother and wife. She was the one who had her youth and everything she loved stolen from her. She is the one owed a debt that can never be repaid."

After opening statements, the plaintiffs' case had taken only the remainder of the day for Louis to present, which demonstrated to Karp that his strategy had worked. It was obvious that Louis had expected to settle and was unprepared for the trial.

Largely his efforts consisted of calling his clients to the stand to talk about their disadvantaged childhoods and how they had been intimidated and threatened into confessing to the rape and attempted murder of Liz Tyler.

Cross-examining each of the first three plaintiffs-Davis, Jones, and Wilson-Karp was satisfied merely to establish that none of them had been questioned without the presence of an adult family member. "And at what point were you intimidated or threatened or coerced?" he asked. None seemed to have a better answer than "the cops scared me."

Otherwise, they sullenly denied making comments in front of the police or to other witnesses that indicated their guilt. He let it be for the time being; he'd return during the defense part of the trial with his witnesses and the videotapes of the confessions.

When Louis called Sykes to the stand, the young man nearly bounced out of his seat as though eager to tell his story. Sitting back down in the witness box, he smiled broadly at the jurors. However, he allowed his demeanor to crumble almost to tears as he described, at Louis's request, the years he'd spent in prison. "They…they do horrible things to you," he said, his voice cracking. "I'm sorry, I can't talk about it."

Louis then asked about the night twelve years earlier on the Coney Island boardwalk. "Mr. Karp in his opening statement described your behavior as 'wilding.' Would that be accurate?"

"No. I'm afraid the police came up with that term, which would be an exaggeration," he said. "It was mostly just pushing and shoving people-admittedly not very nice-but we were just a bunch of poor kids and were trying to get people to give us a little change so we could eat a hot dog. But the Korean man grabbed my arm…he had his hand in his coat pocket and I thought maybe he had a gun. I was scared and hit him just to get him to let me go." Sykes paused and shook his head sadly. "I guess I hit him harder than I intended."

"And you were convicted of that crime," Louis said, "am I correct?"