Linda Fairstein: Death Dance

I had gotten up early to do my homework. "It's a central nervous system depressant."

"So is alcohol, your honor," Ingels said.

"That's the point, if I may continue. My victims were sipping bourbon, which is in itself a central nervous system depressant. Sen-gor slipped-"

" Doctor Sengor, Ms. Cooper."

"I don't care if he's a doctor or an Indian chief, he's charged with several counts of the most serious felony on the books short of murder," I said.

"Prematurely."…

"May I be heard, your honor?"

"Sure," Moffett said, flapping the wing of his black robe at Eric Ingels. "Let her do her thing. I know Alexandra. Once she puts her hand on her hip like that and loses that Colgate smile she marched in here with, she's not happy till I hear her out."

"The instructions for the pills that we believe were used last night caution that because they're for extended release, they are explicitly not to be crushed or chewed. That's why the defendant took a vial full of Xanax-"

"How many pills are you claiming he used?"

"I don't know, your honor. The container was empty, and it holds twelve capsules when completely full. The lab will be able to give me an estimate of the quantity after they've examined the blood and urine samples of both women."

"Go on."

"The combination of the two powerful depressants causes immediate sedation, possible unconsciousness, often leads to respiratory cessation, which-"

"What's that?" Moffett asked.

"Death, judge. An overdose like this mixed with a combination of alcoholic beverages could actually have killed these women."

"Your honor, you can't expect me to stand here and let Ms. Cooper go overboard with her imagination, can you? Nobody's dead."

Moffett was digging back forty years, trying to remember how to cross-examine a witness. He seemed more interested in the consummation of the sexual acts than in the involuntary drugging. "These girls, they don't remember the sex?"

"There's an amnesiac effect from this type of sedative. Even if they had been conscious for any portion of the encounter, they wouldn't be able to remember it. I'm going to submit the literature packaged with the drug as part of the court record."

"Yeah, Alexandra. How's a guy supposed to know they'd pass out?" Moffett held the handkerchief over his nose and honked into it before stuffing it back in his pocket and picking up his red pen.

"Judge, Sengor is a resident in psychiatry. His area of specialty is pharmacology. He knows the property of sedatives and that's exactly why Xanax was his drug of choice."

Moffett looked over at the defense table and shook his head. "I wouldn't expect a medical doctor to have to-"

"Cardinal rule of drug-facilitated rape, your honor. Expect the unexpected. It's for guys who might never resort to force to act oat their twisted fantasies. They let the drugs subdue the victims for them."

I went on, hoping that Moffett would stop doodling on his legal pad and listen to me. "There are four parts of this puzzle, and Sengor had every one of them in place to accomplish his goal."

The judge looked at the defendant and held up a finger for each piece of the modus operandi as I ticked them off for him.

"He's a physician, with the knowledge of the properties of a CNS depressant and its effect when combined with alcohol. Couple that with the ability to write prescriptions for sedatives, and that gives him the means to commit the crimes-his weapon of choice. Next he needs the setting in which he controls the environment. What better than his own home? Third, he had to have the opportunity, which usually requires gaining the trust of his victims, and he'd had the first three nights of their visit to do that. Finally, Sengor had to have a plan to avoid arrest. The victims generally sleep off the effects of the drugs, and here, they would have gotten on a bus to go home to Canada, no wiser for the occurrence of the crime."

Eric Ingels was on his feet. "C'mon, judge. There was no 'plan' to do this. These women wound up in a hospital, right down the street from Dr. Sengor's home. What kind of lamebrain scheme to escape detection is that? Only a complete idiot or a man who'd never had intercourse could think that a woman might wake up and not realize she'd been… been… well, been-"

Moffett laughed out loud in agreement with Ingels. Even Sengor was smiling, perhaps sensing an ally in judicial robes. "Yeah. Been had. That's what you mean, isn't it? What do you say to that, Alex?"

"I'd say this is all completely inappropriate for a bail application, your honor. Do I need expert testimony here, to explain to both of you that one of the advantages of sedating someone with a muscle relaxant is that it makes it possible to consummate a sexual act without the victim's awareness? And many of these cases occur without transmission of seminal fluid?"

Moffett looked down at the papers and then glanced at Eric Ingels, probably hoping my adversary would interrupt me.

I went on. "The crime of rape is accomplished, as I'm sure your honor recalls, by penetration of the victim, however slight. There's no legal requirement that he ejaculate in each of these women."

Moffett knew he was out of his element. The colloquy was too graphic for his old-fashioned courtroom style. "Save that talk, Alexandra. Eric says the hospital these girls went to is near his home. You heard him. What kind of scheme is that?"

"A pretty foolproof one, if my victims had used the bus tickets they told Sengor they had for yesterday afternoon. Do you know how many victims of drug-facilitated rape ever get to a hospital in time to be tested?" I asked. "Less than ten percent. It's almost impossible to prove these crimes because some of the drugs work their way out of the system so quickly that by the time the victims sleep off the effects of the sedatives and feel well enough to get themselves medical attention, nobody even knows what toxicological tests to perform."

"What you're telling me, missy, is that this healthy male specimen," Moffett said, an elbow resting on the ridge of the bench in front of him, his forefinger wagging at Selim Sengor, "would rather make love to somebody who doesn't even know what the heck is going on. Now why would anyone want to do that?"

"It's deviant behavior, your honor. Obviously." Don't try to compare it to your own sexual experience, I was tempted to tell him. Don't try for a minute to think outside the box. He looked even more puzzled as he licked the tip of his finger and used it to smooth down the wisps of hair that were flipping up behind his ears. "We'll have experts to explain the psychology of it at trial. I'm just dealing with the strength of my case for the purpose of this arraignment."

Moffett's ruling about whether or not to detain Sengor would be grounded on two major points: the likelihood that he would return to stand trial rather than be a risk to flee the jurisdiction, and the probability of my obtaining a conviction when the case went to a jury many months down the road.

"So, let me understand this, hon. You got two women who were shacking up at Dr. Selim's place, drinking liquor with him, who wake up with a hangover and miss their bus ride home. You maybe have some seminal fluid-"

"And both women tell me they hadn't had intercourse in more than a month."

"The only thing you haven't got is any evidence that the drugs were even in their cocktails, no less slipped there by the doctor," Moffett said.

Eric Ingels had very little left to do, with Moffett so obviously in his corner. A physician didn't fit the stereotypical profile of a rapist, and a man whose arousal came from sedating women for the purpose of subjecting them to sexual assault was an even bigger stretch for this jurist's small mind.

"It seems to me, judge," Ingels said, "that until Ms. Cooper gets her lab results, you have absolutely no reason at all to detain my client. He's got strong roots in this community. It's where he lives, it's where he works. He's got no history of criminal conduct-a perfectly clean record."