Bronx Justice Read online

  JAYWALKER: Did he do it with his bare hand?

  CERAMI: Yes.

  JAYWALKER: He wasn't wearing gloves?

  They'd found a smudged partial fingerprint of inde terminate age on one of the bulbs, too fragmentary to be classified and used to search databases for a match. But it hadn't been Darren's.

  CERAMI: No.

  JAYWALKER: Or using a handkerchief?

  CERAMI: No.

  JAYWALKER: Do you remember which hand he used?

  CERAMI: I think it was his right.

  Jaywalker took a deep breath before deciding to go for broke.

  JAYWALKER: In other words, he switched the knife from his right hand to his left hand—

  CERAMI: Right.

  JAYWALKER: —and unscrewed the lightbulb. Is that correct?

  CERAMI: Yes.

  Jaywalker let the breath out. Eleanor Cerami had just described the act of an unmistakably right-handed person. Darren Kingston was left-handed.

  He had her concede that, with the bulb unscrewed, the stairwell had become darker than it had been before. He brought out that she'd been terribly frightened and very nervous. He asked her to repeat as many of the man's actual words as she could remember. He had her state, as she had at the Wade hearing, that the man's speech, other than being polite and soft-spoken, was in no way unusual. Jaywalker would have liked to take it one step further. He would have liked to come right out and ask Mrs. Cerami if she remembered the man ever stuttering. But he figured Rendell had asked her, and Pope had probably asked her half a dozen times. Jaywalker's asking her might finally wake her up to the fact that his client must be a stutterer. All she would have to do would be to say, "Oh, yeah, now that you mention it, I think he did stutter." At that point, Jaywalker might as well walk over to the window, open it, wave goodbye and jump. Though six floors up might not be high enough.

  So he moved on to the physical description Mrs. Cerami had given of her attacker. Jaywalker was armed with the police reports, so he knew pretty much what her answers would be and could focus on those items that contrasted with Darren Kingston's appearance. He brought out that she'd described a man twenty-five to thirty years old, weighing 180 pounds and sporting a short Afro. Darren was twenty-two, weighed less than 160, and had mediumlength hair.

  JAYWALKER: Do you recall describing the man as having red eyes?

  CERAMI: Yes, sort of, like maroon.

  JAYWALKER: Well, do you recall giving that de scription?

  CERAMI: Yes.

  JAYWALKER: By that, did you mean his natural eye color?

  CERAMI: Yes, that's what I meant.

  JAYWALKER: You didn't mean that his eyes were bloodshot.

  CERAMI: No.

  Although some African-Americans do indeed have red dish or maroon irises, Darren didn't. His eyes were brown.

  Next Jaywalker had Mrs. Cerami describe in greater detail the shirt the man had been wearing, a tight-fitting, short-sleeved beige V-neck. Both Darren and his family had insisted that Darren owned no such shirt and never had. Jaywalker got Mrs. Cerami to specify that her rapist's sneakers had been low-cuts. Darren's were high-cuts. And in spite of the fact that Darren had a chipped front tooth and a noticeable scar through one eyebrow, Mrs. Cerami could recall no scars, deformities or other distinguishing marks on the man.

  That brought Jaywalker to the task of trying to estab lish that it had been September, not August, when Mrs. Cerami claimed she'd seen her attacker again, walking through the lobby of her building. He wanted to show that Darren had already been arrested and released on bail by that time, and would have been unlikely to go anywhere near Castle Hill. But the more Jaywalker questioned her, the more she stuck to her story, that it had been in August, only a week after the rape. It made no sense. She'd phoned Detective Rendell the Monday after Darren had been arrested. Rendell, afraid they had the wrong man, had contacted Pope, who'd checked and found out that Darren had made bail. Several days later, Pope had warned Jay walker to have Darren keep away from his witnesses.

  Then, in the midst of Jaywalker's questions, Mrs. Cerami suddenly offered an explanation for the confu sion.

  CERAMI: I think I've seen him twice since.

  JAYWALKER: Twice, in addition to August six teenth?

  CERAMI: That's right.

  JAYWALKER: Okay. Do you know when that third time was?

  CERAMI: I think it was right after the arraignment or something. I can't remember very well.

  JAYWALKER: Where did you see the man then?

  CERAMI: In the lobby of my building again.

  JAYWALKER: Same place you'd seen him the second time?

  CERAMI: Right.

  What had happened, Jaywalker was pretty sure, was that the witness had finally realized her error. No doubt she and Pope had gone over the date of the second sighting during trial preparation, and her transposing it from September back into August had been nothing but an honest mistake. But now that she'd said what she'd said, under oath, she was afraid to change it. Never mind that an honest admission would have cost her nothing in the eyes of the jurors, and would have neither helped nor hindered the prosecution or the defense. So she'd decided to invent an additional sighting a week after the rape, leaving the details of it—which were really the details of the so-called third sighting—intact, because she'd already described them that way.

  Well, thought Jaywalker, so be it. He was less concerned with showing that Mrs. Cerami had lied than he was with nailing down the details of the September sighting, the one that had actually occurred. So he concentrated on that one.

  JAYWALKER: No question that it was the same man?

  CERAMI: It was.

  JAYWALKER: Do you know what day of the week that was? Was that also a Monday?

  CERAMI: I think so.

  JAYWALKER: Isn't it a fact, that on what you say was the third time, which would have been the sec ond time you saw the man after the incident, that you called Detective Rendell? And you learned that he was off that day. Someone else took a message, and Rendell called you back.

  CERAMI: Yes.

  JAYWALKER: And that was on Monday, Septem ber seventeenth.

  CERAMI: I don't know the date.

  JAYWALKER: You do recall that it was a Mon day, though.

  CERAMI: Yes.

  JAYWALKER: It was early in the morning, right?

  CERAMI: Yes.

  Jaywalker could have left it at that, but he needed to pinpoint the time, particularly if he was going to try to show later on that it couldn't have been Darren.

  JAYWALKER: How early in the morning?

  CERAMI: About nine-thirty.

  JAYWALKER: Are you certain of that?

  CERAMI: Yes.

  JAYWALKER: And are you certain it was the same man who'd raped you?

  CERAMI: Yes.

  JAYWALKER: Are you as certain that it was the same man who'd attacked you as you are that this is in fact the man?

  Jaywalker stepped back so she could get a good look at Darren. It was a win-win question, he knew. On the one hand, if the witness were to say no, it meant she was now hedging on her earlier testimony, and that she was no longer positive of her identification of the defendant as her rapist. On the other hand, if she were to say yes, that she was just as certain, and Jaywalker could somehow estab lish a solid alibi for Darren at the time of the sighting, he would be able to argue to the jury that if Mrs. Cerami was wrong about that having been Darren, despite all her cer tainty, then she could be just as wrong about Darren having been her attacker in the first place.

  But if Eleanor Cerami recognized the trap, she gave no sign of it. She answered without hesitation, the way any witness who's convinced she's telling the truth would have answered.

  CERAMI: Yes, I'm just as certain.

  Jaywalker left it at that. If it turned out that he could really account for Darren's whereabouts at 9:30 on the morning of September 17th, it would look like a coup, a triumph of cross-examination. But if he couldn't, and if the jurors ha
ppened to call for a read-back of Mrs. Cerami's testimony during their deliberations—and the chances were they would—the read-back would end right there, on that note of absolute certainty. Jaywalker would have egg all over his face, and Darren Kingston would have the next twenty-five years to wonder what his family had been thinking when they'd hired him.

  Pope's second witness was Michael Pacheco, the police officer who'd responded to Eleanor Cerami's apartment on the afternoon of August 16th. On direct examination, Officer Pacheco described Mrs. Cerami as nervous and sometimes in tears. He'd conducted a search of the area for the perpetrator, without success. After that he'd in structed Mrs. Cerami's husband to take her to Jacobi Hospital.

  On cross-examination, Jaywalker zeroed in on the de scription Mrs. Cerami had furnished Pacheco, at a time when her memory of the man was most vivid. She'd told him the man was in his early thirties and weighed approxi mately 180 pounds. With that, the witness was excused, and Justice Davidoff broke for lunch.

  Jaywalker spent a few minutes with the Kingstons, re viewing the morning's events. Eleanor Cerami had been a good witness, they all agreed, and a sympathetic one. But everyone felt Jaywalker had scored a few points with her. Perhaps more importantly, he'd succeeded in pinning her down on several matters that they would be able to explore later, with other witnesses. Officer Pacheco hadn't really hurt them; in fact, Jaywalker had been able to use him to underscore the physical differences between the man she'd first described and Darren.

  As the Kingstons headed out for lunch, Jaywalker took refuge in the first-floor library to go over his notes and pre pare his cross-examination for the afternoon's witnesses.

  Following the lunch break, Pope called Alphonse Guitterez, a friend of Eleanor Cerami. Guitterez testified that he'd gone to her apartment on August 16th, in re sponse to a phone call. He'd found her upset and crying, "nearly hysterical." He'd called her husband for her and waited there until Mr. Cerami arrived, followed shortly by the police.

  Jaywalker had no cross-examination for Mr. Guitterez. Other than further reinforcing Mrs. Cerami's mental state—which was already pretty clear to the jury—he hadn't hurt the defense. There are lawyers who've never met a witness they didn't want to question. It's almost as if, even with nothing to ask and no reason to ask it, they're afraid they might be criticized for their silence. Or perhaps they're getting paid by the word. Who knows?

  Jaywalker would never be one of them.

  Joseph Cerami, the victim's husband, took the stand next. He testified that he and his wife had been married six years, had two children, and had separated three months ago. On August 16th he'd received a phone call at his job and had rushed home in response. He'd found his wife frightened, upset and barely able to speak. Alphonse Guitterez was already there, and the police arrived a short while later. After speaking with the police, Mr. Cerami had taken his wife to Jacobi Hospital. In response to Jacob Pope's final question of him, Mr. Cerami confirmed the fact that between the birth of their second child in June and the rape in August, he and his wife hadn't had intercourse.

  Again, Jaywalker asked no questions.

  Pope called the second victim to the stand.

  In striking contrast to the timidity of Eleanor Cerami, it struck Jaywalker that Joanne Kenarden strode into the court room almost belligerently. Much has changed in terms of people's attitudes toward victims of sexual assault. It's entirely possible that Joanne Kenarden was simply ahead of her time, while Eleanor Cerami was a victim twice over—once at the hands of her assailant and once again of the prevailing attitudes of her generation. Her husband's abandonment of her because she'd been raped—just when she needed his love and support the most—stands as a cruel footnote not only to the case but to its time. Would he have preferred her to fight back and risk being maimed, or even stabbed to death? Don't be too quick to answer that one.

  How would the jurors respond to this defiant woman? Jaywalker tried to gauge their reactions as she made her way purposefully to the witness stand and took the oath in a loud, clear voice. Eleanor Cerami had averted her eyes from Darren until literally forced to identify him. Joanne Kenarden stared directly at him even as she took her seat.

  As he had with the first victim, Jacob Pope began with the diagram. He had Miss Kenarden identify it and mark the location of her building on it. With Justice Davidoff's per mission, Pope then held it in front of the jurors, so they could see the proximity of the two buildings. Next he elicited from the witness that she was divorced and the mother of three children. Then he moved on to August 16th.

  At about 1:45 that afternoon, Miss Kenarden had re turned to her building from a shopping trip. She'd stopped at her mailbox before walking over to the elevator and pressing the button. She'd noticed a man, a black man, standing nearby. When the elevator door opened, she'd stepped on. So had the man. She'd pressed four; he hadn't pressed a button. When the door opened on the fourth floor, the man suddenly grabbed her and slammed her against the elevator wall. Then he put a knife to her ribs and told her not to scream.

  POPE: Will you please describe the knife you saw.

  KENARDEN: It was like a long kitchen knife, about twelve inches long. Brown handle, long shiny blade.

  POPE: Thin shiny blade?

  KENARDEN: Yes.

  At that point, the man pressed twelve. They rode up in silence. When the door opened again, the man pressed his body against hers and, holding the knife against her side, forced her off the elevator, across the corridor and through a door into the stairwell.

  POPE: Once you went into the stairwell, what hap pened?

  KENARDEN: I recall him reaching up with his left hand and turning the lightbulb out.

  In his notes, Jaywalker underlined the word left. If the man had used his left hand to loosen the bulb, it meant that his right hand had been busy holding the knife. Not quite as persuasive as Mrs. Cerami's having had him switching hands to free up his right, but still a pretty good indication that the rapist, unlike Darren, was right-handed.

  Next the man forced Miss Kenarden up the stairs to a landing. When she began pleading with him not to kill her, he assured her that he wasn't going to hurt her. Then he told her to take her pants off.

  POPE: He told you what?

  KENARDEN: To take my pants off. I had jeans on, and I took them off. And then he told me to take my underwear off, and I did.

  POPE: What happened after that? Did he say any thing else to you?

  KENARDEN: Yes, he did.

  POPE: What did he say?

  KENARDEN: He told me that he wanted me—he told me what he wanted me to do to him.

  POPE: Use the exact words he used.

  KENARDEN: He said, "You're going to go down on me, and I want you to—"

  POPE: I want you to what?

  There was no answer from the witness.

  POPE: I know it's difficult, Miss Kenarden, but we have to hear the exact words he said.

  KENARDEN: "I want you to suck on me," he said. "And after that, I'm going to fuck you. When I'm ready to come, I'm going to pull out. You're going to take it in your mouth. Do you understand?" POPE: And after he told you that, what happened?

  KENARDEN: He opened up his pants and just low ered them a bit, and exposed himself. And he told me, "Come over here and go down on me."

  POPE: What in fact happened?