24
P
RETRIAL PROCEEDINGS
in
People v. Lorenzo Tate
were the first thing scheduled on Judge Ferano's morning calendar. It was a regularly scheduled status conference, but with the twist that we expected the judge to rule on the two motions that we'd argued before him a few weeks earlier. Lorenzo had again been brought down from Rikers for the hearing; Myra and I huddled on either side of him.
"What he gonna say?" Lorenzo asked.
Myra shrugged. "There's no way to predict," she said. "We'll find
out soon enough."
It wasn't that soon: Judge Ferano kept us waiting once again, coming out a half hour after our scheduled nine thirty start time.
"This is my decision and order relating to the defendant's motion to suppress the identification procedure used by the police in this case," Judge Ferano began, before reciting a brief boilerplate description of the issue before him. Although this took only a couple of minutes, it seemed to me to stretch out into eternity. My stomach churned—I wanted to win, to have my first big triumph as a public defender. It was purely selfish, I realized, having little to do with Lorenzo Tate and much more to do with myself.
After summarizing all of our arguments, the judge proceeded to systematically reject them all. At one point Lorenzo muttered something under his breath as I felt him tense beside me. I put a hand on his arm. Judge Ferano looked up briefly, expressionless, then looked back at his papers. The judge continued talking, but I stopped listening carefully. I tried to maintain a poker face, although I felt brutally disappointed. I glanced over at Lorenzo, who was still making no attempt to hide his own anger. I looked over at Myra, but she kept her eyes on the judge, her face neutral, not giving anything away. The judge took his time with the legalese before formally concluding that our motion to suppress Yolanda's identification was denied.
"All right," Judge Ferano continued. "Let's turn to the
Molineux
question. Evidence that Mr. Wallace owed Mr. Tate money is itself clearly
admissible, and goes toward motive. The court notes that Mr. Tate has no prior
convictions for drug activity, and that the People's belief that this debt was
drug related is fundamentally speculative, resting primarily on the criminal
history of the victim, Devin Wallace. Telling the jury that this debt arose from
illegal activity would add little in terms of motive, while being highly
prejudicial to Mr. Tate, and would create a grave risk that the jury would
consider him more likely to have committed the crimes at issue because of his
other, uncharged and unproven, crimes. The People will therefore be able to
elicit testimony that Mr. Wallace owed the defendant money, but will be
precluded from attempting to establish that this debt had any connection to
illegal drugs."
AFTER WE
were done in court we met with Lorenzo in a holding cell in the court's basement. Lorenzo still hadn't calmed down; he was unable to sit still.
"It don't matter Yo-Yo say she pick me out," he said. "She just be lying about
seeing me that night. 'Cause I wasn't there."
"That she's lying is harder to prove," Myra said patiently—we'd been over this before.
"We don't have an eyewitness that goes against her, and we can't prove that she
wasn't where she says she was. Have you come up with any reason why she would
lie about this?"
"I don't even know her," Lorenzo said. "I got no idea why she be
saying this shit."
"Well, unfortunately, she is going to be able to testify," Myra said.
"There's nothing we can do now to keep her testimony out; but we can still try
to find a way to minimize it or, ideally, to expose it as untrue."
Lorenzo nodded without seeming to agree.
"There's something else we wanted to talk to you about," I said.
"We found out some new information about Seth Lipton."
"The white kid? What's anything with him got to do with anything
with this?"
"He was in business with Devin," I said. "Seth went to Brooklyn
College, not far from the Gardens, and apparently he was dealing on
campus—selling to the white kids who were scared to cop on the street."
"You saying he was in the game?"
I nodded. "You ever hear about anything like this?"
"Matter of fact, Devin say something about it," Lorenzo said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"He say how he got this white boy could unload the product at that
school, make deliveries, like. Devin told me about it 'cause of how he owed me
that money, so this was something he had for making some more green."
"Did you know who Devin had running the drugs?"
"You tell me now it was that boy who got capped, but I don't
recollect ever hearing his name."
"Lorenzo," Myra said softly, "you have to tell us these things."
"I didn't never put Devin's thing at the school together with his getting a bullet," Lorenzo said.
"I figure the white boy who got put out that night was just some kid looking to
cop. Ain't like it would be the first time. What's it got to do with anything?"
"We don't know," I said. "But for one thing, it means that there's
at least some possibility that Seth Lipton was the intended target, rather than
a missed shot."
Lorenzo sat for a long moment, thinking it through. "You saying
somebody might have been looking to cap the white dude to begin with?"
"He'd opened up a new territory in neighborhood drug dealing," I said.
"Couldn't that have pissed some people off?"
"Ain't like nobody else would be selling direct at the school," Lorenzo said.
"Those boys want a taste, they got to come to us. Besides, I thought you was
looking at Malik Taylor. He's who got a reason to be taking out Devin."
"So what you're saying is, no other dealer would want to take out Lipton because he was working the college?" I asked.
"I'll tell you one thing, though," Lorenzo said.
"What's that?" I asked.
"I got no reason to kill the white boy who was selling Devin's
product. My boy owed me money; I ain't going to cap nobody who was bringing him
green."
AFTER MEETING
with Lorenzo, Myra and I walked back to our office. I knew I shouldn't be particularly disappointed, that no judge was going to be eager to throw out the cornerstone of a murder case. But losing gracefully had never been one of my strengths.
Finally Myra spoke. "Well, there's good news out of this."
"The
Molineux
ruling?"
"No," Myra said. "That we've got our first grounds for appeal."
"Well," I said, "that's something."
"I am a glass-half-full sort of gal," Myra said as she stopped walking to light a cigarette.
"What else do we got? You ever track down the roommate?"
"I found him over the weekend," I said. "He shuffled and danced
for a while, but eventually he admitted that he knew all about Lipton's dealing.
But I don't think he was involved at all."
"So how does he come across compared to your other guy, Delaney?"
"I think Amin is clearly the keeper. His eyes aren't yellow, he
doesn't look like bugs are crawling inside of his skin, he doesn't have the
liability Delaney does in terms of a record, and his knowledge is more
firsthand."
"Did you already 18-B Delaney?"
"I hadn't yet, no."
"I guess you can keep him then," Myra said.
25
W
HY ARE
you yawning?" Chris Delaney asked.
It was a fair enough question from his perspective. Unsurprisingly, Delaney himself was wide-awake, probably as awake as he'd ever been in his life.
I'd yawned because I hadn't been sleeping well lately, had been dragging in the mornings until the caffeine carried me up. I hadn't intended it to be disrespectful, and it wasn't because I was bored, but I understood how Chris Delaney could take it that way.
It was a little before nine in the morning. Chris and I were in my office, talking about the fact that in just over a half hour he was scheduled to plead guilty to misdemeanor drug charges.
"How are you holding up?" I said, instead of responding to his question.
Chris looked at me incredulously, as if I'd just asked him if I could go on a date with his mother.
"How am I holding up?" he said. "I'm about to go to fucking jail. My parents
have basically disowned me, and I've had to drop out of school. That's how I'm
holding up."
"I got you the best deal I could," I said, meaning it. The ADA had agreed to a sentencing recommendation of three months, after which Chris would do six months at a halfway house. It offered at least the possibility of helping him, and since his sentence was relatively short he'd do his time at Rikers—no picnic, but an order of magnitude better and safer than a proper prison like Sing Sing. It was a good deal for someone with back-to-back drug arrests, but
"good deal" was always relative when talking about jail time.
"What about what I told you about Seth Lipton?" Chris asked. "You
said you might want me to testify."
"We're not going to need you to, actually," I said.
"I probably couldn't anyway, right?" Chris said. "Being in jail."
"It's not that," I said. "We've got Lipton's roommate, who's
admitted that Lipton was dealing out of the apartment. But there's a reporter
who's interested in talking to you about Seth."
"A reporter? Why's he want to talk to me?"
"He knows about Lipton's dealing."
Chris raised his eyebrows. "What's in it for me?"
"Nothing whatsoever," I said.
"What's in it for you?"
"Nothing direct. It's just that right now, the story's about how
Seth Lipton was this honors college student, and our client was this dangerous
black drug dealer from the projects. We'd just like to have the full story out
there."
"So you want me to tell the world that Seth was a drug dealer? I
mean, the dude's dead. Shouldn't we just let him rest in peace?"
"Unfortunately, I don't have that option. But you do. If you don't
want to talk to the reporter, don't. It's your decision. I'm not going to try to
pressure you."
"You really think it'll help your case?"
"I don't know. But I'm pretty sure it won't hurt it."
"Will he have to use my name in his article?"
"That'll be up to you. You can tell him you'll talk to him only if
he agrees not to identify you."
"Okay," Chris said. "If you think it'll help your guy, I guess you
can have the reporter call me."
"Great," I said. "I appreciate it, Chris."
"Is that why he killed Lipton?" Chris asked. "Because of drugs?"
"What makes you think Lorenzo's guilty?"
"People who are arrested usually did it, right? I mean, I admit
that I'm guilty. I guess most people probably don't tell you, though. I bet they
come up with some story that you know isn't true, you sit there trying to
pretend you believe it, probably have to keep yourself from laughing half the
time."
I smiled in acknowledgment. "You pretty much nailed it," I said.
"But my client in the Lipton case isn't one of those. Obviously I can't really
talk about it, but off the record and between you and me, I honestly have no
idea whether he did it or not."
"That must drive you crazy."
"To tell you the truth," I said, "I don't really think about it."
"Really?"
"It's not my job to figure out whether someone's guilty or
innocent. It's just my job to defend them as best as I can."
"What if you thought I was innocent?" Chris asked. "Would you
still let me go to jail?"
It wasn't a question I'd yet had to face, and it certainly wasn't something I'd ever thought about in regard to Chris.
"Accepting a plea is never my decision. My recommendation isn't based on whether
or not I think the client is innocent; it's solely based on how strong the DA's
case looks and how good the offer is compared to what could happen at trial."
"You really think it doesn't make any difference to you whether
the person you're representing is actually guilty?"
I shrugged. "Maybe on some subconscious level, sure," I said. "But
not in any way I'm aware of."
"Do you ever see people after they've gone in?"
I was a little surprised by the question, not sure what Chris was getting at.
"Not usually, no," I said.
"So you don't know what happens to them in prison?"
"What do you mean?"
"I just don't want—from the movies and whatever—you know, the
drop-the-soap-in-the-shower shit."
I'd never had a client bring this up before, and had no idea how to respond.
"Rikers is the safest place you can be in terms of a New York prison," I said, repeating what Myra had told me.
"Most of the people there are awaiting trial, so they're not looking for more
trouble, and nobody who's doing their time there is in for anything violent."
"So you think I'll be safe there?"
"I mean, you know, it is a jail. Keep your eyes open, and be as
careful as you can be."
"Is there anything you can do to protect me?"
There wasn't, of course, not really, but I recognized that this wasn't what Chris wanted to hear.
"If you start having trouble in there you can call me and I'll do what I can.
But until there's an actual problem, there isn't going to be much I can do."
"So you're saying you can help me once somebody decides to make me
his bitch, but not until then?"
"What I'm saying is, I think there's a good chance that won't ever happen, but if it does I can try to help you," I said. I checked my watch—we were due before the judge in less than ten minutes. I looked over at Chris, but he wouldn't meet my gaze.
"We've got to go to court. Are you ready?"
Chris still wouldn't look at me.
"Listen," I said. "You don't have to plead. But if we go to trial
on this you're going to be looking at doing real time, and they've got a good
case. I don't recommend lightly that anyone accept a guilty plea. I understand
that you don't want to go to jail—nobody does. But this is as good as you are
going to get."
Chris put his face in his hands. It took me a moment to realize he was crying.
For the first time I saw Chris clearly for what he was: somebody no different from me, except that his luck had turned even worse than mine. He was what I'd just barely escaped being. My knee-jerk dislike for him had always been rooted in our similarities, of course, but only now did I realize that my disdain had been a form of selfhatred, a way to judge myself for similar faults. I truly wanted to protect Chris, to keep him safe, but there was nothing more that I could do.
"You'll get through this," I said.
Chris lifted up his head and looked at me, letting me see his tearstreaked, terrified face.
"How do you know that?" he asked.
"Because people do," I said.