Outrage

PROLOGUE

“All rise!”

At the command of a rotund, jowly court clerk, those people still sitting in the gallery pews of the courtroom jumped up and stood at attention like soldiers waiting for the commanding officer to enter. The lawyers on either side of the aisle-prosecution on the right, closest to the jury box and witness stand; defense on the left-were already on their feet and now turned their attention to the front.

Slowest to rise was the defendant, a slightly built young man with wavy dark hair and large, luminous brown eyes. Head down, defeated, he appeared incapable of committing the horrendous crimes for which he’d been convicted a few weeks earlier. But the big man standing at the prosecution table just a few feet to his right had convinced the jurors otherwise. Now his life hung in the balance.

“Oyez oyez oyez,” announced the clerk, an Irishman named Edmund Farley, “all those who have business before part thirty-six of the supreme court, state of New York, New York County, draw near and ye shall be heard. The Honorable Supreme Court Justice Timothy Dermondy presiding…”

As Farley droned on, Dermondy swept into the courtroom, bringing a black cloud of judicial decorum. The somberness of the moment was etched into his intelligent, angular face. He had never been one to tolerate fools in his courtroom, and it was clear to everyone present that he wasn’t about to start now. His dark eyes swept across those assembled within the confines of the dark wood-paneled room as if daring any one of them to disturb the sanctity of the proceedings as he stepped up onto the judge’s dais and sat down.

“Representing the People, the Honorable District Attorney Roger Karp and Assistant District Attorney Ray Guma; representing the defendant, Stacy Langton and Mavis Huntley,” Farley said, continuing as he had for some thirty years without missing a beat. He looked at the judge and said, “Your Honor, all of the jurors are present and accounted for; counsel and the defendant are present. The case on trial is ready to proceed.”

Dermondy gave Farley a quick nod. The clerk then turned back to his audience, smiled, and invited them to be seated.

“Thank you, Mr. Farley,” Dermondy said. “Good morning, everyone, especially you jurors-your task has been arduous, but it is coming to a close. I would like to ask something more of you. I know you’re tired, but I urge you to focus now, more than ever, on this sacred task because a man’s life is at stake.”

The judge allowed the comment to sink in as he studied the faces of the twelve jurors. “As you are aware, this is a death penalty case, and what you decide may eventually reach a finality that cannot be undone for the defendant. He sits here convicted by you of two counts of murder. The People are seeking the death penalty and both sides have presented their evidence to you over the past couple of weeks for why, or why not, the defendant should be put to death for his crimes. Yesterday, you heard Ms. Langton present her summation on behalf of her client, the defendant; today you will hear from the district attorney, Mr. Karp.”

Again Dermondy paused to allow the jurors to keep up. They looked worn out, their faces set in stone-they just wanted to go home to their families. Murder trials were tough enough on jurors, especially when they had to be sequestered, but death penalty cases were particularly emotionally and physically draining. Still, he needed them to hang in there a little while longer.

Then we’ll all get to go home, Dermondy thought. But he also knew from his lengthy prosecutorial background and distinguished service on the bench that this was a case no one would ever forget.

“Let me remind you once again that during summation, the attorneys will tell you what they believe the evidence shows. However, what they say is not evidence, and it will be up to you to decide what weight, if any, to give their presentations. Do you understand?”

He was pleased to see them all nod. “Will you promise to focus one more time on what is said today, and then after the lawyers give their final arguments, their summations, and I charge you on the law, meaning simply give my legal instructions to you, you will deliberate and render a fair and just verdict?”

Again, twelve heads went up and down.

“Good. I thank you.” Satisfied that the jury was in the proper frame of mind, Dermondy turned his attention to the prosecution table and said, “Mr. Karp, are you ready to proceed?”

Roger “Butch” Karp, all six foot five of him, tapped the yellow legal pad he’d been making notes on and rose from his seat. “Yes, Your Honor.”

“Then, please, the floor is yours.”

Dressed in his usual off-the-rack, bar mitzvah-blue suit, Karp came out from around the table and walked over to stand in front of the defense table, limping slightly from having aggravated an old basketball injury to his right knee. He looked down for a moment at the defendant, who quickly averted his eyes, his face drained of what little color he had left after several months incarcerated in the Tombs, the hellhole otherwise known as the Manhattan House of Detention for Men.

Shaking his head, Karp then turned to face the jury box, fixing his gold-flecked gray eyes on each juror for a moment before moving to the next. He nodded when he reached the last face, then began. “As you now have experienced, a capital murder trial has two separate phases. In law we say it is a ‘bifurcated’ proceeding. In phase one, the guilt phase, you the jury determined that the defendant is guilty of the murders for which he was charged. Phase two, the sentencing phase, deals with whether in your opinion, and based on the law, the defendant should be sentenced to death.”

Karp let the finality of that sink in before continuing. “For the past couple of weeks, on behalf of the People, my colleague Ray Guma and I have presented evidence-what we call ‘aggravating factors’-that more than justifies sentencing this defendant to death. For example, you were shown additional crime scene photographs and heard from the People’s witnesses who graphically described the vicious nature of the defendant’s merciless attacks on the deceased, Olivia Yancy and Beth Jenkins. But other than a brief few minutes in which Olivia’s husband, Dale, spoke movingly, you heard very little about these women as real, living, breathing individuals.”

Turning to point at the defense table, Karp said, “And as you know, the defense then presented its case, arguing that there were mitigating circumstances for why the defendant committed these crimes. The defense hopes this will persuade you to vote against invoking the death penalty. As such, you listened to a great deal about the defendant-his abused childhood, the violence he may have witnessed at an early age, the absence of convictions for other violent crimes, and how he may have been sexually assaulted while serving time in a juvenile detention facility some five years ago.”

Karp walked slowly over to the defense table until he was standing in front of it. “If these things are true, then we certainly agree that no child should be abused or traumatized, and we may even come to understand what demons drive this defendant’s evil nature,” he said, fixing the defendant with a hard look. “But I also ask you to remember the testimony of Moishe Sobelman and the horrors he survived at the Sobibor death camp. And then remember that understanding does not mean that we forgive or excuse the brutal, vicious, methodical, and inhumane horrors that evil men perpetrate on the innocent-that the defendant perpetrated on two innocent women, Olivia Yancy and Beth Jenkins.”

Without bothering to conceal the look of contempt on his rugged face, Karp stared down at the defendant. “He certainly doesn’t look like he’s capable of such horrors, does he? He’s young. Cleans up well-”

“Objection,” said Langton, an attractive thirtysomething brunette. She didn’t need to address the issue further. While a defendant may have been arrested looking like he’d been living in a sewer, the prosecution was not allowed to comment when the defense team cut their client’s hair, shaved and showered him, put him through detox if necessary, and then dressed him up like a preppy Dartmouth premed student.

“Sustained; continue, Mr. Karp,” Dermondy said.

Karp nodded to the judge and then turned back to the defendant. “Here in this courtroom, the defendant hardly looks like the killer we all know him to be. He even wept for you on that witness stand with those big, brown eyes blinking away the tears. Listen to his tragic story, look at him frightened and demoralized in his seat now, and it’s easy to feel sympathy for him.”

Karp whirled and strode over to the prosecution table, where he picked up two eight-by-ten portrait photographs depicting the murder victims as they’d appeared in life. He held them up for the jurors to see. “But I would suggest that such sympathy is misplaced. It rightfully belongs to these two women. A young wife, Olivia Yancy, eager to move into a better, safer neighborhood, so that someday she could feel comfortable raising her children there. But she was instead ambushed by an evil and manipulative predator, the defendant, who stalked her because she was defenseless and vulnerable and lured her into his murderous trap under the guise of friendship.”

As he spoke, Karp handed the photographs to the jury foreman and again pointed at the defendant, who quailed but did not look up. “And her mother, Beth Jenkins, a sixty-year-old widow, who went to help her daughter pack her family possessions for the move but walked in on Olivia being brutalized by that man here in this courtroom sitting so meekly at the defense table.”

Stepping back from the jury rail, Karp allowed his voice to rise along with the genuine emotion he felt boiling to the surface. “So often evil men are made to seem like victims-they say they were only ‘following orders’ in Nazi Germany, or hitting back at the oppressors of Muslims everywhere… or they were abused as children. At the same time, it’s almost obscene how quickly we forget who the real victims are, that they weren’t just the numbers tattooed on their arms, or nameless, faceless office workers, or merely photographs to be passed around a jury box. Take a good look at the women in those photographs, ladies and gentlemen, and remember, they were real and they were the victims.”

Karp pointed at the defense table. “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we can understand that outside forces may help lead a man to commit evil deeds, but it does not justify or excuse the sort of horrors and suffering he may inflict on other human beings… as this defendant inflicted on Olivia Yancy and Beth Jenkins.”

He paused, looking up at the ceiling for a moment. “You may ask, ‘Aren’t all murders horrible?’ And ‘Isn’t the taking of any life equally reprehensible?’ Good questions. So how do we differentiate between a murderer who deserves life in prison and one who deserves to be executed? And isn’t it enough to remove the offender from the population and lock him away with no hope of ever getting out?”

Karp rocked slightly on his heels and leaned on the jury rail, facing the jurors eye to eye. “Make no mistake, my colleague, Assistant DA Ray Guma, and I considered these very issues before deciding to seek the death penalty in this case.” He then stepped back and continued. “And we decided that because the defendant’s outrages were so cruel, unspeakable, and inhumane, if there is to be a death penalty, then beyond any and all doubt, this defendant’s evil qualifies. Let me suggest that perhaps the best way to demonstrate to you how we reached our conclusion, and the conclusion we are asking you to reach, is by going through the same process we did of reviewing the evidence and recalling what happened on that terrible day a little more than a year and a half ago.”

The courtroom hushed; all eyes were on Karp. Even the defendant felt compelled to look up. “It was early afternoon when the deceased, Olivia Yancy, finished packing for the move to her new apartment and walked three blocks to her neighborhood grocery store. That night was to be the Yancys’ last in the old apartment, and to celebrate, she was going to make a special dinner. She was happy. Her husband Dale had just been promoted to full professor at Columbia University. And the new apartment had two bedrooms, one for the child she intended to conceive… Life was good.”