Outrage

26

Ahmed Kadyrov sat at the defense table watching the twelve jurors as they filed back into the courtroom. He hoped to see some small sign that they would declare him not guilty. A faint smile, perhaps, from the pretty, young brunette who he’d fancied thought he was attractive, to let him know that after several months since his arrest, he would soon walk out of the Tombs a free man.

What I’d do to you if I got the chance, eh, sooka? he thought, staring at the brunette. But she merely looked him in the eyes once and then turned her head toward the judge as a wave of revulsion rippled across her face.

Next to Kadyrov sat Mavis Huntley, one of the two lawyers who’d been appointed to represent him from a pool of attorneys qualified to argue death penalty cases. A slender blonde, Huntley pretended throughout the trial that she actually believed he was innocent-smiling and laughing, or nodding in agreement, at everything he said, lightly touching his arm on occasion. That was her job. However, he could tell that she was scared to death of him and was repulsed, despite her plastic smile. He wanted to kill her, too.

On the other side of Huntley was the lead counsel, Stacy Langton, who had achieved early success in her career and was noted as a top-flight courtroom strategist. Both of his attorneys’ demeanor just prior to the arrival of the jurors reminded Kadyrov of refugees that he’d known from his childhood in Chechnya, shell-shocked and stupid as cattle as they fled the Russians and their burning villages.

However, when the jurors began filing in, Langton assumed an air of what she probably thought of as “quiet dignity.” She nodded to the jurors with a half smile, as if to say she’d performed as had been required of her but understood if they had not been convinced. There was nothing anybody could have done, her body language suggested.

Kadyrov loathed Langton, too, and the judge, Timothy Dermondy, who was “prejudiced” against him, ruling against his lawyers and in favor of the prosecution at every turn. Of course he despised the jurors as well, especially the women, and had spent quite a bit of time during the trial fantasizing about what it would be like to rape and butcher each and every one of them.

However, for the moment, he was looking at them with puppy-dog eyes and a tiny, doomed smile, as if he could somehow persuade them at the last moment to alter the verdict he was sure they were returning with. But there was another reason for the pitiful look. Before the jurors entered, Langton had leaned over and said, “I think we have a good chance here,” which they both knew was a lie. “But even if for some unfortunate reason they come back with a guilty verdict, we need to remember that we will go immediately into a death penalty trial, where we will be arguing to save your life. We’re going to need at least one of those jurors on our side.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be saved,” Kadyrov had replied. He didn’t mean it. He was a coward and the idea of being strapped down and injected with deadly chemicals like some pound dog terrified him.

“You can’t let yourself think like that,” said Langton, who’d explained when they first met that she was taking the case because she didn’t believe in the death penalty “for philosophical reasons. The state cannot prevent murders by murdering citizens, and in so doing give official sanction to the barbarism of inflicting death.”

It all sounded like tripe to Kadyrov, who had no qualms about murdering. But if Langton believed it and could keep him from a similar fate, he was all for it.

Of course, the worst of his malevolence was reserved for the two men who sat at the prosecution table. The two men who were trying to kill him.

The old white-haired son of a bitch, Guma, stared somberly at the jurors. He’d tried to get Kadyrov to confess after his arrest at Grand Central and then laughed when he refused and demanded a lawyer.

“Good,” Guma had said, smiling. “I want to take you apart in a courtroom so that the entire world sees what a piece of crap you are.”

Next to him sat the worst one of all, the district attorney himself, Butch Karp, whose decision to take the case himself was further proof that the system had it in for poor Ahmed Kadyrov. When the defense lawyers originally approached Karp with the proposition that Kadyrov would plead guilty to two counts of murder in exchange for a sentence of life without parole, the district attorney had not even considered it for a moment. “He can plead guilty and face a death penalty hearing” was the only counteroffer.

It was so unfair. Even though he understood that his evil nature suggested that he deserved to die, he hoped to manipulate the system and count on good-hearted people who believed in “deterrence” and “rehabilitation.”

During the trial, Karp had come after him like a pit bull in a dogfight. It started with the blue silk shirt, which his victim’s husband, Dale Yancy, had identified on the witness stand as a shirt taken from the apartment by his wife’s killer. It even bore the brand name as it had been recorded on the original police report.

Assistant Medical Examiner Gail Manning was called to the stand to explain how DNA skin cell analysis identified flakes of skin on the shirt belonging to Dale and Olivia Yancy, Vinnie Cassino, “and the defendant, Ahmed Kadyrov.”

Under cross-examination by Langton, Manning agreed that if Kadyrov visited the Cassinos, “it was possible” that some of his skin cells could have been deposited on “anything in the apartment, including the shirt.” However, on redirect by Karp, the AME explained that the only skin cells found on the inside material of the shirt were those of Dale Yancy and Kadyrov.

“And what does that say to you?” Karp asked.

“That the shirt was worn by Mr. Yancy and Mr. Kadyrov.”

“And were you able to find any other DNA evidence on the shirt that would be of interest to this case?” Karp asked.

“Yes, using the chemical luminol I was able to detect trace amounts of blood belonging to Olivia Yancy on the inside material of the sleeves.”

“Again, suggesting what?” Karp asked.

“Well, because there were no skin cells from Mrs. Yancy on the inside of the sleeves, it suggests that her blood was transferred there from the arms of someone who did wear the shirt, either Mr. Yancy or Mr. Kadyrov.”

The most damning testimony had come from Lydia Cassino, and, in a way, her dead drug hustling husband, Vinnie. Not long after his arrest, Kadyrov heard that Graziani had been killed. His initial thought was that it was bad news, as he couldn’t turn on the detective to try to save his own skin. But then again, he figured that with Graziani, Brock, and Vinnie dead, the only witness against him would be Lydia, and she had a rap sheet nearly as long as her husband’s. It would be “he said, she said” and he was certain he would come off better in that exchange.

He was wrong. Lydia Cassino took the stand barely able to control her hatred for him, which at first he thought would be her undoing. He knew that his lawyer had made sure that she would not be able to voice her suspicions that he’d killed her husband. If in her anger she did, it would be grounds for a mistrial.

However, under Karp’s deliberate questioning, Lydia stayed focused on her testimony. First she recounted how he showed up at the Cassinos’ apartment after the Yancy-Jenkins murders wearing the shirt, which he then gave to Vinnie.

“I asked him, ‘What’s on your pants? ’cause it looked like dried blood to me,” she testified. “And he said I was crazy. But he went to the bathroom and washed it off.”

Kadyrov returned to buy more meth a few days later, she said, and pointed to a front-page headline about the Columbia U Slasher. “He said, ‘That’s me.’ My husband didn’t believe him at first. But Kadyrov knew too much. He said he only planned to rape and rob that girl and had tied her up with duct tape and cut her clothes off with a knife when another woman-he called her ‘the older bitch’-surprised him.”

“Did he describe the attacks on Beth Jenkins and Olivia Yancy?” Karp had asked.

“Yeah, he said he stabbed the second woman four or five times,” Lydia responded. “Then he said he told the younger woman, Olivia, I guess, that if she didn’t shut up-he said she was crying and scared because she watched him kill the second gal-he was going to cut her fucking head off… His shirt was all bloody so he took it off and got that blue silk shirt he gave to Vinnie.”

Like fitting the pieces of a puzzle together, Lydia’s recollections backed up previous testimony: that of the crime scene technicians who described how Olivia Yancy’s body had been bound and her clothes removed with a sharp instrument-evidence that had been withheld from the public-and AME Manning’s matter-of-fact description of the attacks, from the number of times Beth Jenkins was stabbed to the rape and near decapitation of Olivia Yancy.

Kadyrov kept his head down as Lydia quoted him talking about the rape, saying how he’d “used her good.” But he’d felt the eyes of the jurors burning into him.

Karp was relentless as he asked Lydia to recall the time Kadyrov went to the Cassinos’ apartment in the spring. The judge had ruled that Karp could not ask Lydia questions that would lead her to talking about the murder of Dolores Atkins in the Bronx. However, the prosecutor got her to describe how Kadyrov had shown up that previous spring with a large bruise on the side of his face-from that bitch in the park he’d tried to rape-and then threatened the Cassinos if they told anyone that he’d admitted to the Yancy-Jenkins murders.

Although reeling like a boxer who had barely stayed on his feet until the bell ended a brutal round, Kadyrov thought he might have survived Lydia’s testimony and that of the other witnesses. However, the knockout punches were delivered when Karp introduced into evidence the recordings Vinnie Cassino had made.

First, Karp played the recording from the previous spring, in which the jury heard the conversation just as Lydia Cassino had described it. “Whether I did or didn’t, I think both of you should watch your fucking mouths. And remember, snitches end up in ditches.”

More damning still was Vinnie Cassino speaking from beyond death’s door against the man who killed him. Kadyrov cringed as he heard himself snarl, “I can do anything I want. And when your old lady gets back, I’m going to rape the shit out of her, if I can stomach touching that ugly bitch. Then I’m going to cut her up real slow… Here’s the deal, old man. Tell me where the blue shirt is and I’ll make it quick for your bitch.”

“Don’t know… any damn blue shirt,” Cassino gasped on the recording. There was a grunt of pain, then Kadyrov’s voice: “Sure you do, the shirt I took from the apartment where I killed them two bitches in Manhattan, same way I’m gonna do to that sooka wife of yours.”

Kadyrov knew he was already down for the count when Karp threw one more punch by calling a language expert to the stand. Having already established that Kadyrov was originally from Chechnya, the relentless district attorney asked the witness if sooka meant anything in Chechen.

“Yes, it means ‘whore,’” the expert replied.

The fight was over before my damn attorneys said a word, Kadyrov thought while the jurors settled themselves and turned expectantly toward Judge Dermondy as the court clerk took the jury’s verdict paperwork to the dais. Kadyrov leaned over in front of his attorney, Mavis Huntley, who froze in fear, and motioned to Langton that he wanted to say something to her privately.

“I hate both of you,” Kadyrov hissed without changing his woeful facial expression. “I would kill you if I could.”

Huntley whimpered slightly. But Langton blinked twice, then shrugged and leaned back in her chair with her half smile still glued to her face. “Don’t think there’s going to be much chance of that, my friend,” she said under her breath. “Though I’m still going to try to save your miserable life.”

Not if the penalty phase goes as well as your defense strategy, Kadyrov thought as he leaned back and turned to look at the judge.

Even if Karp’s barrage had not been enough to have the fight stopped on a technical knockout, his defense attorneys’ counterpunches had been weak at best. Of course it was beyond Kadyrov’s ego to acknowledge that they had precious little to work with.

Langton’s strategy had been based on two possibilities: The first was that Felix Acevedo was the real, and confessed, killer. The second was that if Acevedo wasn’t the real killer, the district attorney was running around “willy-nilly” accusing innocent men and “changing his mind on a whim.”

Langton had started by calling Felix Acevedo to the stand and then going over his confession to Graziani, followed by the statement he’d given the prosecutor Danielle Cohn, who Kadyrov knew was the pretty brunette sitting behind the prosecution table. She looks like my sister, he thought absently as he glanced over at her.

Of course, his attorney’s direct examination of Acevedo concentrated on those aspects that made Felix look guilty: the confessions to the murders in Manhattan and the Bronx; the admission that he’d assaulted the woman in Mullayly Park, from whom he’d allegedly received the bruise shown in his booking photograph; and, of course, the ring he claimed to have taken from Olivia Yancy.

Langton had also noted the “nearly identical” answers Acevedo had given in his confession and the statement given to Cohn. “And that’s because, Mr. Acevedo,” the attorney said, raising her voice as she spoke to the obviously frightened young man on the witness stand, “it’s the truth, isn’t it? You could repeat it word-for-word because you didn’t have to make anything up. Isn’t that true, Mr. Acevedo?”

“Yes,” Acevedo had replied as the defense attorney smiled at the jury triumphantly.

The victory was short-lived. It took much less time for Karp to take the confessions apart than it had to read them into the record. He started by getting Acevedo to recite from parts of the confession where he told Graziani he bought the ring from a young man named Al at Mullayly Park.

“Why did you eventually tell Detective Graziani that you took it from Olivia Yancy?” Karp asked.

“Because Detective Graziani told me I did,” Acevedo said, hanging his head, “and I wanted to go home.”

“Did you take the ring from Olivia Yancy?”

Acevedo shook his head. “I bought it from Al.”

Karp had grimaced and raised his voice as he’d stalked up to the witness stand, holding up the plastic bag containing a small diamond engagement ring. “Come on, Felix! You took the ring from Olivia Yancy!” the prosecutor thundered. “You admitted it to Detective Graziani! You did take the ring from Olivia, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I took it,” Acevedo cried out. It might have seemed like theatrics, but even Kadyrov noted the genuine terror in the young man’s voice and eyes.

Karp had then softened his voice and smiled. “It’s okay, Felix,” he said. “Sorry I yelled. Just tell the truth. Did you take this, or any other ring, from Olivia Yancy?”

“No.”

“Did you kill Olivia Yancy?”

“No.”

“Did you kill Beth Jenkins?”

“No.”

“Did you, in fact, kill anyone? Or assault anyone?”

“No.”

“Then why did you tell Detective Graziani and Miss Cohn, sitting behind the prosecution table there, that you did?”

“Because I wanted to go home,” Acevedo said, wagging his head sadly back and forth.

Karp dissected and dismissed the rest of Acevedo’s false confession in much the same fashion. At the prosecutor’s direction, Acevedo would read his first honest responses to the detective’s questions. Then Karp would ask, “Why did you change your answer if it wasn’t true?”

Then Acevedo would answer in one of two ways: “Because Detective Graziani wanted me to” or “I wanted to go home.” Karp would follow this by again angrily accusing Acevedo of not telling the truth, at which point the young man would again admit to crimes he didn’t commit.

At one point in his cross-examination of Acevedo, Karp suddenly asked if anyone in the gallery had a book they’d brought for reading when court wasn’t in session. After overruling the defense objection, Judge Dermondy allowed him to accept a book from a member of the audience.

As Karp walked over to stand in front of Acevedo, he smiled, shook his head, and laughed inwardly when he looked at the title, Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane. So much for spontaneous courtroom drama, he thought. He then read a page aloud from the book.

Karp looked up and held the front of the book out so the witness could see it. “Mr. Acevedo, have you ever seen this book before?”

Acevedo hesitated as if he wasn’t sure of the answer he was expected to give. But then he replied, “No.”

“Have you ever read it?”

Acevedo shook his head. “No. I don’t like to read. The words get jumbled up.”

“Your Honor, for demonstration purposes I ask that this book be deemed People’s twenty-eight for identification,” Karp said. He then walked over to the jury box and handed the still-open book to the jury foreman before turning back to the witness stand. “Mr. Acevedo, would you please repeat what you just heard me read from this book? And, Mr. Foreman, would you please follow along on page one fifty-three?”

Acevedo repeated the words; it was clear to everyone in the courtroom that he had it down. When he finished, the jury foreman looked surprised and nodded his head before handing the book to the juror next to him.

Meticulous as a surgeon, Karp cut away at the defense’s case. He asked Acevedo to read from the transcribed statement he gave to Detective Brock about how he received the bruise on his face from a backhand blow by his father. Then Karp called Marianne Tate to the stand as a rebuttal witness after first getting Dermondy to allow Kadyrov and Acevedo to be seated on either side of a court officer in a pew behind the defense table.

“Miss Tate, do you see, here in this courtroom, the man who attacked you?” Karp asked.

Tate looked out over the gallery and then fixed her gaze on Kadyrov. “That’s him,” she said, pointing to the defendant.

“You’re sure?” Karp asked. “The man sitting in the second row with the green shirt?”

The woman nodded. “I’m positive.”

“Your Honor, the record should reflect that the witness has identified the defendant,” Karp said. “Now, Miss Tate, what if I told you that you originally identified the young man in the blue shirt sitting to his right as your attacker?”

“I recognize him, too, but from the police station. I thought he might be the one back then,” she admitted. “But now that I can see them both clearly, I am sure it’s the other man.”

Karp continued. “Miss Tate, could you demonstrate how you fended your attacker off?”

With Karp describing the action for the court stenographer, Tate showed the jury how she used her elbow to strike the “assailant” behind her. “And you struck him hard?” the prosecutor asked.

“Hard enough for him to lose his grip and let me go,” she answered.

Karp dismissed Tate and then re-called the assistant medical examiner, Gail Manning, to the stand. She was shown a blowup of Acevedo’s booking photograph depicting the bruise on his face.

Taking the photograph over to the jury, Karp then said, “Ms. Manning, there has been testimony that the young man in that photograph received the bruise on his face from an elbow strike. Based on your observation of that photograph, would you agree that the bruise was the result of such a blow?”

Manning shook her head. “No. In my opinion, the bruising was not caused by an elbow.”

“Please explain,” Karp said.

“If the bruising had been caused by an elbow, I would expect to see one larger point of impact,” she said, turning to address the jurors. “As you can see in the photograph, although there is a general area of swelling and discoloration, there are three small, dark purple spots within the general area, and, somewhat fainter, a fourth. Note they are generally aligned vertically on the side of this man’s face.”

“Do you have an opinion regarding what sort of blow would have caused that particular pattern?” Karp asked.

“Yes, based on the pattern, I would say that the bruise was caused by knuckles, as would be expected from a backhand blow,” Manning answered.

Karp had then called Jesus Guerrero to the stand to admit that he stole a purse containing a small diamond engagement ring. “Whose purse did you take?” Karp asked.

Guerrero shrugged. “I don’t know her, but I remember her last name was Lopez because that’s my mom’s maiden name.”

“What did you do with the ring?” Karp asked.

“I sold it to Felix in Mullayly Park,” Guerrero said.

“Did you tell Felix your correct name?”

“No. I told him my name was Al because that was the name on the inside of the ring.”

Kadyrov didn’t even bother to look up anymore when Karp called Amy Lopez to the stand to describe how she’d been robbed. “Can you identify this ring?” he asked, handing her the plastic bag.

Lopez looked at it for a moment before gazing back up at him with tears in her eyes and a smile on her face. “Yes, this is my engagement ring,” she said. “Can I take it home now?”

The closing summations were more of a victory lap for Karp. Langton insisted that the defense’s case was enough to “throw a cloud of reasonable doubt” over Kadyrov’s guilt based on the confessions and subsequent indictment of Acevedo.

However, Karp had shrugged off Acevedo’s confession as “a pack of lies, manipulated out of a young man who will, as you heard, admit to anything to avoid confrontation and to escape an uncomfortable situation.

“Acevedo’s indictment,” he said, “was a mistake that never should have happened. Because of a failure in my office to adhere to good practices an innocent man was accused of a heinous crime and deprived of his freedom. For that, I am truly sorry.

“However, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what matters here isn’t whether a mistake was made regarding Felix Acevedo,” Karp had said in conclusion. “The only thing that matters here is that the evidence against Ahmed Kadyrov is overwhelming. There is no cloud of reasonable doubt. There is no doubt at all. He is…”

“… guilty of the murder of Olivia Yancy,” Judge Dermondy read to the court, “and guilty of the murder of Beth Jenkins.”