The Borzoi Killings

39.

When Raquel Rematti emerged from the courthouse to the stone plaza, she found what she expected: dozens of cameras and boisterous reporters. It was chaos, like a demonstration veering out of control.

She stopped behind the microphones. It was another clear winter day. When the sound of the crowd subsided slightly, she said into the microphones clustered around her, “Today’s guilty verdict is the result of a deeply flawed prosecution and a trial in which the jurors were deprived of essential information. It is a shameful result. It is a prosecution that had its source in a blatant rush to judgment. It was directed not just at Juan Suarez but in effect at an entire community of men and women whose only offense is that they came to America, as all of our ancestors did, for a better life.”

Julie Harrison, a reporter from NBC who once had dinner with Raquel, asked, “Will there be an appeal?”

“Certainly. Throughout my career I have had confidence in our criminal justice system. Many jury convictions in high-profile cases are reversed.”

Harrison asked, “What issues can you raise?”

“Many,” Raquel said, “and they stem from the first hours after the tragic killing of Brad Richardson. First, with no concrete evidence-no eyewitnesses, no tell-tale traces of anything at the crime scene-they hunted down Juan Suarez. They did this solely on the say-so of Joan Richardson. The rich, powerful, profoundly troubled, and lying Joan Richardson. The prosecution never looked for another person. And, in fact, as you saw in the courtroom, the DA’s office succeeded in doing all it could to prevent the jury from hearing about all the other people who surrounded Brad Richardson at the time of his death.”

Another voice, deeper in the crowd, asked, “What else?”

“The government’s staggering misconduct, and the court’s willingness to condone it. We know that Juan Suarez did not steal anything, we know that two rogue detectives did, and we know that the jury was prevented in the courtroom from hearing anything about that.

“We also know that an honorable woman, a person of integrity, came forward to tell us extremely troubling information about how her forensic work was thwarted and then was silenced. I understand that even now she is the victim of retaliation, placed on involuntary leave without pay.

“This trial is Alabama justice in the 1930s, not a fair trial in the America of the twenty-first century.”

Raquel Rematti knew that her critical words, broadcast to the world, would end in disciplinary proceedings that could result in revoking her law license. Lawyers lived in a feudal regime: they weren’t supposed to say what they truly believed about prosecutors or judges, they were expected to keep in line with an unwritten set of standards controlling what it was permissible to say about the system. There were serious costs to violating the code of silence.

Raquel wasn’t concerned about these costs.

Another voice rang out: “Where is your client now?”

“He is being returned to the detention center in Riverhead where he has been held in deplorable conditions for months.”

“Can you say something about that? Why deplorable?”

“Not only has his treatment been harsh, he has been assaulted by prisoners acting, we believe, at the direction of a Mexican drug lord, Oscar Caliente, whose inexplicable contacts with Brad Richardson I was not allowed to explore. The prison staff did nothing to stop the deadly attack. And then they prepared a report that was not just a whitewash. It was a fabrication.”

“What was your client’s reaction to the verdict?”

No one in all her years of practice had ever asked that question. “Thank you, I want to address that. Prosecutors, judges, the public-and you in the media-never see criminal defendants as men and women, as people who have feelings, fears, hopes, thoughts, love for their children and others. Instead you see all of them as evil-doers.”

She stopped briefly when someone, a heckler, shouted, “Come on, lady, cut the bullshit.”

“Juan Suarez is human. When he heard the verdict, he was very disappointed, he continues to assert his own innocence-and I fully agree with him-on the accusation that he killed Brad Richardson. But Juan Suarez is also a stoic. He’s never once raged at the racism that brought about this prosecution. He’s never once complained about the unfairness of the trial. He is now what he always has been: patient, decent, and respectful.”

Raquel Rematti began to turn away from the microphones when someone asked, “Can you comment about Theresa Bui, the woman who was killed at your house?”

“Theresa was a remarkable woman-intelligent, caring, attractive in every imaginable way. She was also growing into a great lawyer. She enriched my life. Now that this trial is over, I’m going to join her lovely family and join in their grief.”

“There’s information that you were the target, not Theresa. It that so?”

Raquel was already making her way through the dense crowd. Two microphones followed her. “If that’s so, then it would have been far better if I was the one who died.”

“What steps are you taking to protect yourself?”

Struggling steadily through the press of men and women, Raquel Rematti thought about the months of her cancer. She said: “I always pray for God’s will.”