The Wrong Man

69

“Kathy Rubinkowski was a twenty-three-year-old college graduate who wanted to be a research scientist. It was her passion. And so while working a day job as a paralegal at a law firm, she went to school at night to get a master’s degree. She was like so many other young people living in our city-ambitious, dedicated, hardworking. She was chasing her version of the American dream.”

Wendy Kotowski was dressed in a simple gray suit. She spoke slowly to the jury in her opening statement, with her customary blend of nine parts clinical and straightforward, one part emotion and outrage. She had to make sure the jury saw that she cared about what happened to Kathy Rubinkowski, but otherwise she didn’t want to be the focus-the facts would be.

“January thirteenth of this year should have been no different than any other day. Kathy woke up that morning in her condominium in Franzen Park, at the intersection of Gehringer and Mulligan streets. She went to work at her downtown law firm and stayed until five-thirty. Then she went to her organic chemistry classes at night school from six to ten.

“She drove home and parked her car at some time approximating eleven that night. We’ll never know exactly what she had planned for the rest of that evening. Maybe she was going to study. Maybe she was going to veg out in front of the television. Maybe she was going to sleep. Or maybe she was thinking about tomorrow, which would be her twenty-fourth birthday, and the plans she had with her friends.

“But as I said, we’ll never know. Because she never saw her twenty-fourth birthday. She never saw her condo again. She barely made it past getting her bag out of the trunk of her car. Because on January thirteenth, at approximately eleven o’clock at night, Kathy Rubinkowski was accosted by that man, the defendant, Thomas Stoller.”

Wendy pointed at Tom, who was sitting next to me. His aunt Deidre had purchased a suit at a secondhand store that fit him, more or less, and I had thrown in a tie that I haven’t worn in ten years. I wanted him to look decent so he didn’t appear disrespectful of the proceedings, but by no means did I want him to look polished or buttoned up. It was one of the many artifices of the courtroom. The jury was forming initial and perhaps lasting impressions of Tom based on an appearance that bore absolutely no resemblance to reality.

“The defendant robbed Kathy Rubinkowski on that dark, lonely street,” Wendy said. “The defendant took her purse. He took her necklace. He took her cell phone. And he took something far more valuable. He took her life. He shot her in the head. He shot this defenseless woman right between the eyes.”

Most of the jurors winced or reacted in some way to those last sentences. She had delivered them well, for maximum impact. I would have said he shot her in the face, which sounded even worse. But Wendy was always one for understatement.

I paid close attention to how she phrased it. He took her purse, her necklace, her cell phone, her life. She implied that the robbery came first, then the shooting, but she didn’t explicitly detail an order of events. She wasn’t boxing herself into one particular theory. I knew what she thought-that Tom killed her first, then stole her possessions. The evidence lined up that way. But she had some problems with that theory and obviously knew it, so she was keeping things general for the time being.

Wendy recited the facts that would support her case. The murder weapon found in Tom’s possession, and the other things the police found with Tom: her purse, her cell phone, her necklace with the clasp broken, presumably yanked from her neck. Wendy brought each of these out individually, as if item after item implicated him ever further. I, on the other hand, would try to make them a package deal in the jury’s mind-if one link failed, the whole chain did.

She completed her opening statement in twenty minutes. Her case was pretty simple and straightforward.

“She didn’t mention the confession,” said Shauna.

Right. She was saving it. Understating her case. That was Wendy’s style. It would be a pleasant surprise, I guess.

The judge gave me the opportunity to give my opening. I’d already indicated that I would defer my opening until the defense case, because I wanted the element of surprise. I had lost Sergeant Hilton as a witness, but I had an idea as to how I could still use Dr. Sofian Baraniq, my expert. It was a gamble, but it was all I had.

“I’d like to defer my opening,” I told the judge. On balance, I thought, it was still the smart play.

I looked behind me. I caught Aunt Deidre’s eye, but that wasn’t the one I was looking for. I found him in the back row of the courtroom: Special Agent Lee Tucker of the FBI.

“Judge, I wonder if we could take a short break,” I said. We’d gotten a late start today, and it was coming up on eleven, so he probably wouldn’t give it to me. Lee would have to wait.

“Let’s try to get in a witness before lunch,” said the judge. “Ms. Kotowski?”

Wendy Kotowski stood.

“The state calls Officer Francis Crespo,” she said.