After listening to Marlene and taking a stroll around the block to clear his head, Karp had called Tommy Mack and given him a brief rundown of what had happened. The homicide chief berated himself for getting distracted by the case he was prosecuting, which had gone to the jury that day, and not “riding herd better” on Assistant Bureau Chief Pat Davis and other members of his bureau. But Karp had dismissed the self-criticism; the lack of oversight was one of the disadvantages of insisting that he and his bureau chiefs try cases to keep themselves sharp.
“This one slipped through the cracks,” Karp said. “Now the thing is to correct the problem and then make sure the cracks get filled in. I have an appointment first thing in the morning, but let’s meet at about ten and have Davis and Cohn join us at about eleven.”
He then called Murrow and gave him the same briefing. When he was finished, Karp’s administrative chief groaned loudly.
“Spit it out, Gilbert,” Karp said insistently, knowing what was coming.
Gilbert Murrow was a somewhat short and pudgy fellow who favored vests and round, wire-rimmed glasses that gave him the appearance of a research librarian. One of Murrow’s roles was to act as Karp’s liaison with the media; as such he sometimes complained that he was the only one in the office conscious of the fact that the position of district attorney was an elected one.
If there was a problem with the case, the press could be expected to make his life unpleasant. “At the risk of the slap-down I know I’m going to get,” he said, “I was just contemplating how the media is going to react. They’ve been running Columbia U Slasher newspaper exposes and television specials since Acevedo’s arrest. They’ve as much as convicted him. Now they’re going to look like fools who sensationalized this, and who do you think they’re going to take this out on?”
“Please spare me the rhetorical questions,” Karp replied, annoyed.
“Us… and more specifically, you, the New York DA who persecutes innocent young men on a whim,” Murrow said. “We’ll all be pilloried, but they’ll also use the tar and feathers on you.”
“And my reaction to what the media says is…?” He could feel Murrow slump into his seat even over the telephone.
“‘Who gives a rat’s ass.’”
“Right,” Karp said. “But it’s okay, Gilbert, it’s your job to give one, and I appreciate it. But the day I run this office according to how I’m going to be treated by the media instead of what’s right is the day I should be removed from this office.”
Murrow sighed again. “Yeah, and you’re right, but I had to say it. So what do you want me to do?”
Karp thought about it for a moment. His first reaction was to say “Our only option is to address this mistake as straightforwardly as possible and with transparency,” then another thought crossed his mind and he hesitated. “I want to sleep on it,” he said, and told his friend to show up in his office at eleven.
When the three new arrivals were seated, Karp looked from face to face, noting the apprehension on the visages of Davis and Cohn. Murrow just looked resigned.
“Okay, let’s get started,” Karp said. “I want to talk about the Yancy-Jenkins case, and the first thing I’ll say is that in the end, I take the blame for this fiasco.” He noticed Cohn shoot a quick glance at Davis. “Yes, ‘fiasco,’ and that’s putting it kindly. But as I said, the buck stops here. Apparently, I have not adequately expressed that the way we conduct business in this office is nonnegotiable.”
Karp let the comments sink in as the color drained from Davis’s face and Cohn’s expression went rigid. Guma studied his cigar as Fulton gazed up at the ceiling and Mack leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and hands clasped in front, as if praying that his subordinates could come up with some reasonable explanations.
Holding up two fingers, Karp stated categorically, “Let me emphasize again the gold standard around here. We need two things before we proceed with any case. The first is: are we absolutely, one thousand percent convinced that the defendant is factually guilty? Two: do we have legally admissible evidence to prove beyond any and all doubt that the defendant committed the crime?” He shook his head. “We didn’t meet either one of those criteria in Yancy-Jenkins.”
Karp then gutted the case, starting with his examination of the case file, noting the absence of a DD-5 regarding the provenance of the ring. He then moved on to the visit to see Dale Yancy, and finally the results of his wife’s investigation. “Before I even get to the ring,” he said, “I have several issues that should have raised red flags. Let’s start with the confession. Where’s the narrative?”
No one responded, so he went on. “Detective Graziani asked a lot of leading questions, particularly when the suspect didn’t give the ‘correct answer’ to the original question or balked,” he said. “All detectives do that to an extent to flesh out the details of a confession, but not until after the suspect has given a narrative-‘Here’s where I was, what I did, how I did it’-of what happened. But here there was no narrative against which we could have sought some corroboration. In fact, more often than not, Graziani provided the answers when he asked the questions.”
Karp picked up the case file folder that was lying on his desk and turned to a page in the transcript he’d earmarked. “For instance, this is a passage where Acevedo has just told Graziani that the deceased, Olivia Yancy, was his girlfriend, which he later will admit was a lie. So Graziani asks him if he and Yancy had been having ‘kinky sex and it got out of hand.’ I’m reading now from page three of the transcript of the statement the defendant gave to Detective Graziani.
“Acevedo’s answer: ‘No. We don’t have sex.’
“Graziani’s leading question: ‘But you tied her up and put duct tape over her mouth?’
“Answer: ‘I guess.’
“Question: ‘You guess? Or you know?’
“Answer: ‘I know.’
“Question: ‘And you cut her clothes off with your knife.’”
Karp stopped reading for a moment and looked at Cohn and Davis. “I’m sure you recognize that Graziani is supplying information to Acevedo that only someone with knowledge of the crime scene would have.” When the two nodded he continued. “Graziani has just told, not asked, the suspect if he cut the victim’s clothes off her with a knife. And Acevedo answered, ‘Yes.’” Karp looked up from the transcript.
“He admitted the same things to me,” Cohn pointed out.
“You’re absolutely right,” Karp agreed. “Nearly word for word.”
“An indication of truthfulness,” Davis suggested.
“Maybe,” Karp conceded. “Or that he memorized what he was led to say.”
“I wasn’t leading him in the Q amp; A,” Cohn said, “when I questioned him.”
“You’re right,” Karp said. “Your Q amp; A was right out of the book. But it was already too late; he knew what to say.”
“He’s not like one of those guys who confesses to things he didn’t do for the publicity,” Cohn said. “He tried to run from the cops when they stopped him. And he first denied everything-the Bronx case, our case. He was trying to avoid being caught, not give himself up.”
Karp nodded. “However, he didn’t put up much of a fight. Basically, Graziani would ask a question, the suspect would answer, the detective would then tell him he was wrong and suggest what the correct answer would be, and Acevedo would agree.”
“But isn’t it normal for a perp to lie the first time they’re asked?” Cohn asked.
“And maybe he’s just not a good liar, or he feels guilty,” Davis said. “So all it takes is a little push in the right direction.”
“Could be,” Karp replied. “But there’s a difference between a push in the right direction and being told what to say. I’ve been informed that the defendant has a history of confessing to minor offenses at his school and possibly even misdemeanor vandalism.”
“That’s a long way from confessing to murder,” Cohn said.
“Right again,” Karp said. “But it’s certainly something we should have checked out. Has anybody bothered to ask Detective Fulton if he could have one of his detectives run this stuff down?”
Silence. Karp thought for a moment before continuing. “I also have a problem with Graziani lying to Acevedo about there being a witness who saw him leave the Yancy apartment building.”
“The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that police officers can lie, or use trickery, to get a suspect to admit the truth,” Davis said. “Cops do it all the time. Such as telling a suspect that he’s been caught on surveillance video or that he left a fingerprint at the scene of the crime.”
