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,
