bumbled his way along, scoring an inconsequential point here and a dubious point there. He completely missed prosecution weaknesses.
O’Connor came to his cross-examinations totally unprepared and without a plan. And he refused to listen to the advice of his co-counsels on which points to make and which pitfalls to avoid.
O’Connor’s questions were so convoluted and meandering that Judge Levin frequently had to ask him to rephrase them so the witness—and the court—could understand them.
O’Connor constantly lied to Demjanjuk about what was really happening in the trial. He took credit for every success and blamed Sheftel and Gill for every failure. And he conspired to undermine Demjanjuk’s confidence in his co-counsels.
Sheftel thought that O’Connor was more interested in Mark O’Connor than in his client. He was always giving interviews to the press and smiling into TV cameras instead of preparing his cross-examinations. He was so vain that he once asked Sheftel to request the court to install a TV monitor at the defense table so he could watch himself in real time. And he was so insensitive that he asked Sheftel to petition the court for permission to allow O’Connor’s wife to sit at the defense table as a paralegal, which she was not.
In sum, Sheftel told Ed Nishnic that the defense was losing the case now, and would most certainly lose it in the end, if O’Connor stayed on.
Sheftel had two private issues with O’Connor that he didn’t share with Ed. One was philosophical and the other was deeply personal.
O’Connor believed that the Demjanjuk case could be won, and that he was indeed winning it. Sheftel believed that the court had already made up its mind. John Demjanjuk is Ivan the Terrible and must die in the gallows like Eichmann. Sheftel believed that the defense was certain to win, not in Dov Levin’s court, but on appeal in Israel’s Supreme Court. The defense strategy, therefore, should be to build a strong case for an appeal.
Sheftel had already put both courts on notice. Two weeks before his conversation with Johnnie, he had filed a motion requesting the three judges to resign because of their hostility toward Demjanjuk. When they refused, he appealed to the Supreme Court and lost.
Sheftel also had a deeply personal motive for exposing the failures of Mark O’Connor. It was almost a vendetta. O’Connor had not stood up for Sheftel when Judge Levin dressed him down in his chambers during a recess after he had called Levin’s proceedings a “show trial.” All three judges were furious at the insult, which, of course, had been caught on camera.
“I don’t understand why the court is treating the defense so harshly,” O’Connor complained to Judge Levin during the in camera scolding.
“The court is treating the defense with great respect,” Levin said. “The problem is not the defense. The problem is
Then Levin softened. “This is the trial of your life. Don’t ruin yourself,” he advised Sheftel. “Listen to what I am saying and apologize.”
Sheftel didn’t mind apologizing. It was the begging he found humiliating. But beg he did, and most eloquently. He never forgave Mark O’Connor.
Back in Cleveland, the Demjanjuk family decided on a compromise without informing their husband and father. With his critical testimony looming larger and ever more important, John Demjanjuk had enough to worry about. The family told O’Connor that they expected the defense to finally start working together like a team. Autocracy was out. Democracy was in. From now on, each defense decision would be decided by vote. The majority wins.
It didn’t work. O’Connor, Sheftel, and Gill soon dragged their differences into the courtroom. They bickered loudly and publicly before spectators, TV cameras, and the bench. At one point, O’Connor bluntly told the media, “I would never buy a used car from Sheftel.” It was clear to everyone who watched and listened that the defense was falling apart.
It was O’Connor who drove the final nail into his own coffin. He and Sheftel got into a heated argument over the cross-examination of prosecution witness Otto Horn, who had supervised the burying of corpses at Treblinka and had, more or less, identified Demjanjuk’s photo as that of Ivan the Terrible. The argument quickly grew angry and accusatory.
“You’re fired,” said O’Connor, who was known for his explosive temper.
“You’re hired,” said Johnnie, who viewed the argument as the final straw. And with that, Sheftel became the Demjanjuk family’s personal attorney and trial advisor.
The next step in the Demjanjuk family drama was obvious. Fire O’Connor. The problem was—the Demjanjuk
Demjanjuk’s behavior before and during the trial had been very erratic. One moment he was extending a hand to Treblinka survivor Eliyahu Rosenberg and saying, “Shalom!” The next moment he was calling the man a liar. One moment he was sitting passively in his dock listening to the trial over headphones, serene and seemingly uninterested, as if someone he didn’t know was on trial for his life. The next moment he seemed irritated. One moment he would ignore the taunting spectators. The next, he would clasp his hands in the air like a boxer who had just scored a KO and blow kisses to the gallery.
At one point, Demjanjuk shocked the entire courtroom—spectators, bench, prosecutors, and his own defense. He raised his hand at the end of the cross-examination of Professor Wolfgang Schefler. Judge Levin recognized him. Demjanjuk told Levin that he had some questions he wanted to ask the professor.
“These questions are very important to me,” Demjanjuk said. “I am a long time in jail now and I don’t know what the future may hold for me.”
O’Connor apologized to the court for the interruption. The prosecution objected. Levin granted the request. “This is a most important trial,” Levin said, ordering a microphone for Demjanjuk. “It is very important to the accused to ask one or two questions. The same questions—it appears to the accused—that the defense doesn’t manage to formulate properly.”
Historian Wolfgang Schefler, who had testified at the Cleveland denaturalization trial, was a prosecution expert witness on Trawniki. He had just finished answering cross-examination questions about the two kinds of uniforms—black and khaki—that he claimed the Trawniki men wore. And he had testified that the man in the picture on the Trawniki card appeared to be wearing the black uniform of a Trawniki man.
“Professor Schefler!” Demjanjuk began. His “cross-examination” would last forty-five minutes. “You said that black uniforms were introduced into Trawniki later, and at first there were some sort of yellowish uniform. I have heard that is not true, and I would like you to clarify this.”
Schefler told Demjanjuk that he didn’t say yellowish uniforms but khaki. When Demjanjuk kept pressing, Schefler lost his composure. “Maybe
Even Judge Levin seemed stunned by Schefler’s response. “This last offer is not acceptable,” Levin said. And O’Connor muttered loud enough for the bench to hear, “Impartial, huh?”
Demjanjuk next questioned Schefler about the alleged photograph of himself on the Trawniki card. “I saw it first eight years ago, and I’ve seen a great many, many things that apparently would show that this is a forgery.”
Demjanjuk then said something that stung the defense table. “For example,” he said, “I was also wearing a pullover.”
The defense almost cheered when Demjanjuk finally sat down. He had practically admitted being a Trawniki man… unless, of course, Demjanjuk had been mistranslated.
Demjanjuk exhibited the same mood swings in his Ayalon prison cell. At one point, he tried to push visiting police investigator Alex Ish-Shalom out the door. On other occasions, he chatted with him as if he were a friend instead of a cop on a fishing expedition. Demjanjuk remained so distant from the trial that he didn’t want to discuss it, even with his family. And when his daughter Irene came to visit, all he wanted to do was sing Ukrainian folk songs. It was as if he was living in a state of shock—this can’t be happening to me. Hadn’t the court, and Israel, already found him guilty? So why be concerned if things weren’t going well? At times, he seemed depressed. At
