times, as happy as a child with a new toy.
Most of the time, Demjanjuk lived in an optimistic world of his own creation. He decorated his cell walls with hundreds of letters, Christmas and Easter cards, pictures of Christ and the Virgin Mary, as if to insulate himself from the bad news of the courtroom.
Demjanjuk’s mood swings aside, the family had one thing going for it in its determination to get rid of John O’Connor. John Demjanjuk had never been an assertive man. He had always relied on his wife, Vera, to make the big decisions, and sometimes the small ones as well. Because he was passive by nature—not exactly the image of Ivan the Terrible—he had allowed his family to pick both lead attorneys, John Martin for the denaturalization trial and Mark O’Connor for the deportation hearing and the Jerusalem trial. If the family ganged up on him now, he would listen.
John Demjanjuk signed two blank pieces of paper the family gave him, either suspecting or knowing why. With the help of Sheftel, the family then drafted a letter above each signature. In one, Demjanjuk notified the court that he intended to fire O’Connor, asking for a trial extension to prepare for his defense with his new lead attorney. In the other, he told O’Connor he was finished.
“I am totally dissatisfied with your conduct of my defense, your conduct with my family, and your conduct with defense funds,” Demjanjuk wrote O’Connor. “These concerns of mine have been stated to you once and again previously…. Consequently, this is to notify you that you are being discharged immediately.”
Mark O’Connor was not happy about being sacked. His list of gripes against Sheftel sounded like Sheftel’s own list against O’Connor: not preparing for cross-examinations, trying to poison the Demjanjuk family against him, posing as the “savior” of John Demjanjuk, hogging media attention, making legal moves behind his back, and using the trial to boost his legal career.
O’Connor added three more gripes that were not on his co-counsel’s list. Sheftel was burned out and no longer capable of defending Demjanjuk because the rejection he experienced from his fellow countrymen had broken him. Furthermore, Sheftel was conspiring with the enemy—the prosecution—to get rid of O’Connor. And finally, Sheftel was a closet hypocrite, telling the Demjanjuk family that he supported them and would fight for them while in his heart he considered them to be anti-Semitic goyim.
O’Connor wrote Judge Levin a three-page letter accusing Sheftel of brainwashing the Demjanjuk family into getting him fired. “Mr. Sheftel convinced them to pressure the accused into signing two letters, backdated to June 30, 1987, removing his lead counsel from the case,” O’Connor wrote. “Mr. Demjanjuk had confided in me in prison that, although he desires my representation in the case, he must follow the direction of the family.”
O’Connor went on to warn the court of impending disaster if it accepted Sheftel as the new lead defense counsel. “Since Mr. Sheftel has refused for weeks to coordinate any trial preparation with me and visited the defense office in Jerusalem solely for the purpose of removing additional defense documents, he is
Then O’Connor tendered his resignation.
But it wasn’t quite that simple. “The decision to release the counsel is in our hands,” Judge Levin said in a special hearing on who would be in and who would be out. “We can accept it, and we can refuse to accept it,
The court needed to hear John Demjanjuk say that he wished to replace his lead counsel. Demjanjuk began his plea: “My family has decided to discharge O’Connor because he continued to work from my detriment—”
“And what is
“I have decided to accept my family’s decision. I am in a cage, I am in jail. So I am
“I can accept that answer except for the word ‘forced,’” Judge Levin said. “No one is forcing you. The decision has to be yours.”
“I told you that my family’s decision is
That settled, the court needed to know whom Demjanjuk chose to replace O’Connor. Sheftel offered the court a signed power-of-attorney. Given all the sneaky moves he had witnessed so far in the O’Connor firing fiasco, Judge Levin didn’t trust anyone.
“Does the defendant request that Mr. Sheftel be his defense attorney in the trial before us?” Levin asked Demjanjuk.
“Yes.”
“Did you sign the document Mr. Sheftel is holding in his hands?”
“Yes.”
“Do my colleagues and I understand correctly, that the defendant intends to tell us that from this moment on he will be represented by attorneys John Gill and Yoram Sheftel? Yes or no.”
“Yes.”
Demjanjuk then said in a strong, clear voice, “From everything that has been said here now, it seems to me that you are trying to scare me.”
Like Sheftel’s show trial comment, Demjanjuk’s accusation stung. “What kind of language is that?” Levin asked.
“Your Honor, I apologize for having used a word that wasn’t so appropriate,” Demjanjuk said. “But I’ve only got four years of education.”
The final issue to be settled was a possible delay of the trial because of a change of counsel. Levin made it clear that if Demjanjuk insisted on a postponement, it would be a deal breaker. No delay of trial was the condition allowing Demjanjuk to change his legal representation—a simple case of courtroom blackmail. Judge Levin had Demjanjuk by the throat and was squeezing. Demjanjuk gave in to the pressure and agreed not to ask for a delay.
“Does the defendant stand by his decision even if there is no postponement of the trial? Is that the defendant’s position?”
Demjanjuk said yes.
Mark O’Connor was out. According to the Demjanjuk family, he had been paid six hundred thousand dollars over the five years he served as Demjanjuk’s attorney. Yoram Sheftel was in, and he was bound to receive even more hate mail and death threats.
O’Connor returned to his law practice in suburban Buffalo. He would eventually be disbarred for one year by the Supreme Court of New York for, among other charges, “engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or manipulation… and comingling client funds with personal funds.” O’Connor would not seek readmission to the bar after the one-year penalty ended.
The O’Connor affair would have been little more than a sad and grubby struggle of attorneys over power and purse if the life of John Demjanjuk did not depend on the outcome. Was the Demjanjuk family’s decision to fire O’Connor and hire Sheftel a wise one? They didn’t have long to wait for an answer. Sheftel opened the defense of John Demjanjuk on July 27, 1987, one week after the court had accepted him as Demjanjuk’s new lead attorney.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Like the prosecution, the defense presented five expert witnesses to testify about the authenticity of the Trawniki card. As a group, they had two jobs: discredit the findings of the prosecution’s five expert witnesses and prove the card was a forgery.
The first defense expert was Edna Robertson, the defense’s answer to prosecution handwriting experts Amnon Bezaleli and Gideon Epstein. She looked promising on paper. An American psychologist from Panama City, Florida, with a master’s degree in graphology, she had made more than ten thousand signature comparisons,
