MR. JAYWALKER: How did these men treat you?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Some of them were nice to me. Some of them weren't.
MR. JAYWALKER: Tell us about some of the ones who weren't.
MS. TANNENBAUM: They…they did things to me.
MR. JAYWALKER: What kinds of things?
MS. TANNENBAUM: You know.
MR. JAYWALKER: No, we don't know. Not un less you tell us.
MS. TANNENBAUM: They'd kiss me, touch me under my clothes, in places where they weren't supposed to. Make me touch them. Put their thing in my mouth, or on my front, or between my legs.
MR. JAYWALKER: Their thing?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Their penis.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you ever tell your mother?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes.
MR. JAYWALKER: And?
MS. TANNENBAUM: She'd slap me, say she didn't believe me. But I know she did. She knew.
MR. BURKE: Objection.
THE COURT: Sustained. Strike the part about what her mother knew. The jury will disregard it.
MR. JAYWALKER: What else, if anything, did she do or say?
MS. TANNENBAUM: She'd tell me not to lie, not to complain, that we needed the money for food. If I cried, she'd hit me.
MR. JAYWALKER: So what did you do?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I'd close my eyes and pre tend I wasn't there, that I was someplace else alto gether. I put up with it as long as I could. And when I couldn't put up with it anymore, I ran away.
MR. JAYWALKER: How old were you when you ran away?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Fourteen years and one day.
MR. JAYWALKER: How is it that you remem ber that?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I remember that because I
MR. JAYWALKER: And what did you get?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Nothing.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you ever see your
MS. TANNENBAUM: No. waited to see what I'd get for my birthday. mother again?
It wasn't just the squalor and the sexual abuse and the separation Jaywalker wanted the jurors to hear, although their transfixed silence spoke loudly enough about the impact those things were having upon them. But beyond that, he was laying out a pattern for them, a template of a mother not only willing to barter sex for food, but equally willing to enlist her only child as an accomplice to the practice. How surprising would it be that within a year or two of her flight from home, Samara herself would be imi tating her mother's survival strategy and adopting it as her own? Would the jurors excuse her behavior? Perhaps not. But at least they'd be able to understand her actions, and hopefully empathize with her. And empathy, Jaywalker firmly believed, lay at the doorstep to forgiveness.
He had Samara talk about how she'd hitchhiked her way west, careful to catch rides at truck stops, lest the police pick her up and send her back home. She described reaching Nevada, and finally Las Vegas itself, with high hopes of becoming a model or a showgirl.
MR. JAYWALKER: What happened to those hopes?
MS. TANNENBAUM: They didn't last very long.
MR. JAYWALKER: Why not?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I couldn't sing or dance. I was too young and too short. My legs weren't long enough. My breasts weren't big enough, and I didn't have any money to have them made bigger.
MR. JAYWALKER: So what did you do?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I tried lying about my age, but they check a lot out there. I'd bus tables, wash dishes, whatever I could. Usually I'd get fired after a week or two, when they'd find out that the Social Security number I'd given them didn't match up.
MR. JAYWALKER: Where did you live?
MS. TANNENBAUM: There are some very bad boardinghouses off the strip, places none of the tour ists ever get to see.
MR. JAYWALKER: How did you pay the rent?
MS. TANNENBAUM: With whatever money I could make working. And when that ran out
Her voice broke off, midsentence. They hadn't re hearsed it that way, or planned it. It just happened. Which was how the best stuff almost always came from the witness stand. You didn't script it. Instead, you tried to impart to the witness just what it was you were seeking to accomplish, the feeling you were striving to create. And every once in a while a witness would get it, and the result would be pure magic. Samara, by doing nothing more than stopping midsentence, showed Jaywalker that she'd gotten it, at least this one time, and worked a little bit of magic.
MR. JAYWALKER: And when the money ran out?
MS. TANNENBAUM: And when the money ran out, I did what my mother had done. I took men home, or let them take me home. And when they of fered me gifts or money afterwards, I kept it.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you consider yourself a prostitute?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Not at the time, I didn't.
MR. JAYWALKER: And now that you look back on it?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes, I'd have to say I was a prostitute.
MR. JAYWALKER: How do you feel about that?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I certainly don't feel good about it. I mean, I'm not going to brag about it or any thing like that. But I'm not ashamed of it, either, and
I'm certainly not going to lie about it. It's what I did.
It's part of my life. It's how I survived.
She'd been telling her story for nearly an hour now, and Jaywalker sensed that it had been long enough. As re ceptive as the jurors had seemed throughout it, he didn't want to risk overstaying his welcome. The same was true of Judge Sobel. To abuse the considerable leeway he'd shown would be a mistake. The last thing Jaywalker wanted to hear was, 'Let's move along, counselor.' So with a single question, he yanked Samara, and with her the trial itself, back to the business at hand.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did there come a time, Samara, when you met an individual named Barry Tannenbaum?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes, there did.
THE COURT: Forgive me, Mr. Jaywalker, but perhaps this would be as good a time as any to take our mid- morning recess.
MR. JAYWALKER: That would be fine, Your Honor.
There's a rule, which may be invoked by either side, that once a witness has begun testifying, there may be no dis cussion between the witness and the lawyer who's put the witness on the stand. When the witness happens to be the defendant, however, that rule gets trumped by a higher constitutional rule: the right to consult with counsel. At the moment the conflict provided something of a conundrum for Jaywalker, who'd never met a rule he didn't want to break. So in Samara's case, he ended up breaking both rules, first by telling her how well she was doing, and then by turning his back and walking away from her. Just in case Burke took the chance of asking Samara on cross-examina tion if she'd discussed her answers with her lawyer during recess, Jaywalker wanted her to be able to answer truth fully that she hadn't.
And there was another reason for his caution. Just as jurors watch the defendant like hawks in the courtroom, looking for some telltale sign of guilt or innocence, so do they continue to look for clues out in the corridor, in the elevator and down on the street. As grateful as Jaywalker was for having Samara out on bail, rather than locked up on Rikers Island, he was aware of the risks. The well-known defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, after
