by Ron Liebman
Once reseated, I watched the judge look over first to the prosecution’s table and then ours.
“Counsel,” the judge said, “we have a note from the jury. They have reached a verdict. Shall we bring them in?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” both sides said.
“Very well,” the judge said, then told the bailiff to do just that.
I watched as the bailiff knocked on the side door at the opposite end of the courtroom. He opened the door and stepped aside as the jury members one by one filed back into the jury box.
There’s another old trial lawyers’ adage: If the returning jury looks at the defendant, that’s a good sign. If they don’t, it’s curtains. You’re going down.
I sat at trial table between my two lawyers, intently watching the incoming jurors.
One or two took a quick glance in my direction. Most seemed purposively to look away.
Oh, boy.
50.
They say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die.
It’s supposed to be some sort of chemical phenomenon where a massive dose of adrenaline is released into your system and in literally seconds all that you were and all that you did sprints across your mind’s screen.
The jury members were still taking their seats. Everyone in the courtroom sat perfectly quiet. Waiting. Tension rode the air like a hot current. It’s always like that when a jury returns with a verdict.
I wasn’t dying, though it felt like it. Somehow the days of testimony that had preceded this very moment shot through my head like a bullet. (Shades of Mad Dog.) It jolted me.
Dipak Singh had been the first prosecution witness.
Part of his plea deal in India was the obligation to appear at my trial in New York. On direct examination he testified that I knew all about his payoffs to the Indian judge, that he had disclosed everything to me at our London luncheon. He claimed that I’d sent Jeremy away from the table, so he wasn’t there when Dipak spilled the beans.
Jeremy didn’t cross-examine Dipak, since he was part of the London luncheon scenario. (He also didn’t testify that Dipak was lying about his absence from the table. You can’t ordinarily be a witness and a lawyer in the same case.) My “lead” lawyer did only a so-so job. He tried to get Dipak to admit that he had taken money under the table from Peter Moss to bring Dunn & Sullivan into the case.
The payoff funds were well hidden by a wire transfer from an offshore account to an account under a fictitious name in India. So Dipak denied it even though the paper trail, such as it was, showed timing consistent with such payments.
“No, my good sir,” Dipak had said. “I have not received anything from this man . . . Peter Moss. Never even met the gentleman.”
I saw juror number seven nod. Was he buying Dipak’s perjury?
When it was her turn on the stand, Anka Stankowski told the jury that she had done her best to supervise me and had repeatedly asked for assurances that all was on the up-and-up.
“I was very careful with this young man,” she testified on direct examination, after trying her best to squeeze her voluminous frame into the narrow witness chair. “With hindsight I can say that something seemed not right, but he kept assuring me that all was in order. You know our firm enjoys the highest reputation, and I did my best to see that this young partner behaved properly, as both our law firm and the law itself demands.”
On cross-examination Jeremy confronted Anka with documents we had subpoenaed from Dunn & Sullivan showing the big bump in stock she was to get once the IPO took place.
She acknowledged the extra stock but claimed it was merely an incentive for the time she spent monitoring young partners like me. And anyway, she told the jury, there hadn’t been an IPO, so she got nothing. (With my indictment, the impending trial, and the attendant bad publicity, Carl and the bankers had decided to let things cool off before pulling the trigger on the IPO.)
Another nod from juror number seven, and now one from juror number two.
And then firm chairman Carl Smith took the stand.
I have to admit, he gave a masterful performance on direct examination. He was charming, removing his eyeglasses from time to time and addressing his responses to the jury as though they were cherished friends.
Carl told the jury how saddened he was about the rotten apple he’d had to pluck from the golden barrel that was Dunn & Sullivan. Such a tragedy, he said, shaking his head in grief for the benefit of the jury. Such a promising young man. Yes, maybe he should have pressed harder about what was going on in the GRE case. But he had sought and received repeated assurances from me that all was going smoothly, as he had from Anka, to whom he had delegated the task of keeping tabs on me.
“We value our reputation,” he told the jurors, eyeballing each one in turn. “Still, I can’t help feeling sorry for this young man. If it were in my power to forgive him, I would,” he added, making clear to the jury that they need do no such thing.
On cross-examination Jeremy did his best. He later told me how weird it felt at first, cross-examining his former law firm’s chairman, but how quickly that hesitancy dissipated and how he had no trouble going after the son of a bitch.
The trial transcript bears it out.
Jeremy: Carney Blake wasn’t the only young partner to whom you assigned one of your law firm’s contingent-fee plaintiffs’ cases, isn’t that right?
Carl: As firm chairman I don’t assign cases. Others do that for me.
Jeremy: So you are denying under oath that you had any role in assigning those cases to young and relatively inexperienced partners?
Carl: I didn’t say that. You’re twisting my words.
Jeremy: It is a fact, is it not, that you had a role in selecting Carney Blake for the GRE case?
Carl: (doing his best to wiggle out of the question) Are you asking me to explain our law firm’s case selection procedures?
Jeremy: No, sir, I am not. (then . . .) I will ask the court stenographer to read my last question back to you.
Whereupon the stenographer read back Jeremy’s last question verbatim.
Jeremy: (continuing) Do you understand the question? Yes or no.
Carl: (glowering at Jeremy—did the jurors see that?) Yes, I understand the question.
Jeremy: Then answer it.
Carl: Yes.
Jeremy: Yes what?
Carl: (visibly annoyed) Yes, I had a role.
And that’s pretty much how it went. Carl admitted that all of the contingent-fee cases Dunn & Sullivan took in had been assigned to young and relatively inexperienced partners. He also acknowledged that Big Law typically did not take on these kinds of cases. Carl affirmed the IPO plan, but like Anka he blew it off because there had not been an IPO (yet).
Jeremy hammered at Carl for another hour or so. Now, unlike during his behavior on direct, Carl was visibly testy with Jeremy as he was continuously confronted with questions he didn’t like. That surprised me. I didn’t think Carl would lose his cool like that. Jeremy had gotten under his skin, no doubt about it.
Carl was the last prosecution witness. The government then rested its case. Following a motion by the defense for summary dismissal of all charges (quickly denied by the judge), it was our turn.
We had some accounting experts and legal scholars testify about plaintiffs’ cases and how Big Law had historically acted as defense counsel and not plaintiffs’ lawyers. We tried to put a banking expert on the stand to testify about this new quest for law-firm IPOs and the windfall profits they would generate for certain partners. The prosecution objected, telling the judge that this had no relevance to what I did or didn’t do. The judge bought it and wouldn’t allow our evidence.
I did not take the stand in my own defense.
I wanted to. Thought the jury needed to hear from me. My lawyers (Jeremy especially) said no. Too risky, they said.
If I took the stand, on cross-examination I would have to admit that I didn’t catch on in time to all the bad shit that was happening. And I should have. Or the jury wouldn’t buy my explanation and conclude that I was lying, that I must have figured out what was going on and chose to do nothing about it. Either way I would look bad in the eyes of the jury. So no. Don’t take the stand, they said.
It was my call.
I listened to my lawyers and didn’t testify. If that was a mistake, it was a big one.
Then we rested.
Both sides made final argument, the judge instructed the jury what law to apply to the facts, and the jury members were then sent back to their room to deliberate.
And we waited. It took the jury three full days to reach a verdict. As I said earlier, at one point during the second day, the jury sent a note out to the judge telling him they were hopelessly deadlocked and couldn’t agree on a verdict.
The judge ordered the jury back into the courtroom and read them the Allen or dynamite charge, and then sent them back for more deliberations. On day three they reached a verdict. And now here they sat as the judge addressed their foreman.
“Mr. Foreman,” the judge asked, “has the jury reached a verdict in the case of the United States versus Carney Blake?”
The foreman rose to his feet. “We have, Your Honor.”
“Have you completed the jury verdict form you were handed when you began deliberations?”
“We have, Your Honor.”
The judge then instructed his bailiff to retrieve the completed form and hand it up to him.
I sat between my lawyers and watched as the bailiff retrieved the form and walked it over to the judge’s bench. The judge unfolded the paper and read it. He looked at me.
Hard as I tried, I couldn’t read the judge. His face was absolutely blank. I quickly glanced over to the jurors. The foreman had retaken his seat. Not one juror was looking my way.
“Prepare yourself,” my lawyer whispered as the judge handed the form to the bailiff with instructions to return it to the jury foreman. I turned for a quick glance at the spectators’ gallery. My brother, my dad, Diane—all of them were intently watching me. I tried a weak smile but couldn’t even manage that. I turned back to face the front of the courtroom.
Jeremy and I exchanged glances. Was that worry I was seeing? Of course it was. How could it not be?
The courtroom was still. Not a sound.
“The defendant will rise,” the judge said.
I got to my feet.
“The jury foreman will rise,” the judge said.
He got to his feet.
The judge nodded to the bailiff.
“How say you?” the bailiff asked the foreman. “As to count one of the indictment. Is the defendant Carney Blake guilty or not guilty?”
The foreman looked down at the sheet of paper between his hands. He said nothing at first, seemed to be . . . what? Rereading it? Did he catch a mistake? What was taking him so long?
Then he looked up. He faced the judge. He faced the prosecutors. Then us. But he wasn’t really looking at anything. He seemed frightened? Worried?
And then.
The bailiff, repeating. “How say you, Mr. Foreman? As to count one of the indictment. Is the defendant Carney Blake guilty or not guilty?”
Jeremy got to his feet and stood beside me. That caused my other lawyer hesitantly to do the same. Jeremy gripped my arm and held tight.
“As to count one,” the foreman finally said. “We the jury find the defendant Carney Blake . . .”
ANOTHER TWO YEARS LATER
EPILOGUE
Mr. Blake?”
I rise to address the judge. “Your Honor?”
“Are you ready to give the jury your opening statement?”
“I am, Your Honor.”
“Then kindly step to the podium, and let’s get this show on the road.”
This judge is like that, using vernacular phrases (“show on the road”), thinking it makes him appear less stuffy, more a man of the people. This anemic-looking Asian-American jurist, sporting an early Beatles mop-top haircut and granny glasses, who had been appointed by a very conservative president, thinking the judge was a safe-bet right-winger, and whose views then did a one-eighty once he was confirmed by the Senate. So what? His views are his business, as long as he runs his courtroom fairly and efficiently. As he does.
I grab my notes and slowly walk to the podium set up directly in front of the jury.
As you no doubt have figured out by now, I was acquitted on all charges. It was torture standing and waiting for the bailiff and the foreman to work their way through all four of the counts in the indictment. I think I held my breath so long that I almost passed out by the time the foreman announced the final “Not guilty.”
And a lot has happened since then.
Peter Moss’s Mason Rose and Dunn & Sullivan merged. Well, they called it a merger, but it was more an acquisition, a semi-hostile takeover by Peter Moss’s law firm of a crippled Dunn & Sullivan, and most decidedly not a merger of equals.
Big Law was still spiraling downward. Defections continued, as did loss of revenue. Peter Moss had brought his corporate-raider skills to the game. At the now-combined law firm, he quickly cleaned house, firing even more deadwood lawyers and staff. He dumped those other worthless plaintiffs’ class-action cases that Carl had brought in. Ruthlessly stole as many clients from competing law firms as he could. Moss brought “New Law” to what had been Big Law.
Before the merger—in fact, soon after my arrest and indictment—Carl had withdrawn Dunn & Sullivan’s legal representation of the Indian plaintiffs in the GRE case. (Moss then dropped his lawsuit against the firm and me.) The newly minted law firm of Blake and Lichtman picked up the case.
We dismissed the New York lawsuit seeking to seize GRE’s assets based on the Indian court’s judgment and filed a different case back in federal court in Manhattan to try the entire matter anew. By that point there was no reason not to do so. Most all of what had happened earlier was by then on the public record. We established jurisdiction to keep the case in court and overcame all delay issues raised against us.
By then the takeover of Dunn & Sullivan had been completed. The combined firm was renamed Moss and Sullivan.
Moss and Sullivan wanted to continue the GRE defense begun by its predecessor, Mason Rose, subject to any objection from us. I told the judge we had no objection. No problema, as Geraldo Alvarez would have said.
And speaking of Geraldo.
His case did come to trial, and he was acquitted. It seemed that the wiretap had not been lawfully authorized, and so almost all of the prosecution’s evidence against him became inadmissible.
“Nice going,” Geraldo told me after he was released from custody. “Thanks, Counselor.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And I didn’t have to kill anyone this time. Much easier.”
“Tell me you’re joking?”
Geraldo didn’t respond. He shrugged his shoulders. Whatever.
He’s back in jail again, held without bail on a new set of charges Blake and Lichtman are still his lawyers. In fact, thanks to the earlier acquittal, we’ve picked up a growing roster of criminal cases. Between that work and the plaintiffs’ civil cases we now handle—almost all opposing Big Law firms, all on percentage-of-recovery fee arrangements—our firm’s revenue has steadily climbed.
But that’s not the primary reason we take on those new civil cases. Nope, it’s the sheer pleasure we get out of beating the pants off Big Law. (And we don’t use hedge funds to finance our cases. We hold back a portion of our fees and keep them in a war chest to fund subsequent ones.)
I’m standing at the podium adjusting my notes. About to begin my opening statement to the jury. I look up and smile at them.
My memoir was
published several months after my acquittal. My publisher was eager to get the book into the shops and onto e-readers while my story was still fresh. One of the jury-qualification questions posed by GRE’s defense counsel—none other than Mr. Peter Moss in the flesh—had the judge ask prospective jurors if they had read my book. I agreed that any prospective juror who had actually read the book would be excused from service.
This case being the civil suit about to commence by the Indian plaintiffs’ class against GRE.
And where was Carl Smith in all this?
After the “merger” he and Peter Moss served as co–managing partners of the reconstituted law firm. Guess how long that lasted? Peter Moss still had it in for Carl. There would be no forgiving and forgetting. Like the Italians say, revenge is a dish best served cold.
Carl finally took his hand off the coconut when he withdrew Dunn & Sullivan’s representation of the GRE plaintiffs, as I said, pre-merger, at the time I was arrested and charged.
And what does he do? He sticks his hand right back through the hole in the box. It seems there was another coconut in there all along. And this one was even bigger. Even juicier. That other coconut? The IPO, of course. And there was Carl’s fist, now grasping that other coconut for dear life.
Carl still wanted to cash out. The problem was that Peter Moss wanted to cash in. Big money was to be made from a revamped version of traditional Big Law. The last thing Peter Moss needed was independent outside stockholders looking over his shoulder. So, as far as he was concerned, there would be no IPO.
Carl pushed and pushed. He had reinvigorated the bankers. That wasn’t hard. Bankers were like the carriage horses tourists take from Columbus Circle for a spin through Central Park. They both wore blinders when it came to doing their jobs.
So Carl pushed, and Peter Moss then pried Carl’s tight fist off that second coconut. How did he do that?
Carl was expelled from the new firm.
The grounds for said expulsion? It starts with the NYPD.