Outrage

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “Many times.”

  “Really?” Karp asked. “Did you cry when you saw the terror in Olivia Yancy’s eyes, or as you told the Cassinos, did you tell her to shut the fuck up or you were going to cut her head off?”

  “I was thinking I was Russian soldier.”

  “And did you cry as you were raping Olivia Yancy while her mother lay dying on the floor?”

  Kadyrov didn’t answer. He just sat there, stone-faced, as Karp took another step toward him.

  “I know you want us to believe that you thought you were a Russian soldier,” Karp said sarcastically. “But did you cry when you yanked her head back and sawed away at her neck? Or as she drowned in her own blood?”

  “No. I—”

  “And long after you were no longer thinking you were a Russian soldier, like when you were at the Cassinos’ apartment and boasted that you were the Columbia U Slasher, did you cry then?”

  “No. I could not show weakness.”

  “Nor, apparently, compassion or remorse. And how about later when you went to the Cassinos’ apartment to try to get the blue shirt back so that it couldn’t be used against you in court, did you cry then?”

  “No, I was frightened.”

  “More frightened than Beth Jenkins or Olivia Yancy?”

  “Objection,” Langton shouted.

  “I withdraw the question,” Karp said. He glared hard at Kadyrov, who blanched. “You didn’t cry at all for these women, did you, Mr. Kadyrov? Instead, you enjoyed murdering and raping them, didn’t you?”

  “Objection! The witness has not said that.”

  “No, you haven’t yet, have you, Mr. Kadyrov,” Karp said, continuing. “But you liked seeing the terror, hearing their helpless cries, knowing that they were aware they were going to die at your hands, didn’t you, Mr. Kadyrov?”

  “Your Honor, I’ve objected!” Langton shouted.

  “Sit down, sooka!” Kadyrov screamed from the stand. He stood and faced the jury as the court officers started to move toward him, but Karp extended his right arm and motioned for them to stop.

  Spitting, Kadyrov yelled, “If you vote to kill me, you’ll have my life on your consciences. I’ll haunt your sleep and will be in the shadows watching you for as long as you live.”

  Calmly, without batting an eye, Karp said, “Sit down, Mr. Kadyrov, your threats have the impact of a feather. We’re not through with you yet. Your Honor, no further questions, but I do want to call a rebuttal witness.”

  “Your Honor, I am calling Moishe Sobelman, whose experiences as a child are not just similar to those of the defendant but greatly exceed them in horror,” Karp told the court. “The defendant just gave us a sob story about how the atrocities he committed against Olivia Yancy and Beth Jenkins are somehow excusable in light of what he experienced as a child. Mr. Sobelman is an expert in his own right regarding the murder of family members by soldiers acting under the guise of military authority, as well as how someone might cope with such an experience.”

  Dermondy thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “I’m going to allow it, Mr. Karp, but let’s not overdo.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Karp said, and turned to the back of the courtroom, where in a moment Moishe Sobelman entered.

  Carrying himself with dignity, the little man made his way to the witness stand and took the oath to tell the truth. Then, under Karp’s questioning, he told the story of Sobibor, the Nazi death camp—the deaths of his mother, sister, and father; the horror of working as a Sonderkommando—until at last he came to his days as a partisan and the capture of the three German SS officers whose car had broken down.

  The old man paused to wipe at his eyes and blow his nose. “I played the part of judge, jury, and, may God forgive me, lord high executioner. With my anger raging inside, I decided that the punishment must fit the crime.”

  The courtroom was absolutely still as Sobelman finished his story. But Karp had another question. “Mr. Sobelman, what did the Nazis do at Sobibor after you escaped?”

  “They murdered everyone who remained and then bulldozed the place and tried to make it look like farm country,” Sobelman replied. “As if it had never happened.”

  “And why do you think they did that?” Karp asked.

  “I think they knew that they had gone beyond the boundaries of all civilized society,” he said. “And that they knew what their punishment would be if the world found out what they had done there.”

  “And what would that punishment have been?”

  Sobelman blinked and then lifted his chin. “The same as what I meted out to Hans Schultz. For some evil, there is only one answer. And that is to be cast beyond the circle of all humanity. For some evils, only death is justice.”

  EPILOGUE

  KARP HANDED THE CRIME SCENE PHOTOGRAPHS TO THE jury foreman and stepped back. The photos depicted the brutal outrages Kadyrov had inflicted on Olivia Yancy and Beth Jenkins. Now the jurors, as well as the police officers and crime scene technicians who’d been called to view that horrible outrage, would have the visual result of the defendant’s inhumanity indelibly imprinted in their minds’ eyes.

  The photographs were not admitted in the prosecution’s case-in-chief. Judge Dermondy had ruled that their prejudicial impact against Kadyrov had outweighed their probative value. But during the sentencing phase, the prosecution had more latitude. The AME’s vivid descriptions of the physical impacts, the sheer devastation of two individuals, was graphic and horrifying. Yet the photos, by any civilized measure, were emotionally appalling.

  From experience, Karp knew that time would help those images fade, but he also knew that they would never go away entirely. He also believed that the administration of justice required that good people—cops, attorneys, and private citizens called to serve on juries—do their jobs thoroughly and witness evil’s work so that evil could be stopped.

  “Understanding does not mean that we forgive or excuse the brutal, vicious, methodical, and inhumane horrors he perpetrated on two innocent women.” He was well into his final summation and had set the stage for asking the jury to sentence a man to death. It was not a request he took lightly, and it was one he made rarely, believing that the death penalty should be reserved only for the worst of the worst whose inhumanity and depravity demanded no lesser punishment.

  Beginning with “Life was good,” Karp had led the jurors back through each brutal moment of the attacks on Olivia Yancy and Beth Jenkins, as well as the defendant’s attempts to get away with what he had done. Now it was time to bring it home and, as Moishe had stated so eloquently, cast Ahmed Kadyrov beyond the circle of humanity.

  As he waited for the photographs to circulate among the jurors, Karp glanced back at the gallery, where his wife and twin boys sat behind the prosecution table. He looked at the cast on Zak’s hand and, despite the pathos of the moment, noticed that his sons were maturing from boyhood into young men.

  Zak had broken his hand knocking Max Weller to the ground in defense of his brother and Esteban Gonzalez. The blow that broke his son’s hand had also busted Weller’s nose, which would have been enough to take both boys out of the playoffs even if there had been no further repercussions. But, of course, word got out to the parents and athletic director, who launched an inquiry. The result was that Weller and his cronies were kicked off the team, and more importantly, Coach Newell had been fired.

  Missing their top two starting pitchers, as well as several key players, the team had been drubbed out of the playoffs, though starting shortstop Esteban Gonzalez had received an honorable mention to the all-tournament team for his play. With a new coach, the boys were already looking forward to a better run the next season.

  The injury had been hard on Zak. He had to undergo two surgeries to make sure the bones in his hand set right. But he’d been assured by the surgeon that after he got the cast off, in a few more days, and went through rehab, he’d be back in time for spring training. And what he gained in both his self-respect and his
brother’s adulation was impossible to quantify, but it could be seen in the way he carried himself.

  Like a man who knows he made a difficult choice and did the right thing, Karp thought.

  Seeing his boys in the gallery reminded Karp of his other child, and he smiled slightly. Lucy was back in New Mexico, happily preparing for her wedding in the spring. Her fiancé, Ned Blanchett, had arrived in New York about a week after Kadyrov’s arrest. He couldn’t talk about where he’d been or what he’d done—though it had obviously, from the strain that was evident in his face and eyes, been a rough time. Former FBI agent and antiterrorist operative Jaxon and U.S. Marshal Jen Capers had come to Karp’s office a few days later to let him know that Amir al-Sistani, the mastermind of the attack on the New York Stock Exchange, who’d been allowed to leave the country by the State Department, had been “reacquired” and was back in federal custody.

  When Lucy announced that the wedding was back on and was leaving with Blanchett for the airport, Karp had asked her, “What about your concerns that this is not the right time?”

  Lucy smiled and replied, “A very wise woman told me there’s no right time for love, there’s only now. I think I should follow her advice.”

  “I think you’re right,” Karp replied.

  “Mr. Karp, we seem to be dead in the water; do you care to continue?” Judge Dermondy’s voice broke through the reverie.

  “Yes, thank you, Your Honor,” Karp quickly replied. He looked at each juror, saw their ashen faces and the tears in their eyes. “When I began this summation, I raised the questions ‘Aren’t all murders horrible?’ and ‘Isn’t the taking of any life equally reprehensible?’ And the answer, of course, is yes. So then we come to how to differentiate between a murderer who deserves life in prison and one who deserves to be executed.”

  Karp walked slowly over to the defense table and stood looking down at Kadyrov, who kept his head bowed. “As you are well aware, we just went through an exercise that establishes the legal reasons that a killer may qualify for the death penalty—the aggravating factors,” he said, turning back to the jurors. “But those are really just an attempt by civilized society to quantify how to reach such an important decision.

  “I’m sure you are aware of the debate that surrounds the death penalty. Alleged experts face off in debate challenging each other with respect to whether or not the death penalty serves as a legitimate punishment model. For example, is it a deterrent, or not? Is it a form of cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of the eighth amendment? And philosophically, should the state be in the execution business?”

  Karp shrugged. “But I leave that for the academics, editorial writers, and policymakers to debate,” he said. “I am not asking you to sentence the defendant, Ahmed Kadyrov, to death to keep him from killing again or as a deterrent to others. I am asking you in the name of the people because it is the only answer that justice will allow.”

  Pointing to the photographs that the jury foreman now had back in his hands, Karp continued. “Forgive me for asking this of you one last time, but I want you to put yourself in Olivia Yancy’s place on that terrible day. You’re facedown on your marriage bed. Your wrists are bound behind your back, your ankles bound together. Your clothes have been cut from your body, and then your mother, sixty-year-old Beth Jenkins, walks in. You can only watch helplessly, in terror and in horror, while she is stabbed repeatedly as she fights for her life. As she collapses to the ground, the killer turns toward you, and when you cry out, he tells you to stop or he’s going to cut your fucking head off.”

  Karp turned back toward Kadyrov. “And you know in that moment what your fate is going to be. It doesn’t matter if you stop crying and ignore the terror; there’s not going to be any mercy. He’s told you what he’s going to do. So you can only watch, the fear growing, as that man, his knife dripping with the innocent blood of Beth Jenkins, walks toward you. He is a beast. In his eyes, no compassion, only rage and lust and … perhaps more terrifying than all the rest, enjoyment. You know you are going to die. He knows you are going to die. And you both know that it will not be a quick death.”

  A woman in the jury cried out, but Karp ignored her. “The defendant is enjoying this so much that he is sexually aroused. Blood and fear and death are his real drug of choice. And when he has acted out his lust, he sits astride you and you feel him grab your hair and yank your head back.”

  Karp paused and looked at the floor for a moment before going on. “You know what’s coming even before you feel the first bite of the knife at your throat,” he said. “What goes through your mind? Do you think of your husband and how he will come home to find the women he loved most in the world slaughtered? Do you think of the children you will now never bear? Is there time to regret the joy of the long life you had a right to expect but that is being stolen from you?”

  Feeling the emotion rise in him, Karp let it form his words. “Then the agony as the blade cuts deep into your neck and the unspeakable horror when you can’t breathe and you begin to drown in your own blood. And how long do you remain conscious? Long enough that you are aware that this beast, this inhuman creature, is so thoroughly pleased that he degrades you again? That he satisfies his lust in your dying body?”

  Karp let the anger ebb as the jurors and many in the gallery reached for tissues to dab at eyes and stifle cries. “I just said that I was asking you to vote for the death penalty,” he said quietly. “But in a way, that is not true. Would it offend your common sense if I suggested to you that it was the defendant who made this choice for you? That when he committed these unspeakable acts, he knew that there could be only one response from civilized society?”

  Walking over to the prosecution table, Karp picked up two photographs that had been introduced during Moishe Sobelman’s testimony. One showed the death camp; the other showed what appeared to be seemingly quiet and peaceful farmland.

  “Why did the Nazis at Sobibor bulldoze that death camp and try to hide what they had done?” he asked. “It was because they knew that what they had done there went beyond the bounds of all civilized society. That if good people in the world learned of the atrocities they’d committed, there could be only one answer, and that would be to wipe them from the face of the earth as thoroughly as they eliminated all traces of Sobibor. All traces, except the memories of the very few who escaped and survived to bear witness to their atrocities, who held the murderers accountable.”

  Karp put the photographs back down and pointed at Kadyrov. “That man seated there, the one who wept on the witness stand and blamed his actions on others, also knew that the decisions he made on that horrible July afternoon—the depravity of the pain and suffering and terror he inflicted, and the joy he took in that—would leave civilized society only one answer, too.”

  Karp continued to point until, as though against his will, Kadyrov raised his head, terror on his face. “Yet he continued to think that perhaps he could manipulate the system and convince you, the jurors, that it really wasn’t his fault, to make good, honest people question whether sentencing him to death was the right thing to do,” he said. “And, in doing so, hoped to make a mockery of the system and of you, because he knows, as well as you and I know, that there is only one way to respond to evil of this magnitude, and that is to eradicate it.”

  Slowly, Karp lowered his hand and shook his head. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am asking you to invoke the death penalty because it is the only answer to his evil. The defendant knows it. He chose it as surely as he chose to follow Olivia Yancy into her apartment that day. He asked for this, not me.” For several moments, Karp stood facing the jury, looking from one face to the next.

  As Karp returned to his seat, Kadyrov sat unmoving, staring straight ahead. But what he saw wasn’t the courtroom but a brightly lit sterile room that smelled of ammonia, deadly chemicals, and fear. A room where they would strap him down and he would die. And when he woke again, it would be dark and cold and forever.

 

 

  Robert K. Tanenbaum, Outrage