“Imagine the police saying to you, ‘We won’t come because your family is Lithuanian. We don’t respond to the crimes committed against Lithuanians.’ ”
“Objection. This is becoming absurd. He’s playing the ethnic card. You’ve got to control him, Your Honor. This is all irrelevant.”
“No, Mr. Cox. It’s becoming interesting and relevant,” Judge Tree replied. “Now I know what Mr. Ringel is getting at. You may continue, but just for a few more questions.”
“Thank you, Your Honor. Now, Mr. Prandus, is it not fair to say that your rage would have increased if the police refused to help you because you are Lithuanian?”
Paul was seething with rage. He could see exactly what Abe was doing, but he was determined to keep his composure. “I cannot imagine that happening, but yes, if it did, it would increase my rage.”
“You say you can’t ‘imagine that happening.’ Have you studied what happened in Lithuania during the Second World War?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Did the police come to help the Jews during that period?”
“No. They did not.”
“Did the police help to kill the Jews?”
“I don’t know, maybe some did.”
“Was your father a member of the militia?”
“Yes, he was.”
“Did he help the Jewish citizens of Lithuania?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he participate in the killing of innocent Jewish citizens of Lithuania?”
“Objection, Your Honor. This witness is not on trial, and neither is his late father.”
“Overruled. He may answer, if he knows.”
“I don’t know,” Paul Prandus said angrily.
“I have one final set of questions,” Abe said, pointing to the videocassettes on the prosecutor’s table. “Have you watched the videotapes that were shown to your father?”
“Yes, I have.”
“It must have been very painful for you to watch pictures of your child being killed.”
“It was torture. Your client is a very cruel and sadistic man.”
“Can you imagine anything worse than having to watch those videos?”
“Yes!” Paul shouted. “Having to watch them believing they were true—the way your client made my father watch them, and the way I watched them before learning they were fake.”
“What if the videos had been actually true?” Abe said in a soft voice.
“They were true to my father,” Paul replied, his voice rising in pitch, “and they were true to me for a few painful minutes.”
“What if they actually turned out to be true?”
“But they didn’t, thank God,” Paul said, crossing himself.
“If they had been real—if my client had actually murdered your son—could you have taken his life?”
“Yes, I could have,” Paul Prandus said, looking directly into Abe’s eyes. Paul stopped himself from saying, “What makes you think I still won’t?”
“One final question. If you were to come to believe that your father actively participated in the killing of innocent Jews and that he was never brought to justice for his crime, would you understand the rage that was felt by a surviving family member of his victims?”
“Objection.”
“Sustained.”
“I could understand it, but I still could never have done what that man did,” Paul said, ignoring the judge’s ruling and pointing to Max.
“I have no further questions.”
“Just one redirect, Your Honor,” Cox said, moving his wheelchair near Paul Prandus. “Can you ever imagine yourself killing a helpless old man who is tied to a chair?”
“No, I don’t think I could.”
“One recross.”
“Go ahead.”
Abe walked to within a few feet of the witness box and looked into Paul’s blue eyes. “Even if you had just learned that the old man in the chair had killed your son?”
Paul paused, then he responded, looking at Max, not Abe.
“Maybe I could have killed him.”
“Even if he were tied to a chair?”
“Even if he were tied to a chair.”
“Does either side plan to recall this witness?” Judge Tree inquired as Paul Prandus began to rise from the witness chair. Normally Abe would keep his options open with an adverse witness and respond by saying that he might recall the witness. This would result in the witness being excluded from the remainder of the trial in order to prevent him from hearing the other witnesses and tailoring his testimony to fit neatly into the prosecution’s case. But Abe had a hunch about Paul Prandus, and he wanted him to hear the remaining witnesses. From now on, Abe would treat Paul Prandus as if he were the “one juror” he had to win over.
“No, Your Honor. We have no objection to the witness remaining in the courtroom during the remainder of the trial.”
Paul Prandus took a seat in the front row of the spectator section, next to Freddy Burns and directly behind Erskine Cox.
Cox ended his case by playing for the jury the videotapes made by Danielle. The jurors gasped audibly as they watched each of Marcelus Prandus’s descendants being killed. From these chillingly realistic videotapes, it was easy to understand how Marcelus Prandus had come to believe that his family had been killed. It was a dramatic ending to what appeared to be an open-and-shut case for the prosecution, especially in light of the lack of cross-examination by Abe Ringel. The defense seemed to be conceding the essential elements of the crimes charged.
That night on Court TV and radio talk shows around America, Abe Ringel was being pilloried for his lackadaisical defense to what appeared to be a strong prosecution presentation. Joseph Genevese, a former prosecutor, accused Ringel of deliberately throwing Max’s case in order to prevent Danielle from being tried. Lori Levenberg, the CBS legal consultant, predicted that it would only get worse the following day, when Abe began his defense.
Chapter 40
THE DEFENSE CASE
Although he had done this a thousand times, Abe was always nervous at the beginning of the defense case. He knew that under the law he didn’t have to prove anything. The entire burden was on the prosecution. Early in his career he had learned that while the prosecution had the burden in theory, the defense carried a heavy burden in practice. Most jurors assumed—perhaps only in the back of their minds—that defendants were guilty. Why else would they be on trial? And they were right, as a matter of common sense. The vast majority of criminal defendants were, in fact, guilty. That was the reality, and Abe knew it. In his lectures he would say, “Thank God most defendants are guilty in this country. Would anyone want to live in a country where the majority of people charged with crimes were innocent? That may be true in Iraq or Iran or China, but not in the U.S.—and in order to keep it that way, we need zealous defense attorneys who are prepared to defend the guilty along with the innocent.”
Now that Abe was defending mostly innocent people, he realized how much more of a burden that placed on his shoulders. Losing for a guilty defendant was not difficult—it was the defendant’s fault. Losing for an innocent defendant was the lawyer’s fault. Losing for an old friend was intolerable. And Abe knew that the chances of losing for his friend Max were considerable, especially since he had to begin his opening statement by essentially conceding that Max had committed the acts necessary to establish the crimes of kidnapping and felony murder.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I did not challenge the prosecution’s evidence in this case because it is true—at least as far as it went. But you will hear the whole truth in our presentation. I will also present two interesting and compelling questions about causation. The first is: Can a defendant be said to cause the death of a victim when it is the victim himself—by his own act of free will—who takes his life? But that is not all this case is about. It is about causation of a different kind. What could have caused a law-abiding seventy-five-year-old Bible scholar—a man of peace, no
t violence; a man of the mind, not the sword—to have devised the diabolical plan that my client, Max Menuchen, stands charged of devising and implementing?
“The prosecution deliberately avoided asking that question because they were afraid of the answer—of the whole truth, which is supposed to come out at a trial. We will present the whole truth—not only what happened, but also why it happened. Max Menuchen will not shrink from admitting exactly what he did, but when you hear why he did it—and when you hear what he considered, but refrained from doing—you will ask yourselves, What would I have done if I had been in his shoes? As you listen to the defense case, I implore you each to ask yourselves what you would have done if you had experienced what Max Menuchen experienced.
“The judge will instruct you on the law you must apply. He will tell you that no act alone is ever a crime. There must be an evil intent and a lack of justification. It will be your responsibility to apply the law, as the judge gives it to you, to the facts as you find them—and then to decide whether the acts committed by Max Menuchen were criminal, rather than justified or excusable.”
Even before Abe sat down, Cox was objecting.
“Your Honor, the law doesn’t allow a justification defense in this kind of situation. If it did, anyone could simply decide to take the law into his own hands if he was dissatisfied with what the courts did. I know of no case supporting Mr. Ringel’s proposed defense, and I object.”
Judge Tree nodded his head in apparent agreement. “Do you have any precedent, Mr. Ringel? If you do, show it to me—in chambers.”
“I do, Your Honor,” Abe said, rustling through some papers and winking at his daughter, Emma, who was seated in the front row of the spectator section. It was Emma who had remembered this precedent from a history course she had taken at Barnard entitled American Radicalism in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. She had researched the case and brought Abe the results that he was now using on Max’s behalf.
As soon as Abe entered the chambers, he began speaking. “The precedent is President Carter’s daughter, Amy, right here in Massachusetts,” he said. “Amy Carter, along with several other protesters, including the late Abbie Hoffman, was charged with trespass and disorderly conduct for occupying a University of Massachusetts building in which a CIA recruiter was interviewing applicants. They claimed that it was ‘necessary’ for them to commit this crime in order to prevent the greater injustice of CIA actions. The judge allowed the jury to consider the necessity defense under Massachusetts’s law, and the jury acquitted the defendants. Here, I have the judge’s instructions in that case.” Abe handed Judge Tree and Erskine Cox a ten-page photocopy. “This case is far more compelling than the Amy Carter case, and in that case the jury acquitted the defendants.”
“This is ridiculous, Your Honor,” Cox said, his voice rising. “That was Judge Browning from Tanglewood. He was a hippie. That was a crazy time. This is no precedent for the 1990s. If you let Ringel use the Abbie Hoffman defense, you’re going to turn this trial into another ‘Chicago seven’ case.”
“No, I won’t, Mr. Cox. I’ll maintain order in my courtroom, and I’m going to let Mr. Ringel try his case. There is some precedent. We can’t have one law for a president’s daughter and another for the rest of us. You can argue your case to the jury, Mr. Cox, but I’m not going to keep the jury from hearing the defendant’s side, whatever my own personal feelings might be.”
When they returned to the courtroom, the judge indicated the defense could proceed.
“I call as my first witness Max Menuchen.”
Max walked slowly to the witness stand, looking older than his seventy-five years. His gentle smile was gone. His face was even paler then usual. He felt uncomfortable in the courtroom, especially as he approached the witness chair. As a teacher he was accustomed to asking the questions, not answering them. He didn’t like the games both sides seemed to be playing, and he was not sure what was expected of him. All he knew was that his liberty—and, equally important, his integrity—was at stake. Abe had told him to relax and tell the truth—“our truth.” Max affirmed rather than swore on the Bible. He sat in the witness chair and sipped a glass of water as Abe asked him to describe his educational background. After about ten minutes Max had completed the answer. Abe continued.
“Professor Menuchen, please tell the jury where and when you were born.”
“In Vilna, Lithuania, in the year 1924.”
“Would you please describe to the jury what happened on April second, 1942.”
Abe waited for a possible objection from Cox, but Cox was happy to allow Menuchen to provide the motive for his criminal acts. It would corroborate the only relevant issue: that he, in fact, did commit them.
Max looked each juror straight in the eye as he recounted the events of that day, beginning with the Passover seder and ending with the murder of his entire family. He spoke quietly, trying to control his emotions. The jury listened attentively, some sobbing, others with a shocked expression. Judge Tree, too, was spellbound.
In the front row, behind the prosecutors, Paul Prandus—the victim’s only family member in the courtroom—appeared stunned by Max’s testimony. It was one thing to hear a sanitized version from his father’s old friend. It was quite another thing to hear from a surviving victim an unvarnished account of what his father had done. Paul put his head in his hands. He sensed the eyes of the courtroom on him, asking him silently how he could tolerate being the son of a monster. Part of him wanted to tell everyone in the courtroom that his father had never told him about these terrible things. Another part of him wanted to defend his father. His hatred of Max grew more intense for putting him in this position.
As Max completed his account of the murders in Ponary Woods, a man stood up in the back of the courtroom and shouted, “Liar! There was no Holocaust. Death to the Jew killer and his Jew lawyer!” As the courtroom marshals pounced on the neo-Nazis, one of them shouted: “We want the Jew lawyer to defend our freedom of speech!” Then he laughed and gave Abe the finger.
At the rear of the courtroom, Marcelus Prandus’s two old friends from the Lithuanian Social Club, Peter Vovus and the man in the wheelchair, smiled.
Judge Tree banged his gavel and shouted, “Recess!” as everyone in the courtroom tried to regain their composure. Paul sat silently as those around him left the courtroom.
During the recess Max grabbed Abe by the shoulder and said, “I must ask you a question. You would not actually defend the right of those neo-Nazis to say what they said, would you?”
“Not in a courtroom, Max, but on a street corner, yes, I would.”
“It is wrong. So wrong what they are saying. They have no right to say there was no Holocaust.”
“That’s the most important right of all, Max—the right to be wrong.”
“I do not agree with you, Abe, but I do love you.”
After the recess Abe continued his questioning by focusing first on the war years, the time in the displaced persons camp, the period Max spent in Israel, Dori’s suicide, and his eventual move to the United States.
Then he asked, “Professor Menuchen, please tell the jury, as best you can, what thoughts you had about Marcelus Prandus during all these years.”
“I thought about him every day of my life, from the time in Ponary Woods until the day he died. Then I stopped thinking about him.”
“What did you think about him?”
“How he was never brought to justice. How so few of them were ever brought to justice.”
“Objection!” Cox shouted. “It is not relevant what happened to other people. Make him stick to Marcelus Prandus.”
“Sustained,” agreed the judge. “Stick to the specific victim here.”
“Fine,” Abe replied, directing his statement as much to Max as to the Court.
“Focusing exclusively on Marcelus Prandus, when did you first think about revenge?”
“Probably while I was lying in the grave—and ever since. For many years I was able to
control my obsession with revenge, first because I did not know where he was and second because I always had some hope that Prandus would be subjected to justice.”
“When did you lose that hope?”
“It was gradual. It came to a head when I learned that my sister had died, and that Marcelus Prandus could not even be deported and that he would die surrounded by his family.”
“What did you then decide to do?”
“I decided to kill his oldest grandchild.”
There were gasps from several jurors. Although the prosecutor had learned of the aborted plan to run over Marc, they had decided not to charge Max with that crime, since Max himself had aborted the plan. Now it was the defendant who was telling the jury what he had almost done.
Abe then had Max describe how he had planned to run over Marc on his way to school and how he had crashed his car into the barrier.
“Was that crash an accident?”
“No. I told people it was, but it was the only way I could avoid hitting the boy. I just could not go through with it.”
“What did you then decide?”
“I actually considered killing the entire Prandus family. I thought it might be easier to throw a bomb at a group of people than to run over one young child. I don’t know whether I could have done it. Then we came up with a perfect plan for a just punishment that was directed exclusively at the man who had killed my family and that was in some way proportionate to what he had done.”
“Objection,” Cox said. “I move to strike the word just from the previous answer.”
“Sustained.”
Abe continued. “And what would such a punishment be?”
Max described how it would have to equal the agony his family had suffered before dying yet could not cause undue pain to innocent Prandus descendants. He related how he had asked Danielle Grant to help him think of something, and she had devised a plan after reading the commentary by Maimonides on the Book of Job. “It was my decision to turn the abstract plan into concrete action,” Max said.
“Professor Menuchen, would it have been your preference to see justice done by some government?”
Just Revenge Page 19