Condemned

by John Nicholas Iannuzzi

  “And you think that my being a sacrificial lamb could be that icing?” said the Doctor. “That’s the thought you have to make my situation go back into the box it flew out of?”

  “Not a sacrificial lamb to be exposed and pilloried on the witness stand. Rather, like a heavy-duty weapon I can tell the D.A. I have, standing by, ready, willing, and able to blow a hole in his death penalty case. I’ve already told you, on the facts, I think Hettie’s dead in the water. Therefore, it’s in Hettie’s best interest to plead guilty—but only, only, if the D.A. foregoes the death penalty in exchange for that plea. In order to get him to agree to that disposition, I have to come on like gangbusters to show the D.A. that we have a very strong death phase position. Just so you know I’m not looking to save Hettie and ruin you, I intend to accomplish this with only the Assistant D.A., maybe his supervisor, seeing or knowing who my heavy-duty witness is. If we can make the death penalty phase go away by a show of strength, without the necessity for anything happening in open court, then Hettie’s interests are served, yours are served, I’ve done my job, the entire matter is moot, and everybody goes back about their business.”

  “What would I have to do?” asked the Doctor, seeing a glimmer of hope.

  “I think if I were able to convey to the D.A. that I spoke to a brother of the defendant, who has signed an affidavit, a powerful affidavit, with background information spelled out, an opinion, both personal and medical, the D.A. might see that the death phase would be a waste of time and energy, and take it off the table.”

  “I’d have to put all this in writing?” said the Doctor, his lantern of hope dashed.

  “At this moment, Doctor,” said Sandro, “I’m counseling you as if you were my own client. If I put one original affidavit together, making no copies, that the D.A. could read—no signature, no name at the top of it, I wouldn’t even let him keep a copy of it—an affidavit that I would keep in my possession and eyesight at all times, which I take with me after he reads it—you and I can burn it together afterwards if it works—you’ll be out from under, Hettie’ll be out from under, your exposure is limited to one person in the world, the Assistant D.A.”

  “Can you trust him?”

  “Good planning makes trust superfluous, Doctor.”

  “You think your plan is good enough—a bunch of lives are at stake?” said the Doctor.

  “With the records we have, with Hettie’s background being what it is, with a powerful affidavit from you—without telling the D.A. anything more than he needs to know—we might be able to carry the day without the need of a death phase, without the need to expose this situation any more than it is at this very moment. If we carry the day, if it works, you’re home free, so is Hettie—well, not exactly free for Hettie—”

  “If we don’t?” The Doctor’s face was beginning to fall again.

  “It will work,” Sandro said with authority. I’ll make it work, he said to himself.

  “You sure?” said the Doctor.

  “We’ll put this thing together so solidly, the D.A. won’t have any other choice.”

  “I thought I had other people’s lives in my hands at the hospital,” said the Doctor. “Now, I see you have mine and my sister’s—” The Doctor sighed, picking up his glass. “Let’s do it,” he said as he lifted the martini to his lips.

  Sandro’s Office : August 21, 1996 : 2:45 P.M.

  Sandro sat at his desk, earphones over his ears, listening to tapes that A.U.S.A. Dineen had supplied in connection with Tony Balls’ case. There were seventeen cassettes of ‘pertinent’ conversations (those the Government considered sufficiently damaging to be introduced at trial) recorded in the short but intense intercept which led to the indictment of Tony Balls, Sally Cantalupo, and Uri Mojolevsky, Sascha Ulanov, and several other Russians. Dineen had also supplied Sandro with an additional box of cassettes containing recordings of the balance of intercepted conversations, those the government considered “non-pertinent’ and did not intend to use at trial. In addition, the Government provided rough transcripts of those pertinent conversations.

  Title III, the short name of the federal law governing electronic surveillance, was originally intended, among other things, to preserve the privacy of innocent citizens whose voice and conversations might unintentionally be recorded during a court ordered electronic surveillance. Additionally, certain conversations—conversations between a client and a lawyer or clergyman—were considered privileged and not to be listened to or recorded. Calls between a suspect and the telephone company, or the landlord, or the dry cleaner, unrelated to the investigation were designated ‘non-pertinent’, and a monitoring Agent was, according law, required to discontinue listening to that conversation, minimizing unnecessary intrusion.

  The cassettes Dineen provided recorded conversations over several target telephones that had been the subject of government surveillance. Those target telephones included a secret home phone that Tony Balls had; another was the public phone on the street near Cantalupo’s office; another one in Billy Legs’ social club.

  Tony Balls’ secret phone—which he had installed in his next door neighbor, Lou Spagnola’s house, in order to obtain an extra line without the police or the telephone company knowing it—was officially listed and billed as a second line of the Spagnola family. After the telephone company installed the second line in Spagnola’s, Tony Balls brought in a cousin of a ‘friend’, who worked for a private telephone provider, to run a line from the Spagnola house to Tony Balls’ house. This second line, which apparently was not so secret, was the line over which a substantial number of the ‘pertinent’ calls provided by A.U.S.A. Dineen, were intercepted.

  Dineen had also supplied Sandro with the surveillance logs that related to the pertinent calls. The logs were the written records the law required intercepting Agents to keep for each conversation overheard. The logs noted the time and date of each call, the name of the listening Agent, identified the parties to the call, if possible, and gave a short synopsis of the intercepted conversation.

  Part of the recorded non-pertinent conversations the government did not intend to use at trial were domestic conversations of Tony Balls’ household, his wife Vickie, and his daughter Theresa talking to friends, relatives, sales solicitors, and wrong numbers.

  The length of time it takes for a monitoring agent to determine whether or not a call is pertinent or non-pertinent has been the subject of many court hearings. Often, the agents testify that they could not determine when or if a conversation which appeared at first blush to be non-pertinent—might suddenly turn into a pertinent conversation. That handy logic had served to permit monitoring Agents to listen to the bulk of conversations on any target phone, pertinent or not.

  As he listened to the tapes, Sandro kept a tally sheet, categorizing the various conversations, by participants, subject matter, and length. Of the approximate one hundred and ninety-three conversations recorded over Tony Balls’ private line in the span of the intercept, forty-one were between Tony Balls’ daughter and her boyfriend, Skip, as they decided which movie to go to, what time to meet, and the daily ups and downs of the affairs of a young man and his intended bride. All these calls, on the theory that at any moment they could suddenly become drug related, were recorded in their entirety.

  There were fifty-two calls between Theresa and her girl friend Betty. Almost every time Theresa spoke with Skip, she immediately called Betty and recounted the entire conversation. Then, the two of them analyzed the conversation in terms of how good a husband Skip would be after they were married; if he was really her one true love; and if any of the other guys Theresa knew might make a better husband.

  There were thirty-nine calls—slightly minimized—between Tony Balls’ wife Vickie and the telephone company, the supermarket, various and sundry merchants, dry cleaners, department stores, and friends and relatives. There were twenty-two phone calls between Vickie and her girlfriend Lisa, mother of Theresa’s girlfriend, Annie. Tony Balls and Lisa
’s husband were in the same ‘business’. The conversations between Vickie and Lisa were almost duplicates of those between Theresa and Annie; grousing about their mates, their clothes, that they never went anywhere, that their husbands never came home, and when they did, they immediately fell asleep.

  To add spice to the dullness of the monitoring Agents’ routine of sitting for hours at recording machines, drinking coffee and eating Danish pastry, there were thirty-one calls recorded in their entirety between Tony Balls’ wife, Vickie, and a hapless fellow named Charlie, who worked at a supermarket somewhere nearby Tony Balls’ house, and who was Vickie’s telephone lover. According to the conversations recorded, Vickie and Charlie never went out with each other, or met alone, because both Vickie and Charlie were deathly afraid of Tony Balls and his temper. Thus, their romance was limited to conversations on the telephone during which they talked dirty to each other, masturbating as they did.

  Most of the Vickie-Charlie conversations occurred at night, when they were both alone at their respective homes—Tony Balls would be out prowling the streets; Charlie’s wife Marcie, a waitress, was working at a Brooklyn restaurant; Theresa would usually be out with Skip. The conversations began with Charlie saying Vickie looked nice when she was in the store that day, or commenting about the weather, the events of the neighborhood, and then they would talk about their respective mates being dull and sexless. Finally, the two telephone adulterers would begin to tell each other what they would do to each other if they were together. Charlie would tell Vickie how he would fuck her bent over the kitchen table, pound her on the floor, hump her on the toilet bowl, bang her, bung hole her, stretch her pussy, make her scream with his hand up her ass and cunt at the same time, bang her on the stairs, make her beg, whine, whimper, cry, scream for mercy with his big, red, swollen, dog’s cock jammed in her.

  Vickie, in turn, would fill Charlie’s ear with her mouth and her tongue, telling him how she would fuck him, suck him, lick, stick her tongue in or over every part of his body, how she would swallow him, suck him, devour him, sit on his face, piss all over him.

  While Vickie and Charlie were thus turning each other on—and amusing the monitoring Agents—with these conversations, their breathing could be heard to get faster, deeper, heavier. They would start to talk louder, faster, as they masturbated together, ending in screaming orgasms.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming …”

  “Now, now …”

  “Oh, yes, yes …”

  “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me …”

  “Scream, you bitch, scream …”

  “Oh, yes, yes,…”

  “I’m ripping your pussy apart with my cock …”

  “Oh, oh, ohhhhhhh …”

  Then there would be quiet, Vickie would light a cigarette. They would purr at each other over the phone. Invariably, Charlie or Vickie would start describing how exciting it had been, how they were turned on, how great it was to feel that great big cock spurting cum, and they would be off again, through another round of dirty talk, and often another orgasm together while miles apart. In the logs, the agents noted one record score of three orgasms for Vickie, two for Charlie.

  The Agents recorded every single word of every one of these obviously non-pertinent conversations. After all, there might be a moment at which Charlie and Vickie would start talking about drugs, and the conversations would become pertinent.

  These calls became a topic of conversation among the monitoring agents. They even made bets as to which night such a call might be received, how long it would last, who would have how many orgasms. When the surveillance was terminated, the phone calls were a topic of conversation between the monitoring Agents and Dineen and, after Dineen turned the tapes over to Sandro, between Sandro and Dineen. After Sandro heard the first of these conversations, he inquired if Dineen thought that these conversations manifested a true spirit of minimization. Dineen said he was aware of the conversations—he knew exactly how many calls there were—even how many minutes of such conversations there were. Eventually, all the defense lawyers retained to represent the defendants, knew about the conversations, joked about Vickie and Charlie, treating the same with ribald hilarity. All, that is, except Sandro, who had an obligation to mention these calls to Tony Balls, who was more than humiliated, he was enraged to the point of tearing both Vickie and Charlie apart—except such actions on his part might have caused the topic of the conversations to become more known than they already were.

  As to Tony Balls’ own phone conversations, there were few, very few, since Tony Balls was rarely at home. The most that the Government recorded him saying over the phone was that phones were not intended for men to talk on. He then would make an appointment to meet whomever it was that he was talking with, at some locale so they could talk.

  Although Tony Balls did not believe phones were intended for talking, telephone conversations between Vickie and Charlie caused Tony Balls—a man, a stand-up man—more embarrassment than anything in his life.

  District Attorney’s Office : August 24, 1996 : 3:30 P.M.

  “I have my own copy of all this stuff,” Rob Quintalian said to Sandro as he scanned through the school and medical records of Hettie Rouse. “Why are you showing me this?”

  “I want to focus you on the Hettie Rouse case, so we can discuss a disposition,” said Sandro.

  “What disposition can there be? It’s death, or life without parole. And at the moment you haven’t shown me anything that causes me to tell you we won’t pursue death.”

  “That’s what I came to see you about,” said Sandro.

  “But, like I said, I’ve already read this stuff. I know she wasn’t bright, and all that, but that still doesn’t change things for me. People who kill are not necessarily rocket scientists, so unless you have something else—”

  “I do,” said Sandro, reaching into a folder he had in his open alligator skin attache case. He removed a document.

  “What’s this?” said Quintalian.

  “First, I want you to tell you a little about Hettie Rouse, a little that you don’t know,” said Sandro. “She has a brother …”

  “You told me. He’s a doctor somewhere,” Quintalian nodded indifferently. “What’s he do, work in a clinic in Alabama?”

  “No, I told you, he’s a prominent Park Avenue doctor, with a very elite practice. And, for all intents and purposes, he’s white.”

  “He’s what?”

  “White. He has a white practice, a white wife, white children—step children—and I’ve interviewed him. His opinion, both as a brother and as a medical expert is that Hettie Rouse, his sister, is, and was always, mentally challenged; that her capacity is, and was always, diminished, that her capacity to comprehend right from wrong, or anything else, is, and was, subpar.”

  “Let me see that,” said Quntalian, reaching again for the document Sandro held just out of his reach.

  “Before I do that, I am giving you a redacted copy. His name is blacked out, so is his signature at the bottom—you guys do that to us all the time. The reason I’m redacting it is that the doctor is reluctant—not unwilling—just reluctant to blow his cover at this time. He has been passing as white for many, many years—”

  “How could that be? Hettie Rouse is as dark as the ace of spades,” said Quintalian.

  “The reason her father abandoned she and her mother, as I’m sure you already knew,” said Sandro, “is that the father believed, probably rightly so, that Hettie Rouse wasn’t his daughter, that the mother was fooling around and became pregnant from another man. Hettie and the Doctor are probably half brother and sister. But they lived together their entire lives until the brother went off to prep school, I guess around the age of fourteen or fifteen.”

  “You telling me that he’s willing to testify to this?” said Quintalian.

  “If we can’t work out a disposition, he will—at great, great, personal sacrifice. Coming out of the closet will ruin his life—his wife and kids do not know—it
will ruin his practice, he will be sacrificed entirely on the witness chair. But he will do it. And he will confirm the fact that Hettie Rouse has always had diminished capacity. This is a very intelligent, a very impressive man, very well spoken, very dignified. I think his testimony, and his open confession to having passed all these years, the obvious damage that he would be doing to himself by testifying, because it is the right thing for him to do, will, at the very least, evenly balance the jury, which, of course, will result in no death penalty, in life without benefit of parole.”

  “Let me see it,” said Quintalian.

  Sandro handed Quintalian the affidavit, then reached back down into the folder in his attache case and took out another redacted copy, which he silently re-read along with Quintalian. As Quintalian read, occasionally, he glanced up and across his desk at Sandro, then back down, continuing to read.

  “The doctor is willing to take the stand and say all this?” said Quintalian.

  “If absolutely necessary.”

  Quintalian continued to read. “You say he’s well spoken, dignified, intelligent?” he said without looking up.

  “Extremely so,” said Sandro.

  Quintalian’s desk phone rang. He let it ring. “Voicemail will answer—” he murmured, continuing to read. At one point, Sandro glanced over. Quintalian’s eyebrows were raised, his head nodding. “You think he’ll make a good witness?”

  “You’d be very impressed,” said Sandro. “And, Rob, when the poor bastard has to take the stand, basically, sacrificing his life, his world, by taking the stand, it will come across like a peal of thunder.”

  “You know I’ve always been a straight shooter with you, Sandro, because you’ve always been straight with me—I think,” Quintalian smiled slightly. “This affidavit, along with the documents—if he really is, as you say, credible, impressive—”