Wily, prepared, and with the energy of a much younger man, he loved battling prosecutors and did so with zeal and aplomb. But unlike some on his side of the aisle, he also did it ethically and without rancor—a man who truly believed that it was his duty to his client to put the People to the test and make them work to prove their cases beyond a reasonable doubt.
Karp wouldn’t have had it any other way. As he often lectured younger assistant district attorneys in his office, the system was tilted in favor of the prosecution “and anybody can win a case against a bad defense attorney.” But someone like Irving Mendelbaum would beat them if they weren’t prepared and if they did not have the legally admissible evidence to prove their cases “not just beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond any and all doubt.” A great attorney like Mendelbaum would force them to be better prosecutors or they’d lose and be embarrassed in the process.
Mendelbaum was beloved throughout the courthouse, and not just because of his kindly disposition and cheerful attitude toward all who came across his path. He also carried a large Redwell file, which he kept full of candy that he liberally distributed to one and all: court clerks, fellow attorneys, judges, security personnel, and even young ADAs.
It wasn’t uncommon to see him surrounded by children, witnesses, the media, and lawyers in the halls of the courthouse, all waiting for a sweet handout. In fact, when Karp arrived in court that morning, he discovered his co-counsel Kenny Katz, a young assistant district attorney, enjoying a Tootsie Pop.
“I see that Mr. Mendelbaum is in the building,” Karp had said to his colleague, with an arched eyebrow.
Katz had turned red and quickly removed the sucker. “Uh, sorry, I couldn’t resist.”
Laughing, Karp had told Katz not to worry about it. “You’re not the first ADA who has succumbed to Mr. Mendelbaum’s bribes. I may have accepted a treat or two myself from time to time.”
Karp didn’t mention that one of those times was during the lunch break on the first day of the trial. He’d grabbed a quick hotdog from the vendor across Centre Street, wolfed it down with a can of orange soda chaser, and then, eschewing the lovely early summer day, hurried back to the courtroom to study his notes. But as he’d passed the witness waiting room, he’d looked through the glass and saw with alarm Irving Mendelbaum sprawled on his back on top of the wooden table inside.
Rushing into the room, he shook the old man’s arm. “You okay, Irving?” he had asked.
With a snort, Mendelbaum woke and then sat up with a groan. “Why, if it isn’t young Mr. Karp, my favorite boychick district attorney,” he said with a grin that had charmed juries since before Karp got out of law school.
Karp smiled and shook his head. “That was some opening, counselor. I was about ready to tar, feather, and ride myself out of town on a rail.”
Mendelbaum’s grin grew even wider as he chuckled. “But then where would I find a worthy adversary? These kids coming out of law school nowadays, hardly worth my time,” he said. “Surely you don’t expect me to just roll over and play dead. In fact, I intend to kick your heinie on this one.”
“I wouldn’t put it past you.”
Mendelbaum looked at him sideways. “Don’t try to soften me up either, you momzer,” he said. “But I don’t suppose you want to level the playing field by telling me your plans?”
“Don’t you worry, my friend, you’ll find out soon enough.” Karp smiled and turned to go.
“Hey, Butch.”
Looking back at the old man, Karp stopped and laughed. Mendelbaum was holding open his Redwell file with its sugary treasures.
“Can I interest you in something sweet?”
“Got any Snickers or Hershey’s with nuts in there?”
“Of course I do,” Mendelbaum replied.
Karp had enjoyed the banter with his old friend. But when court went back in session and for the next three days, the gloves had come off and Mendelbaum had lived up to his reputation for zealously representing his client.
The first day had been dominated by the prosecution witnesses who would lay the groundwork for the rest of the case. One such witness was Gail Manning, an assistant medical examiner, who had described the fatal injuries. However, Karp had refrained from showing the jury any photographs of either of the two women who’d died in the car or of Rose Lubinsky. Another prosecutor in another jurisdiction might have tried to get such gruesome photographs into evidence. But Karp saw that sort of thing as just a low appeal to the jurors’ emotions but unnecessary to the case. Manning’s description of the two younger women’s fiery deaths and Lubinsky’s injuries had been enough.
Other witnesses had included crime scene investigators and photographers to help Karp describe for the jurors the physical layout of the scene. He’d set up an easel on which a large map of the crime scene had been laid. Then as photographs taken at the scene were introduced into evidence, he tacked them to the map where they belonged and drew arrows to indicate the direction of the view. He also had the witnesses draw circles and label them for such details as to where the Nazi demonstrators and the counterdemonstrators had been standing, as well as where Forsling had been arrested and then detained in the back of the police car.
As he built this foundation, he’d ask questions that at the time might have seemed innocuous or unimportant to the jurors. Such as asking the arresting police officer if Forsling would have had a clear line of sight of the counterprotesters, as well as Lubinsky’s car, and if he’d confiscated Forsling’s cell phone when he placed him in the police car.
Meanwhile, Mendelbaum carefully chose when and where to pick his fights during his cross-examinations. For instance, he declined to cross-examine Manning or refute most of the details on the easel. However, when it was his turn to question the police officer who arrested Forsling, he challenged the officer’s testimony to Karp that Forsling “was nowhere near the car.”
“If you weren’t even aware that the leader of the Nazi protesters had slipped away from your sight,” Mendelbaum said, “how do you know what he was doing before you saw him?”
“I didn’t know what he was doing before he was taken into custody,” the officer responded. “I meant he wasn’t near the car when he was apprehended.”
“So you don’t know if he planted the bomb?” Mendelbaum pursued.
“I only know that Forsling didn’t detonate it because he was in the squad car and had no cell phone,” the officer countered.
Although made in bits and pieces, Mendelbaum’s points, Karp knew, would be noted by the jurors. However, as he told Katz during a break, “We’re not worried about details taken out of context, we’re concentrating on the whole that the details create when put together. Our friend Irving doesn’t have much to work with so he’s trying to plant a seed in some juror’s mind that he hopes will sprout into reasonable doubt.”
With Mendelbaum sniping where he could like a guerrilla fighter trying to pick off stragglers, Karp continued to relentlessly build his case brick by brick. Now, on the morning of the second day, he was ready to add to that foundation.
“The People call Sergeant Mike Cordova,” he said.
Short and broad-shouldered, with a thick graying mustache and pewter hair, Sergeant Mike Cordova was the leader of the NYPD bomb squad assigned to the case. After establishing his credentials and the overall impact of the bomb on the car and its inhabitants, Karp asked him about the C-4 plastic explosive used to detonate the gas tank of the car. “Is it possible to determine whether two different pieces of C-4 came from the same batch?” he asked, turning toward the defense table. He was gratified to see Stone’s eyes widen for a moment and Mendelbaum frown, though he wouldn’t tie this line of questioning in until later.
“Let me put it this way, it’s easier to rule out using chemical analysis that they weren’t from the same manufacturer or even batch than it is to say a hundred percent that they are,” Cordova said.
“Sergeant, how was the C-4 detonated?” Karp asked.
&nb
sp; “It was remote detonated,” the sergeant explained.
“Could you explain to the jury what you mean by ‘remote detonated’ in this particular case?”
“Sure. The bomb consisted of a component from a cellular telephone. Someone then called that number from another cellular phone, which then closed a circuit that caused the bomb to explode.”
Karp asked Sergeant Cordova to explain how the process worked. “There’s a vibrating mechanism in a cell phone speaker. When the phone is called, it activates the mechanism, which vibrates and completes the connection and detonates the explosives.”
“Were you able to locate the cell phone used to detonate the bomb?”
“Most of it was destroyed. So we know the make but very little else.”
“What sort of make was it?”
“An NY-Mobile . . . one of those cheap prepaid cell phones you can buy at various stores. You use up the minutes and then toss it.”
“So if the phone was destroyed, were you able to determine where the call came from?”
“Yeah, another NY-Mobile.”
“How do you know that?”
“It was located in a Dumpster in an alley between 28th and 29th Streets off of Third Avenue, just a block or so away from the scene.”
“And you were able to determine that it was the phone from which the call was made that detonated the bomb?”
“Yeah, we know precisely what time the bomb went off because it was recorded on one of the squad car’s dash cams,” Sergeant Cordova said. “A call was placed from the phone found in the Dumpster to a number associated with another NY-Mobile phone.”
Karp had walked over to the diagram and pointed to the alley between 28th and 29th Streets off of Third Avenue. “Would this be the location of that Dumpster?”
“Yes.”
“And is that location closer to the circle marked on the diagram as ‘counterdemonstrators’ or ‘Nazis?’ ”
“The counterdemonstrators.”
Karp looked over at the defense table where Stone sat with her brow furrowed as if confused by his questioning. But Mendelbaum had a slight smile on his face.
“Sergeant Cordova, would you say that this bomb was a fairly sophisticated device? I mean, it’s not like someone lit a fuse and tossed a stick of dynamite,” Karp inquired.
“No, though they might both have the same effect. But I’d say this was a fairly sophisticated bomb.”
“And Sergeant Cordova, approximately a week after this incident, were you called out on another car bombing?”
“Yes, I was.”
“And there was the death of another individual associated with this bombing?”
“Yes, a young male died as a result of the blast.”
“Were the circumstances of this bombing similar, and by that I mean, was a similar mechanism used to detonate the bomb?”
“Pretty much exactly the same,” Cordova replied. “Two NY-Mobile phones, one of them attached to C-4 explosive; the other to make the call.”
“Did you do a chemical analysis of the C-4 used in this second bomb?”
“Yes.”
“And were you able to compare it to the C-4 used in the first bomb, the one used to murder the deceased in this case?”
“Yes.”
“If so, could you explain to the jury the results of that comparison?”
Cordova nodded and faced the jury. “Chemical analysis indicated that for all intents and purposes they were exactly the same makeup. Like I said earlier, I can’t one hundred percent say they were from the exact same batch, but it’s pretty damn probable.”
“Objection,” Mendelbaum said. He rose stiffly from his seat. “Your honor, ‘pretty damn probable’ is hardly something to ask a jury to base their opinion on.”
“Sustained,” the judge said. “Mr. Karp, would you like to rephrase your question?”
“Yes, your honor,” Karp replied, and turned back to the witness. “Sergeant Cordova, is it your opinion that the two samples of C-4 obtained from these two separate bombings are chemically identical as a result of scientific analysis?”
“Yes, we have a great laboratory—highest rated in the country.”
“And Sergeant Cordova, I believe that you told the jury you have worked as a bomb squad detective for more than twenty years and dealt with thousands of cases involving explosives, including C-4?”
“That’s correct.”
“And is it therefore your expert opinion to a reasonable degree of certainty that the two samples of C-4 you just testified about are likely to have come from the same place?”
“It is.”
“No further questions, your honor.”
Rainsford looked over at Mendelbaum, who had remained standing after his objection. “Would you care to cross-examine this witness?”
“With pleasure, your honor,” Mendelbaum said as he walked quickly over toward the witness stand. “Good morning, sergeant.”
“Good morning, Mr. Mendelbaum,” the sergeant replied with a smile. Even the cops liked the old gentleman.
“I only have a few questions,” Mendelbaum said. “I don’t remember Mr. Karp asking if there were any fingerprints found on any of these NY-Mobile cell phones.”
“There weren’t any.”
“And so no one saw somebody use one of these cell phones to detonate either bomb?” Mendelbaum asked with a self-assured smirk.
Cordova then looked over at Karp and smiled. “I know from the investigation that Lars Forsling saw an individual using a cell phone at the moment of the explosion and that we believe that individual was Yusef Salaam, one of the co-conspirators in this case.”
During witness preparation, Sergeant Cordova had been prepared for this line of questioning. Karp laid the trap and Mendelbaum walked right into it.
Mendelbaum suddenly realized that he took the bait. Alarmed, he addressed Judge Rainsford, “Your honor, I ask that the answer be stricken. Neither Forsling nor Salaam will testify.”
“Mr. Karp, your response?” Rainsford asked.
“Your honor, Mr. Mendelbaum asked a very broad, open-ended question,” Karp said. “Sergeant Cordova properly responded.”
“Yes,” Rainsford said. “Mr. Mendelbaum . . . Mr. Karp and the court are aware that when you, Mr. Mendelbaum, open a door, it may very well be shut abruptly as this witness just did. You’re right, Mr. Karp. Be more careful, Mr. Mendelbaum, your motion is denied. Please proceed.”
“Very well, your honor,” Mendelbaum said as he turned back to the witness stand. “Sergeant, you told the jurors that you believe that these bombs were sophisticated devices, but isn’t it true that anybody with a computer can find out how to make them from the internet?”
Sitting in his seat, Karp made a note on his legal pad. Mendelbaum was somewhat unsettled by the last foray with the witness, and this was an atypical mistake on Mendelbaum’s part that Karp would exploit later.
“Yes, you can find almost anything of this nature on the internet,” Cordova acknowledged. “We arrested several individuals this past year who had a blueprint for making a viable nuclear weapon they’d found on the internet. They lacked only the radioactive material necessary but were working on getting it.”
“Thank God you were able to stop them,” Mendelbaum responded. “You and your men are to be commended. But as you said, you can find almost anything on the internet these days. No further questions.”
Rainsford looked at Karp. “Redirect?”
“Just a couple questions, your honor. Sergeant Cordova, were you able to link any of these NY-Mobile phones together in any way?”
Karp smiled slightly when he noticed Mendelbaum take sudden notice. Got ya, he thought.
“Yes, the two NY-Mobile phones we were able to recover were bought from the same store though on two different occasions.”
“Obviously these purchases were made before the bombings?”
“Yes, the day before in each case.”
“Are there any other l
inks to the bombings?”
“Well, of course each phone has its own number, and these numbers are sequential to the phone purchased before and after it. And they have to be activated at the store.”
“And what’s the significance of that?”
“First, the folks at NY-Mobile were able to tell us which store sold the phones,” Cordova said. “Then we were able to determine from store records that each of the phones purchased was bought with a second phone with sequential phone numbers. These were the last numbers dialed by the phones we were able to recover.”
“And, if you would please tell the jury what that means to you?”
“That the second phones were destroyed in the blasts.”
After Rainsford adjourned for lunch, Karp saw Mendelbaum in the hall. “So, boychick, you’re killing me in there,” the old man complained. “That stuff with the phones. Of course, you know I’m going to have to go for the second blast was a setup to take the blame off Forsling . . . evil charter school types trying to get even. No disrespect to you.”
“I think it’s time for you to start writing novels, Irving. The evil charter school types? You’ve got to be kidding me,” Karp said.
Ending the banter, Mendelbaum said, “You know I’m calling Marlene to the stand?”
“You do what you need to do, Irving. But be careful, my friend, she’s much more clever than I.”
After lunch Karp called Captain Bo Loselle of the New York Fire Department to the stand to describe the circumstances surrounding the fire that killed Forsling’s mother and subsequent investigation into its cause.
“The call came in about 3 a.m.,” explained Loselle, a big man with a thick salt-and-pepper mustache. “By the time the crews arrived, the top floor was engulfed.”
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