Veronique, wearing a short robe, greeted him at the door of apartment one, 103 Corlears, and invited him in. The only light in the room came from the television, which she tuned to an erotic channel. For some period they sat beside each other on the futon, chatting, and then she invited him to take off his clothing, spreading a blanket in the narrow space between the futon and the low coffee table against the wall on the other side of the room, behind the entrance door. He reclined there and undressed, while Veronique stood at the edge of the blanket, at his feet, between Milcray and the door. Looking up, naked except for his socks, Milcray allegedly watched her open her robe, remove her shirt, and lower her panties. At which point he saw that she had a penis.
He cried out, “What the fuck is this?” and “I’m outta here!,” to which Veronique replied, “Once it gets in, it’s not gonna hurt.” Milcray scrambled for his clothes while Veronique turned and put on a condom. She thrust Milcray to the floor on his back and lowered herself between his thighs. He, by this time, had managed to get his overalls partially on (up, he recalled, but he was uncertain if he had managed to fasten the bib). Bearing down on him, face to face, Veronique repeated her promise (“Once it gets in . . .”) and began working to raise his legs and strip him.
At this point, Milcray explained, he went for his knife, opened it, and stabbed Veronique once in the chest. She, he asserted, did not relent, but bore down still more furiously and squeezed him to her body. He responded by reaching around with his right arm, over her back, in order to “hit him a few times,” eventually slipping out of the weakening grasp, putting on his shoes, grabbing up his bag and jacket, and escaping.
In the street, he saw the extent of his hand injury, and the amount of blood on his white tee shirt. He ditched the latter, and dropped the knife, open, into a storm sewer at the corner of Christopher Street, before proceeding along that sidewalk and soliciting help from several shopkeepers and bystanders.
Sheepishly, he admitted that the tale of the five white males had been an invention, asserting that he had lied out of fear.
Milcray communicated this story to the detective orally, who then arranged for him to write the basic outline on a sheet of lined paper. While he did so (slowly, since his right hand was largely immobilized), the lead detective arranged for an assistant DA to come and videotape the statement, though it was now nearly midnight. She and the other detective reviewed the written statement and asked Milcray to add the location of the jettisoned weapon, so he drew a line from the mention of the knife in the body of the text, along the side of the page, to the bottom, where he put in a footnote: “in a rain-gate.”
The video team arrived and set up, as did the assistant DA, who then conducted a forty-five-minute recorded interview with the suspect. This was later entered into evidence. In response to the ADA’s probing, Milcray expanded on certain crucial moments in his account: Where was the sheet of paper with the address and the phone number? Lost. How close did he and Veronique sit on the futon? Close enough to touch, but not touching. Did Veronique threaten to kill him? No. Did Veronique have a weapon? No. Did Veronique ever punch or kick him? No. Was Veronique dead when he left? Milcray said no, that his assailant was still moving. Did Veronique look seriously injured? Yes.
He was made to rehearse the most minute details of the physical confrontation several times, and this made for certain ambiguities. How exactly did Milcray manage to dress while under attack? Did he try to rise? How many times? Repeatedly revisited, some of this became muddled. More muddled than any complicated story would become under close examination? Difficult to say.
At trial, the prosecutor—rumpled, gesticulating, deferential with the judge to the point of sycophancy—made much of the defendant’s changing stories: first five white men and a melee (each time the prosecutor said the phrase “five white males,” his voice oozed sarcasm, as if to whisper, “See how he played the race card, the skunk!”); then, once he was cornered by the authorities, a tall tale of a drag rapist. And even that story had changed.
Milcray’s lawyer, in his opening statement, declared that his client still stood by much of the story he told the detectives, but that he now admitted to fibbing a bit there as well. In particular, Milcray now asserted he had not met Veronique on the street on August 1 but, rather, via a telephone chat service the same day. The defense attorney explained: Milcray had made up the story about the street encounter because he was embarrassed about having used a “date-line” phone service, and having gone to the home of someone he met that way. Milcray had a fiancée, after all.
The prosecution scorned this “correction” as bald strate-gizing, necessitated by the improbability of the first story: Who, after seeing photos of Randolph Cuffee (or, rather, of his somewhat distended corpse), would believe that anyone could, in broad daylight, mistake this large-featured, robust man for a woman, wig or no?
The defense attorney wanted to know if anyone had a photograph of Cuffee alive. No one, apparently, did.
Or no one willing to help the defense, anyway.
We watched the grainy color video of Milcray’s confessional statement on a television wheeled up beside the witness stand. After some back and forth between the judge and a court officer, the lights were dimmed; it proved impossible to lower the shades, despite several attempts. The gallery had filled in for the showing—various clerks, assistants, a visiting class from John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
A large cockroach emerged from under the prosecution’s table, creating a minor disruption. It escaped the stomp of a squeamish female guard, and wedged itself into an invisible crevice at the foot of the bench.
The taped statement was compelling. It made the evening of the killing feel close. The ADA was young, handsome, Asian, wearing a tie. He had a three-ring binder open in front of him, and he and Milcray sat across from each other, a narrow table between them, like tournament chess players. Shortly after the recording began, the invisible camera-operator tightened the frame on Milcray, and the ADA became a disembodied voice, inquisitive, measured. A digital readout of the time (both elapsed and local) rolled along at the bottom of the screen. One sensed that each question, seemingly straightforward, concealed complex structures: legal implications, potential charges, due-process considerations. The ADA took his time, making it clear he had to think before he spoke. Milcray responded quickly, telling the story, his intonation rising restlessly at the end of each phrase, as if he were looking for some confirmation from his inquisitor, as if he himself were asking question after question, in an eager tumble. The difference in pace, in caution, stood out.
Earlier in the week, on the second day of the prosecution’s case, the supporting detective had taken the stand. The defense attorney, on cross-examination, pressed him to explain how he had gotten Milcray to “give it up” in that windowless room.
Again and again the detective said only, “All I told him was, ‘Tell me what happened . . . just tell me what happened.’ ”
“Nothing else?”
“No. All I said was, ‘Tell me what happened, just tell me the story.’ ”
But now, watching the video, one sees how grossly these seemingly neutral promptings distorted what the state really wanted: a “story” hangs together, is treated whole. But once you tell your story into the law, it becomes the object of a precise semantic dissection. The whole of the story is of no interest; instead, patient surgeons of language wait and watch, snip and assay, looking for certain phrases, certain words. Particular locutions trip particular legal switches, and set a heavy machine in motion. Milcray knew nothing of this, but already it was happening as he spoke.
On he went, explaining, the sound from the television speaker tinny, hollow—bottled like the little room itself.
Asked to show how he had handled the knife, he obliges, raising his right arm (in a cast) and supporting it with his left at the elbow, through the sling. He mimes an overhand grip and makes small, apologetic pecking gestures.
Pronounc
ing final “s” sounds, he has a lisp that seems nearly a hiss; he puts his mouth around words in haste, gobbling them.
“Yessir,” he replies, often.
When he quotes himself as having blurted out, “What the fuck is this?,” he excuses himself for his language, quickly, instinctively, in a whisper.
By the end of the tape, he is holding his bandaged right arm and wincing; he sucks air through his teeth in pain. Asked if he wishes to add anything to his statement, he responds, reasonably, “What’s going to happen next?” And then adds, “Can I go home tonight?”
The assistant DA pauses, and repeats his question: Does Milcray wish to add anything to his statement at this time?
He declines.
The high contrast of the image renders his face nearly featureless, makes him a silhouette.
4. The Evidence
A day of warm weather comes as a surprise; the sun is bright, slanting over the top of the strange, windowless AT&T building that stands near the court. Things are wet, but they sparkle—the asphalt, the granite sidewalks, the dusting of broken glass in the gutters. Taking off my coat, holding my bag between my knees, I think how different the city feels in the sweltering of summer, now a distant memory: for months everyone has been bundled up, covered with many layers, no skin touching the air or available to the eyes. In August, though, in the Village—I am remembering the bare legs and arms.
How much more vulnerable to a knife, a body in the summer.
I walk up Mercer Street, stepping over a sheet of ice spreading glacierlike from a leaky downspout in the shade. Surely my heavy coat would slow down a blade, offer some protection?
I think about that for a moment, wondering what it would feel like to have something partially in one’s body and at the same time partially outside; what it would feel like to hold such a thing with one’s hands. This thought (tactile, intimate) had preoccupied me long before I found myself in Part 24, though in the courtroom it has passed through my head many times a day. Years earlier, after being struck by a particularly gruesome bit of the Iliad (a lance to the lower gut), I had written a short poem, a limping sapphic, about such wounds—about being able to grasp at a shaft piercing the body, about the strange and sudden tangibility of one’s insides under such conditions.
I was about Milcray’s age at the time, amorous, hungry, prone to unreachable sadness and (I thought) unspeakable desires. The short poem tried to say all this. When I gave it to a woman to read, she said it seemed to her very much about being a boy rather than a girl. Maybe. I wasn’t so sure. I took up fencing.
Valentine’s Day is approaching. The world feels beautiful; smells, if only for this brief moment in the early afternoon, of spring.
Why would people ever stab each other, in such a fine world as this?
The prosecution had a great deal of evidence, but most of it for things that the defendant did not dispute. There was, for instance, no shortage of recovered DNA samples, presented by a cordially poised and slightly didactical woman from the forensics laboratory, and these linked the bloods of the victim and the defendant. But this, obviously, was consistent with Milcray’s account. More troubling was the presence of seminal proteins on a swab taken from the victim’s penis, and this became all the more mysterious when no traces of semen could be found anywhere on either of the condoms recovered under Cuffee’s body. Semen also turned up on Monte Milcray’s gray cotton briefs, which he had left at the scene in his rushed exit. Nowhere did enough semen turn up for investigators to get a positive identification on its source, or to say how much time had passed since it was deposited.
In addition to this forensic evidence and a selection of objects from the crime scene (the wig, a kimono-cut paisley smoking robe, the blankets, several blood-dabbed chunks of concrete lifted from the sidewalk in front of the apartment, the condoms, the knife itself), the prosecution had Milcray’s own statements, a large number of still photographs (of Cuffee’s body at the scene and in the morgue, of the crime scene, of the victim’s car, etc.), a crime-scene video, a set of phone records, and the testimony of law-enforcement personnel involved in different stages of the investigation.
Many of these men share a manly density, a mass. In my mind’s eye I see one of them clearly—Anthony Bonatoni, a crime-scene investigator with the New York City Police Department. Walking into the courtroom, Anthony rolled his shoulders to settle his suit, and patted down the front. It hung on him uneasily, and his chest displayed the unlikely symmetry of an oil drum. He took his oath with the pointed “I do” of an uncomplicated man, seated himself as if at ease, and then tried unsuccessfully to button the neck of his shirt, already filled beyond capacity. Giving up, he tightened his tie. Mr. Mackelwee, the clerk, took his badge number.
Between replies, Anthony seemed to shut down, like something automated, his head slumping forward on his bull neck, and his broad shoulders encroaching on his visage. A little repetitive clenching of the muscles below his jaw indicated that he was in sleep mode—cognitively suspended, but ready to power up at the next question. There was a vulnerability about him here, in an arena where words would be the primary instrument of communication.
And yet this is too cruel, inadequate even as stereotype. For “Tony” Bonatoni offered the sympathetic imagination a warmer array of immediate associations: the image of the deeply earnest, somewhat oversized student reviewing a mediocre spelling exam, considering how to do better next time; the spirit of proms now past. One can conjure up the nuns of his youth, the coaches, the extra sprints after practice. Parochial schools in the outer boroughs create men like these, and they present a perfection not to be ignored, much less scorned. Would I be able to do his job? Not likely.
Tony was not alone. Other bulky officers took the stand, eyeing Milcray’s attorney with a defensive anxiety. Asked to establish times, they used military notation with confidence. Explaining the finer points of their investigative work, they spoke in clipped and technical cadences, creating strange sentences like: “These are the samples which were selected by me with the swabbing of the suspected blood for the identification of the medical examiner’s office upon the certification of the record reports by me, which I did.”
They had manifestly been prepped to ensure friendly, direct eye-contact with the jury.
Prosecutor: “Officer, would you tell us about the procedure for handling these sample bags?”
Witness: “Sure.” (Turning to face us, helpfully, a pedagogical mien) “After the swabbing of the potential samples of the presumed semen . . .”
But on cross-examination this odd loquacity collapsed.
Defense: “Did you happen to see if the bolt of the door split the frame when it came open?”
Witness: “I saw a door, and I went through.”
Defense: “Thank you, Sergeant. No further questions, your honor.”
The prosecution also had a very different set of witnesses, on whom a great portion of the state’s case depended. Hector “Laverne” Hebreo (to whom I shall here refer as “Hector-Laverne”) and Nahteesha Breen both testified that Milcray frequented the “Fem-Queen Stroll” on Ninth Avenue to ogle parading cross-dressers and drag prostitutes. Moreover, they claimed to have seen Milcray and Cuffee together on a number of occasions, a fact they explained with the surprising and damaging assertion that the victim and the defendant had been, for some time, lovers.
On top of this, Nahteesha, Hector-Laverne, and a third witness, Stevie Trevor, all placed Milcray in the victim’s apartment sometime around 12:30 a.m. on the night of the killing.
As Antigua’s friends, these three also gave a taste of the flamboyant community of fabulous gender-bending in which Randolph “Antigua” Cuffee moved. We had been prepared for some of this in the process of jury selection. In voir dire we had been told not only that the case would involve explicit discussions of homosexual activity, but also that we would need to weigh the testimony of drag performers, male prostitutes, and transvestites. Those unable to countenance s
uch talk, or credit such witnesses, were asked to recuse themselves. No one did.
Perhaps we were somewhat overprepared: as the first few witnesses approached the stand—including the robust Tony Bonatoni himself—I was ready for anything. Could this be a drag act? It seemed unlikely. Maybe. In fact, at some point I probably found myself musing that nearly all the denizens of Part 24 were, under it all, other than they appeared.
The prosecution’s three key witnesses did test one’s intuitive sense of such things, each presenting a different riff on sexual nonconformity. Hector-Laverne had cinematic eyebrows, pencil-fine and arched like those of a Balinese beauty-mask. His lips continuously pursed, he pastiched every gesture of a certain impatient femininity: a physical sassiness in the head and hands, a sudden and tumbling manner of speech, a tendency to cock his head up voguishly and glance askance, with much eye-rolling and huffy aspiration.
Nahteesha presented another, if no less hyperbolic, character: that of the sultry femme fatale. Whereas Hector-Laverne was fussy in voice and movement, Nahteesha unfolded languorously, her long fingers extended by tapered talons, her diction and intonation smoldering like a young Lauren Bacall’s. The judge, in parley with the prosecutor, alluded to Nahteesha as “she,” and then excused himself hastily, but that seemed to be her preference. When asked to explain her occupation, she gave an R-rated encomium to the generosity of her “wonderful husband,” followed by a flicker of lashes. More poised than either Hector-Laverne or Stevie (whose partial deafness and speech impediment slowed his responses), Nahteesha made a remarkable impression on the stand, witty and brutal.
She discomfited even the prosecutor, who seemed very anxious to set the rest of us at ease with his slightly unusual star witness. Then, leading her through the first part of her testimony, he inexplicably got tangled up, saying “vegetable,” when he meant “vestibule.” Under the edgy circumstances, it felt like a charged slip—off-color, redolent of tumescent, pendulous legumes. People sniggered. The prosecutor perspired.
A Trial by Jury Page 4