JAYWALKER: Do you have occasion to see him from time to time?
YVETTE: I lived in the same house.
JAYWALKER: Until when?
YVETTE: Until November of nineteen-seventy nine.
JAYWALKER: So would you say you know him quite well?
YVETTE: Very well. Yes, sir.
JAYWALKER: Yvette, do you remember learning about Darren's arrest in connection with this case?
YVETTE: Yes, sir.
JAYWALKER: And did there come a time when an incident occurred near the Castle Hill housing proj ect that involved you?
YVETTE: Yes, sir.
JAYWALKER: Can you give us an approximate date with respect to that incident?
YVETTE: I would say around the beginning of October of last year.
JAYWALKER: And can you tell us where you were?
YVETTE: I had gone to Nathan's, which is a res taurant in the Bronx, opposite Korvette's. And as I entered Nathan's, there were several people sitting around eating. And I got shook up when I saw this man sitting at a table with this girl, because he had a striking resemblance with Darren. My first im pression is that here's Darren, sitting at the table. And so I approached the table where they were sit ting, and then I realized it was not Darren.
Yvette explained that she'd just come from the Kings ton house, where Darren had been. Logically, therefore, she knew this couldn't be him. Yet the resemblance had been so strong that she'd still thought it was, at least at first.
Realizing the significance of what had happened, Yvette had immediately phoned Inez, only to find her line busy. Next she'd tried to reach her own husband, with the same result. She stayed in Nathan's for fifteen to twenty minutes, dialing both numbers while staring at the man and the girl. Finally she'd gone to the Kingston house and told them she'd seen a man who looked just like Darren.
JAYWALKER: And what did they do?
YVETTE: I was so upset and so sure that I'd seen this man who looked like Darren that I asked them to get the car and go back to Nathan's.
JAYWALKER: And did anyone do anything?
YVETTE: My husband and Delroid went together to Nathan's.
JAYWALKER: Do you know if they were able to find the man?
YVETTE: They came home about thirty, forty-five minutes later, and said they didn't see anybody.
JAYWALKER: You didn't go with them?
YVETTE: No, sir, I didn't. I stayed with the baby.
Pope, on cross-examination, first established that Yvette was fond of Darren and had known he was in trouble at the time of the look-alike incident. Then he set out to reduce it to an everyday occurrence.
POPE: Mrs. Monroe, have you ever walked down the street and seen someone you thought you recognized?
YVETTE: Yes.
POPE: And you've gone up to that person and re alized you don't know the person?
YVETTE: Yes.
POPE: It's happened to you a number of times?
YVETTE: A few times, yes.
POPE: And in fact that happened to you sometime in the beginning of October nineteen-seventy-nine, the incident you're talking about. Right?
YVETTE: Right.
Pope was scoring effectively. He drew from Yvette an admission that it had been a matter of only three or four seconds before she'd realized the man wasn't Darren. He asked her if she'd made an attempt to call a police officer. She said she hadn't. Had she attempted to find out who the man was? No. Had she waited around and then at tempted to follow the man? She hadn't. Had she men tioned the problem to anyone else in the restaurant? No, she hadn't.
To Jaywalker's way of thinking, the answers to all Pope's questions were self-evident. Wouldn't following a suspected knife-wielding rapist be the last thing in the world a young woman would want to do? Would a police officer really have arrested a man because someone claimed he looked like a defendant on a case? Would innocent bystanders have grabbed him and held him?
But as he looked at the jurors, he saw only blank faces. Weren't they capable of seeing through Pope's crossexamination? Were any of the defense witnesses getting through to them? Or had the case ended for them when the victims had pointed to Darren as their rapist? Were they simply too overwhelmed, too frightened by the prospect of a black man on the loose, attacking women like them selves, their wives and their daughters in their own neigh borhood, where they lived and worked and tried to cling to a way of life that was vanishing before their eyes?
Finally, Pope showed Yvette a photograph taken of Darren at the time of his arrest on September 12th. Al though she was able to identify her nephew, she seemed uncertain. She thought the eyes looked strange, and the body shorter and heavier than Darren's.
At last Yvette Monroe was allowed to step down from the witness stand. Pope, through an effective piece of cross-examination, had seriously undercut her testimony, and whenever a prosecutor succeeds in doing that, he causes the jury to look with suspicion upon the entire defense. Witnesses are expected to help the side that calls them, and when a witness fails to do that—or inadvertently helps the other side—the damage can be incalculable.
And once again, Jaywalker held only himself to blame. Yvette had come into court armed with nothing but the truth, and sometimes that's not enough. By failing to an ticipate where Pope might go with his cross-examination, Jaywalker had left her vulnerable to attack. And in so doing, he'd not only let her down, but he'd also let his client down. And the fact that he would learn how to do things better and never make the same mistake again was of little consolation at the moment.
He nodded a thank-you toYvette as she walked past him to take a seat in the audience. Then he rose to his feet and announced that he was calling Darren Kingston to the stand.
15
DARREN
Until the actual rendering of the jury's verdict, the mo ment when a defendant rises to take the stand is second to none in terms of the drama it infuses into a trial. Often, the moment doesn't happen at all. Many defendants never testify. Even when they do, typically the jurors have been forewarned and have spent days—sometimes many of them—anticipating their appearances. This jury, on the other hand, had never been told, one way or the other, whether Darren would testify. Now their eyes turned as one upon this young man who'd sat almost in their midst for more than a week now, had stretched his legs in the same corridor as they had during court recesses, and had even ridden up and down the same elevator as they had, standing inches from their shoulders. And in all that time, they'd yet to hear him utter a single word.
Now, as that young man slowly made his way from the defense table to the witness stand, Jaywalker sat down. This was Darren's moment, after all, and he wanted the jury to focus on him, and him alone.
By this time, Jaywalker had spent hours with Darren— days, if you added up the time, or even weeks—first as an investigator, then as an examiner, finally as a mock inter rogator, and throughout as a friend. Most of the sessions had taken place months ago, back at a time when Jay walker had harbored serious doubts about Darren's claims of innocence and had been more interested in breaking his story then he'd been in presenting it. By the time the mo ment finally came to call him to the witness stand, Jay walker had been fully converted. So convinced was he of Darren's innocence now that he literally would have bet everything he owned on it. Not that that would have amounted to all that much: a heavily mortgaged house, fur nished largely in early '50s Salvation Army; a rusting Volkswagen, complete with loan payment book; a pair of skis, badly dinged; a bunch of law books, out of date; and a stack of bills, overdue.
But you get the point.
So convinced was Jaywalker, in fact, that once the trial had gotten under way, he'd spent very little time with Darren in terms of actual witness preparation. Was he about to repeat the error he'd just made with Yvette Monroe? The thought certainly occurred to him now. But even as it did, he rejected it. He felt certain that Darren's innocence would cloak him with more protection against whatever Pope might throw his way than all the c
oaching Jaywalker could ever give him. To be sure, he'd told Darren in broad terms the areas he expected to go into with him, the types of responses he wanted, and the things he could expect from Pope on cross. But he'd stopped short of asking him the actual questions he intended to put to him once the moment finally came. This wouldn't be a reprise of the lie detector test, where the aim had been to get Darren to sweat over questions he'd known were coming his way. This would be about a young man, falsely accused of being nothing less than a monster, finally getting a chance to tell the jury who he really was.
The courtroom grew absolutely silent. Every eye riveted on Darren as he dutifully placed his left hand on the Bible, raised his right arm and faced the court clerk. Today, in a new century of religious tolerance and politi cal correctness, we've grown accustomed to modified oaths. The deity is often omitted, so as to avoid offending those who doubt his existence, and witnesses are even permitted to "affirm" rather than swear. But this was 1980, when every courtroom sprouted an American flag, the words IN GOD WE TRUST were as much a part of the décor as a wooden gavel, and an oath was an oath. So, repeat ing after the clerk, Darren swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help him God.
The moment was here.
Jaywalker began gently, asking Darren about simple things. His age, his address, his family. Even as Darren answered these preliminary, nonthreatening questions, his stutter was noticeable. Jaywalker suppressed a smile each time he heard it, just as he knew Pope must have been struggling to hide a grimace.
He asked Darren about his past record, figuring that it was better to bring it out than wait for Pope to do it. Today, refinements in the law allow for a pretrial conference to determine what matters a prosecutor may go into when cross-examining a defendant, and Darren's prior arrest would no doubt be ruled off-limits. But back then it was considered fair game. Darren described the arrest and his limited involvement in the incident. He explained that all the charges against him had ultimately been dismissed. Other than that matter and the present case, he'd never been arrested. And he'd never before been charged with a sex crime.
Jaywalker questioned Darren about the extent of his education, and about his employment. Darren talked about his current position at the post office, the specific location where he worked, and how long he'd worked there. Asked about his weight, Darren placed it at 151 or 152 pounds. The last time he weighed himself, he stated, the scale had registered 154, but he'd been fully clothed. When and where had that been? Last night, he said, at his lawyer's house. Jaywalker sneaked a sideways glance at the jurors. He hoped it wouldn't be lost on them that the door of his home was open to this young man. But if it had made any impression on them, they weren't showing it.
JAYWALKER: Now, Darren, are you right-handed or left-handed?
DARREN: I'm l-l-left-handed.
JAYWALKER: Did you ever play football?
DARREN: Yes.
JAYWALKER: What hand do you throw a football with?
DARREN: My left hand.
JAYWALKER: What hand do you sign your name with?
DARREN: Also my left hand.
JAYWALKER: Do you bowl?
DARREN: Yes, I bowl.
JAYWALKER: What hand do you bowl with?
DARREN: My l-left hand.
JAYWALKER: Do you play baseball?
DARREN: Yes.
JAYWALKER: What hand do you throw with?
DARREN: My left.
JAYWALKER: Do you bat?
DARREN: Yes.
JAYWALKER: Do you bat left-handed or righthanded?
DARREN: L-l-left-handed.
Jaywalker removed an item from a paper bag and had Darren identify it. It was a baseball glove, so ancient that the leather was dry and cracked. It was a Phil Rizzuto model, but made to wear on the right hand, freeing the player to throw with his left. It was the only one of its kind that Jaywalker had ever seen, or ever would. He had it received into evidence.
He asked Darren if he drank. Darren replied that he did, occasionally. When he did, he drank Seagram's V.O., a brand of blended whiskey. Never wine.
He asked about any scars or deformities Darren had. Darren pointed to an old scar that ran clear through one eyebrow, where no hair grew. Then he described a front tooth that was noticeably chipped. At that point Jaywalker had him step to the front of the jury box to show the jurors. Jaywalker wanted him close to them. Look at him, he wanted to tell them. Lean forward. He won't hurt you. He tried willing them to feel free to reach out to Darren, to touch him, to know he was every bit as harmless as they were. But if they were feeling that way, they weren't doing anything to show it.
Jaywalker asked Darren if he owned a car or knew how to drive. He answered no to both questions. How long would it take him to travel from his apartment to Castle Hill, or from the post office to Castle Hill? Either trip, he answered, would involve subway and bus combinations that he estimated would take over an hour, one way. Asked about his uncle Samuel's house on Olmstead Avenue, he said he'd last been there at a family dinner in 1975 or 1976, and that he'd never had a key to the house.
Jaywalker asked about sneakers. Darren said he owned one pair. Jaywalker produced another item from the paper bag and had Darren identify his sneakers, which were received into evidence. They were white and high-cut, with canvas that fully covered the ankles. And although they were worn, they could hardly be called gray.
Jaywalker asked Darren about his stutter. Darren stated that he'd been stuttering for as long as he could remember. He described speech classes he'd been forced to attend at school. He produced a draft card, which was received into evidence. It bore a notation that Jaywalker read aloud: "Other obvious physical characteristics: speech defect."
Jaywalker moved on to September 17th, the day Darren had returned to the post office following his release on bail. He described going there with his cousin Delroid, and seeing Andrew Emmons, George Riley and P. G. Ham ilton. He identified his signature on the form he'd had to fill out that morning. He related how he'd left, met up with Delroid again in the lobby, and how the two of them had traveled back home, where they'd stayed the rest of the af ternoon.
JAYWALKER: Darren, you heard Eleanor Cerami testify, didn't you?
DARREN: Yes, I did.
JAYWALKER: Are you the man she saw walking through her lobby on the morning of September sev enteenth, at about nine-thirty?
DARREN: No. I couldn't have been. I was in M-M-Manhattan, at the post office.
JAYWALKER: Are you the man that raped her on August sixteenth?
DARREN: No, I am not. No.
JAYWALKER: Or any other date?
DARREN: No.
JAYWALKER: You heard Joanne Kenarden testify, didn't you?
DARREN: Yes.
JAYWALKER: Are you the man who raped her?
DARREN: No, I am not.
Jaywalker sat down, turning Darren over to Pope for cross-examination. Pope began with the left-handed issue, drawing from Darren an admission that he could in fact do certain things with his right hand, including unscrew ing a lightbulb. Where Jaywalker had made a point of calling Darren by his first name, Pope now carefully avoided the trap. Over and over again, he inserted "Mr. Kingston" into his questions whenever he could, his at tempt to depersonalize Darren in the eyes of the jury. Fair was fair, after all.
Next, despite the fact that Jaywalker had already gone into the matter pretty exhaustively on direct examination, Pope asked Darren about his prior arrest.
POPE: Isn't it a fact, Mr. Kingston, that on April tenth, nineteen-seventy-eight, you, with one Marvin Rollins and one John Washington, entered the apart ment of a person named Cato Billingsly, and that you, holding a knife, robbed him of some two dollars?
Jaywalker jumped to his feet and objected. At the bench, he explained to Justice Davidoff that he'd rep resented Darren on the case and had interviewed the complainant, who'd never alleged that Darren had had a knife.
Bronx Justice Page 18