Bronx Justice (13 page)

 

Pope's second witness was Michael Pacheco, the police officer who'd responded to Eleanor Cerami's apartment on
the afternoon of August 16th. On direct examination, Officer Pacheco described Mrs. Cerami as nervous and sometimes in tears. He'd conducted a search of the area for the perpetrator, without success. After that he'd instructed Mrs. Cerami's husband to take her to Jacobi Hospital.

On cross-examination, Jaywalker zeroed in on the description Mrs. Cerami had furnished Pacheco, at a time when her memory of the man was most vivid. She'd told him the man was in his early thirties and weighed approximately 180 pounds. With that, the witness was excused, and Justice Davidoff broke for lunch.

Jaywalker spent a few minutes with the Kingstons, reviewing the morning's events. Eleanor Cerami had been a good witness, they all agreed, and a sympathetic one. But everyone felt Jaywalker had scored a few points with her. Perhaps more importantly, he'd succeeded in pinning her down on several matters that they would be able to explore later, with other witnesses. Officer Pacheco hadn't really hurt them; in fact, Jaywalker had been able to use him to underscore the physical differences between the man she'd first described and Darren.

As the Kingstons headed out for lunch, Jaywalker took refuge in the first-floor library to go over his notes and prepare his cross-examination for the afternoon's witnesses.

 

Following the lunch break, Pope called Alphonse Guitterez, a friend of Eleanor Cerami. Guitterez testified that he'd gone to her apartment on August 16th, in response to a phone call. He'd found her upset and crying, “nearly hysterical.” He'd called her husband for her and
waited there until Mr. Cerami arrived, followed shortly by the police.

Jaywalker had no cross-examination for Mr. Guitterez. Other than further reinforcing Mrs. Cerami's mental state—which was already pretty clear to the jury—he hadn't hurt the defense. There are lawyers who've never met a witness they didn't want to question. It's almost as if, even with nothing to ask and no reason to ask it, they're afraid they might be criticized for their silence. Or perhaps they're getting paid by the word. Who knows?

Jaywalker would never be one of them.

 

Joseph Cerami, the victim's husband, took the stand next. He testified that he and his wife had been married six years, had two children, and had separated three months ago. On August 16th he'd received a phone call at his job and had rushed home in response. He'd found his wife frightened, upset and barely able to speak. Alphonse Guitterez was already there, and the police arrived a short while later. After speaking with the police, Mr. Cerami had taken his wife to Jacobi Hospital. In response to Jacob Pope's final question of him, Mr. Cerami confirmed the fact that between the birth of their second child in June and the rape in August, he and his wife hadn't had intercourse.

Again, Jaywalker asked no questions.

 

Pope called the second victim to the stand.

In striking contrast to the timidity of Eleanor Cerami, it struck Jaywalker that Joanne Kenarden strode into the courtroom almost belligerently. Much has changed in terms of people's attitudes toward victims of sexual assault. It's
entirely possible that Joanne Kenarden was simply ahead of her time, while Eleanor Cerami was a victim twice over—once at the hands of her assailant and once again of the prevailing attitudes of her generation. Her husband's abandonment of her because she'd been raped—just when she needed his love and support the most—stands as a cruel footnote not only to the case but to its time. Would he have preferred her to fight back and risk being maimed, or even stabbed to death? Don't be too quick to answer that one.

How would the jurors respond to this defiant woman? Jaywalker tried to gauge their reactions as she made her way purposefully to the witness stand and took the oath in a loud, clear voice. Eleanor Cerami had averted her eyes from Darren until literally forced to identify him. Joanne Kenarden stared directly at him even as she took her seat.

As he had with the first victim, Jacob Pope began with the diagram. He had Miss Kenarden identify it and mark the location of her building on it. With Justice Davidoff's permission, Pope then held it in front of the jurors, so they could see the proximity of the two buildings. Next he elicited from the witness that she was divorced and the mother of three children. Then he moved on to August 16th.

At about 1:45 that afternoon, Miss Kenarden had returned to her building from a shopping trip. She'd stopped at her mailbox before walking over to the elevator and pressing the button. She'd noticed a man, a black man, standing nearby. When the elevator door opened, she'd stepped on. So had the man. She'd pressed four; he hadn't pressed a button. When the door opened on the fourth floor, the man suddenly grabbed her and slammed her against the elevator wall. Then he put a knife to her ribs and told her not to scream.

At that point, the man pressed twelve. They rode up in silence. When the door opened again, the man pressed his body against hers and, holding the knife against her side, forced her off the elevator, across the corridor and through a door into the stairwell.

In his notes, Jaywalker underlined the word
left.
If the man had used his left hand to loosen the bulb, it meant that his right hand had been busy holding the knife. Not quite as persuasive as Mrs. Cerami's having had him switching hands to free up his right, but still a pretty good indication that the rapist, unlike Darren, was right-handed.

Next the man forced Miss Kenarden up the stairs to a landing. When she began pleading with him not to kill her, he assured her that he wasn't going to hurt her. Then he told her to take her pants off.

There was no answer from the witness.

Again Jaywalker was struck by the contrast between the two victims. Eleanor Cerami had seemed absolutely mortified at having to testify about the details of her ordeal. As he listened to Joanne Kenarden now, he had the strange feeling that she was somehow taking a measure of satisfaction from the opportunity to testify. This wasn't her shame; it was her revenge.

Pope asked her what happened next.

The question was leading, and Jaywalker could have objected. But he saw nothing to be gained, other than antagonizing the jurors.

Pope questioned her about the lighting. She said it had been good. He asked her if she'd been able to see the man's face during the incident. She said she certainly had. He asked her how long the entire encounter had taken. She estimated fifteen to twenty minutes. Then he stepped back.

She pointed at Darren, directly and defiantly.

As had Eleanor Cerami, Joanne Kenarden stated that Darren looked thinner now than he had back in August, and that his hair seemed to be longer now than then. Shown the full-body arrest photo of Darren, she, too, identified the sneakers.

Miss Kenarden, it turned out, hadn't phoned the police
until that night. Pope, anticipating that Jaywalker might try to exploit the delay, asked her to explain why. She testified that she'd been afraid, and had waited for her son to get home from school. Only after she'd fed him and put him to bed had she called the police. At their request, she'd gone to the precinct, and from there to Jacobi Hospital.

Back in 1980, the prosecution had to introduce independent evidence to corroborate each element of a sex crime. In a rape case, that meant proof that force had been used. Mindful of the requirement, Pope turned to the subject of any injuries Miss Kenarden had sustained.

Pope finished up by asking Miss Kenarden if the man had stuttered while speaking to her. Jaywalker fought back a surge of total panic. Having made no reference at all to it in her Wade hearing testimony and her trial testimony up to this point, was she suddenly going to remember it now, with Pope's prompting?

But she said no, she hadn't noticed a stutter.

Pope, obviously sensing that Jaywalker would be making a point of it, was simply bringing it out himself first, trying to steal a little thunder from the defense. Taking a page, in other words, from Jaywalker's playbook.

 

Jaywalker began his cross-examination of Joanne Kenarden as he had with Eleanor Cerami, trying to develop the point that she'd had no occasion to pay attention to the man on the elevator before he turned on her. This time, he didn't get away with it. Miss Kenarden insisted that she'd looked directly at the man at one point early on.

Jaywalker had more success when it came to having her place the knife in the man's right hand.

Again Jaywalker established that on the way from the elevator to the staircase, the man had been behind her. Again he tried to show that once the man had unscrewed the lightbulb, it had become significantly darker in the stairwell.