Courtroom 302 (26 page)

But when the lawyers assemble at the appointed hour and Sundberg calls the case, prosecutor Adrienne Mebane asks for a three-week continuance, citing new “security concerns” regarding a witness.

Locallo is clearly taken aback. “We’ll address the issue in chambers,” he says testily.

While Locallo and the lawyers meet in chambers, Conniff and his partner, Kathryn Lisco, huddle near the defense table, wondering whether jury selection will begin today or not. They look forward to their respite from the courtroom grind once the trial begins and the private lawyers do battle for a week or so. It will allow them to catch up on jail visits and case investigations. “I think he’ll make ’em go,” Lisco says to Conniff. “I mean, he got a haircut.”

Locallo can’t make them go, however. When the principals return to the courtroom fifteen minutes later, the judge says for the record that he can’t force prosecutors to trial before they’re ready. But since Caruso’s and Jasas’s lawyers are ready today and demanding trial, the delay will count against the 160 days the state has to try the defendants. The delay will be much longer than the three weeks the state asked for, since Caruso’s lawyer has a federal trial scheduled for May and Jasas’s lawyer has a trial set for June. Locallo sets July 6 as the new date for this case.

The witness about whom prosecutor Mebane has “security concerns” is nineteen-year-old Richard DeSantis. He’s a key witness for the prosecutors, having signed a statement implicating all three defendants in the attack on Lenard Clark and Clevan Nicholson. The “security” problem is that DeSantis is missing. Sometime after the three defendants were arrested, the DeSantis family moved from Bridgeport to Scottsdale, Arizona. The prosecutors knew about the move, but when authorities went to Scottsdale recently to subpoena DeSantis for the trial, his mother and sister told them they hadn’t seen him in weeks.

DeSantis’s father reputedly has been a member of the same wing of the Chicago mob that Frank Caruso’s father allegedly belonged to, the
26th Street Crew, which operated near 26th and Princeton. So
prosecutors aren’t worried about the younger DeSantis’s safety. They feel certain that he’s ducking.

The latest delay frustrates Locallo. He’d hoped to dispose of the case well before his retention election this coming November, to allow time for any animosity the case might generate toward him to dissipate. He’s further annoyed the following morning by the jowly sketch of him in an article in the
Chicago Sun-Times
. Any publicity is good publicity, he believes, but if they’re going to use his likeness, they may as well get it right. He soon delivers a personal photo to the
Sun-Times
’s courthouse reporter, asking
her if in the future the paper would use the photo instead of a sketch, and adding that he’s considering charging the illustrator with impersonating an artist. Guerrero is fonder of the sketch. He trims it from the newspaper and tapes it to a wall in the sheriff’s station with the caption: “Ehh! All right, Gil—give him a contact visit.”

EIGHT

Charlie Chan

THREE FRIENDS
of Frank Caruso have signed statements implicating him in the Bridgeport beatings. Unless Richard DeSantis is located, only two of them can be witnesses against Caruso at his trial. One of the two is Mike Cutler.

Cutler told police—and the grand jury—he was in Caruso’s Jeep Cherokee on the night of the beating, riding through Bridgeport, and that when they drove past two young black boys and a Hispanic youth, Caruso said he was going to “beat the fuck out of those niggers” because they “shouldn’t be in this neighborhood.” Caruso then parked the Jeep and confronted the youths. Cutler said he saw Caruso knock the taller black boy off his bike and chase him down the block. He said he didn’t witness the stomping of the black youth around the corner, but that he heard Caruso brag later about how he and others “beat the fuck out of the nigger.”

Cutler had been a year ahead of Caruso at De La Salle Institute, a Catholic high school. He graduated two months after the beating, then attended Union College in Kentucky on a football scholarship. Early in May 1998 he returned to Bridgeport for the summer.

Cutler was a shade under six feet tall, muscular, and brown complected. His mother was white, and his biological father, whom Cutler never knew, was Puerto Rican.

On the evening of May 14 Cutler went on a date with a new girlfriend, a young African American woman from a southern suburb who attended college downstate. Cutler and the young woman, Linda,
^*
had gotten to
know each other in an Internet chat room while at college. They’d talked on the phone, but this was the first time they’d met in person. They planned to go to a movie, but Linda and her best friend, Donna, got to Cutler’s mother’s apartment, on Halsted Street, later than expected—it was around ten
P.M
. The three young people then drove to the west side, to the home of a former high school classmate of the two women. The former classmate, Edward, lived in a small middle-class enclave of Austin, a solidly black, generally impoverished neighborhood.

Linda parked the car in front of Edward’s house, and Donna got out to visit with him. After a half hour or so Cutler told Linda he was getting tired. Linda said she’d get a drink of water in the house and then drive him home.

Linda was still inside the house, and Cutler in the car, when two young African American men in hooded sweatshirts or jackets walked up. The hooded men approached Donna and Edward on the porch, and the taller one pointed a handgun at them and announced a robbery. Edward tossed his wallet to the men and pulled Donna into the house.

A moment later Edward, Donna, and Linda heard a gunshot out front. They called 911, and then Edward and Donna went outside to check on Cutler—they wouldn’t let Linda come out. They found Cutler facedown next to the car, bleeding and barely moving. He’d been shot once in the chest. The nineteen-year-old was pronounced dead an hour later at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Detectives told reporters that they had no suspects but doubted there was any connection to the Bridgeport case. The shooting of Cutler likely stemmed simply from the robbery, they said.

But there’s speculation nonetheless, in the newspapers and at the courthouse.

“Was it a hit?” Locallo asks prosecutor Joe Alesia from the bench the Monday morning after the news breaks. Alesia has assisted the two prosecutors assigned to the Bridgeport case with the pretrial hearings in 302.

“The way I heard it, it was,” Alesia says.

LOCALLO IS OVERBOOKED
on this particular May Monday. A jury is waiting in the jury room for the beginning of the second day of the retrial of Kevin Betts. Locallo also has two bench trials and thirty other defendants on the day’s docket. If a judge always schedules only the cases he definitely will have time to hear in a day, he’ll often be left with little to do, given the inevitable cancellations. Even the simplest “status hearing,” in which the lawyers update the judge on progress toward trial or a plea, requires the presence of the defendant, his lawyer, the prosecutor, the
judge, and a court reporter. A trial or a hearing on a motion usually requires the presence of witnesses as well. Lawyers frequently get delayed in other courtrooms, witnesses get sick or arrested, and mix-ups in the jail sometimes result in a defendant not being sent over for his court date.

The prosecutors and PDs assigned to 302 don’t blame Locallo for overbooking, but they think he should be quicker to make adjustments on mornings such as these, when no one cancels and there’s clearly more work than can be handled. Public defender Kathryn Lisco, who’s involved in both of the bench trials set for today, thinks the judge should continue the two benches now since he knows he’ll be tied up with the Betts trial. Locallo, however, still hopes to nibble away at the two benches during breaks in the jury trial. Judges frequently hear bench trials in bits and pieces over several days or even weeks. Locallo asks Deputy Rhodes to bring in the Betts jury and tells Lisco he’ll start the bench trials as soon as he gets a chance. Lisco stares at him speechlessly. She’d hoped to get back to her office in the administration building to catch up on some of her out-of-court work; but now she’ll be tethered to the courtroom most of the day. (When I ask Locallo later about the complaints of some of his lawyers about being tied to his courtroom and thus unable to get other work done, he says, “Here’s my suggestion to them. Get to work earlier.”) A prosecutor tells the two police officers in the jury box who are waiting to testify in one of the bench trials to come back this afternoon. “This is ridiculous,” one of the officers says as she gets up to leave.

The defendants in the gallery are restless as well; it’s becoming clear to them that their cases won’t be called until lunchtime at the earliest. As Lisco takes a seat in the front bench of the gallery, a middle-aged black man grumbles to her about the delay. Lisco tells him, “I’m in the same boat as you are. I can’t do my work because I have to wait around.”

The Kevin Betts retrial began the previous Friday, with prosecutor Alesia telling the jury the case was about “a violent act committed by a violent person”—a verbatim repeat of his opening statement synopsis in the February trial, delivered with the same glare at Betts. Alesia and partner Mark Ostrowski feel no need to alter their strategy, since only one bullheaded juror spoiled things last time, in their view. Public defender Tony Eben, on the other hand, aware of the eleven votes against Betts in February, adjusted his tenor. (With Amy Campanelli having left the office, Eben is being assisted this time by Homicide Task Force colleague Ann Collins.) Eben’s opening statement in the first trial had been restrained—he’d questioned the “appropriateness” of the investigation and had said merely that “the evidence will show” that another inmate did the shanking. This time he came out swinging, saying the state and the defense were “in absolute
and complete dispute” about the evidence and baldly asserting that Betts “was not the offender in this case.”

Betts didn’t like the makeup of the first jury, and to him this panel seems only marginally better. He’s glad this jury is a little younger, and that there are six women instead of five, and three blacks instead of one. But half of the jurors in the first trial were from the city, and this time only two are.

On Friday the jurors heard from the victim’s grandmother, Ora Lee Carter, and from Officer James Jackson, the guard in the jail barbershop. This morning Officer Johnnie Debergh tells about the call he got from Officer Jackson after the shanking and how he stopped Betts in the hallway.

Locallo recesses the trial for lunch at one
P.M
. He asks the court reporter, Kenneth Madoch, if he needs a break. Madoch flexes his fingers but shakes his head. The judge arraigns one defendant, scoops into custody a probationer who hasn’t done his community service, and then tells Lisco and the prosecutors in one of the bench trials that he won’t be able to get to that case today. Then he calls the other bench, a sexual assault case.

No reporters from the city’s dailies or TV stations are covering this dime-a-dozen, not-even-a-murder, black-on-black rape case, this muddled picture of what happened, or didn’t, in an abandoned building in a south-side slum more than a year ago. Twenty-sixth Street mostly offers tangled messes such as this, as opposed to nice clean TV lessons. Some courthouse veterans like to affect a knack for seeing through every snarl and detecting every lie. More prudent veterans here humbly admit there’s often much about a case they’ll never know.

The defendant’s accuser is on the stand when the Betts jurors, having finished their lunch in the administration building, suddenly march into the gallery, led by Deputy Rhodes, through the glass doors, and into the well of the courtroom. Lisco is cross-examining the woman about her testimony that the defendant “was on top of you and having sex with you.” Locallo looks up from the ledger in which he’s taking notes, sees what’s happening a moment too late, and signals to Lisco to pause. The woman on the stand lowers her head and covers her eyes as the deputy, twelve jurors, and two alternates parade past her to the jury room.

Ten minutes later Lisco is still questioning the woman, and the judge is frowning at the PD impatiently. He’s got the jury waiting in the jury room, the lockup crammed, and defendants in the gallery. He hoped to at least complete the woman’s testimony today.

“How much more?” he asks Lisco.

“I still have some, Judge—”

“Well, as soon as the lawyers [for the Betts trial] get here, we’re gonna have to break.”

This irks Lisco. It wasn’t her idea to squeeze this testimony in over lunch, and she doesn’t appreciate the judge rushing her. Locallo soon gives up on the prospect of getting all of the woman’s testimony in and suspends the rape trial for the day. Lisco and the prosecutor gather up their files; the lawyers from Betts settle in; Deputy Guerrero takes the rape defendant to the lockup and trades him in for Betts. Meanwhile, Locallo issues four continuances.

Over the next two hours the Betts jury hears from three of the convicted murderers who were in the barbershop when Bernard Carter was attacked. As in February, they say the late Angelo Roberts was the culprit and not Betts. At 4:25 Locallo gives the jury a washroom break. The judge needs the break as much as the jury: he’s got to deal with that lockup full of defendants and the ones waiting in the gallery. “Uh, Kathy, tell the sheriff to take five at a time,” he says to Lisco, as he heads to his chambers for a moment.

“Five at a time? Any
particular
five, Judge?” Lisco says sarcastically when the judge is out of earshot. Guerrero starts lining up the prisoners in the deputies’ hallway.

Locallo, back on the bench, begins calling cases and dispensing with them rapid-fire. There’s not enough time even for status reports; he simply continues most of the cases to dates in the near future. When he continues one case to Wednesday, two days hence, his clerk, Duane Sundberg, warns him that “Wednesday’s becoming a nightmare.” “All days are nightmares at this point,” Locallo says. A file is missing (continued), a lawyer is missing (continued), a defendant is missing (warrant). A defendant wants his bond reconsidered: denied. A defendant wants to plead guilty, but there’s not even time for that. Bring him back tomorrow, the judge says.