"And third…" He paused and glanced sideways at Tyler again. "This is about justice. Not for four bloodthirsty, depraved thugs. It's about an injustice they did to a young mother and wife. She was the one who had her youth and everything she loved stolen from her. She is the one owed a debt that can never be repaid."
30
After opening statements, the plaintiffs' case had taken only the remainder of the day for Louis to present, which demonstrated to Karp that his strategy had worked. It was obvious that Louis had expected to settle and was unprepared for the trial.
Largely his efforts consisted of calling his clients to the stand to talk about their disadvantaged childhoods and how they had been intimidated and threatened into confessing to the rape and attempted murder of Liz Tyler.
Cross-examining each of the first three plaintiffs-Davis, Jones, and Wilson-Karp was satisfied merely to establish that none of them had been questioned without the presence of an adult family member. "And at what point were you intimidated or threatened or coerced?" he asked. None seemed to have a better answer than "the cops scared me."
Otherwise, they sullenly denied making comments in front of the police or to other witnesses that indicated their guilt. He let it be for the time being; he'd return during the defense part of the trial with his witnesses and the videotapes of the confessions.
When Louis called Sykes to the stand, the young man nearly bounced out of his seat as though eager to tell his story. Sitting back down in the witness box, he smiled broadly at the jurors. However, he allowed his demeanor to crumble almost to tears as he described, at Louis's request, the years he'd spent in prison. "They…they do horrible things to you," he said, his voice cracking. "I'm sorry, I can't talk about it."
Louis then asked about the night twelve years earlier on the Coney Island boardwalk. "Mr. Karp in his opening statement described your behavior as 'wilding.' Would that be accurate?"
"No. I'm afraid the police came up with that term, which would be an exaggeration," he said. "It was mostly just pushing and shoving people-admittedly not very nice-but we were just a bunch of poor kids and were trying to get people to give us a little change so we could eat a hot dog. But the Korean man grabbed my arm…he had his hand in his coat pocket and I thought maybe he had a gun. I was scared and hit him just to get him to let me go." Sykes paused and shook his head sadly. "I guess I hit him harder than I intended."
"And you were convicted of that crime," Louis said, "am I correct?"
"Yes," Sykes replied dutifully. "I did the crime."
"And did you do the time?"
"Yes. I was sentenced to six years to serve concurrently with my other sentence. With good time, I could have been out in four years."
"Good time?" Louis asked. "Can you tell the jury about that?"
"Yes," Sykes answered. "I stayed out of trouble and did my time. I was reborn again as a Christian and tried to spread the good word among my brothers in prison."
Louis moved on to Sykes's confession to the police. "I was scared," he said. "I was just a big kid and they kept threatening me. They said I could get the electric chair. They talked about how hard it would be on my momma if I was to be executed."
"So what did you tell them?"
"Actually, I told them what they told me to say for the camera."
"Thank you, Mr. Sykes. Your witness, Mr. Karp."
"Good afternoon, Mr. Sykes," Karp began.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Karp," Sykes replied and gave the jury a small, frightened smile.
"I understand that you struck Mr. Kim with a piece of steel rebar, is that correct?"
Sykes shrugged. "I believe you are right. I don't really remember… I've tried to block that out. I've felt so terrible about it."
Karp walked over to his table and picked up a plastic bag marked with an old evidence tag. Inside was a fourteen-inch piece of rebar. "Did it look like this?"
"Could be," Sykes said. "It was just something I picked up from a construction site."
"Any explanation why it would be found under the pier at Coney Island?"
"Not at all," Sykes responded, looking bewildered. "I dropped it after I hit Mr. Kim. I suppose Mr… um…Villalobos could have picked it up… Or maybe the police just said they found it under the pier."
"Let's move on," Karp said. "You just told the jury that you felt threatened by the police officers and detectives after your arrest. Did anybody do anything to you physically?"
"What do you mean?"
"Did anybody hit you or push you or touch you in any violent way?"
"No."
"So the threat was a verbal one."
"Yes, they sort of hovered over me like they might hit me and said those things to me."
"Do you recall saying to a female police officer, 'I want to lick your pussy'?"
Sykes hung his head as if in shame. He'd been told not to deny this one because it had been taped by the jail's surveillance camera. "I…I may have. I was scared-there were a lot of bad men around me in the jail-and I wanted them to think I was tough so that they wouldn't bother me later."
"I see, and was that the same reason your prison indicates that you were placed in solitary confinement no less than six times for assaulting other people, including a guard?"
"Yes," he said. "You have to understand that in prison, if the other inmates think you won't fight back, they'll do…horrible things to you. Fortunately, I found Jesus and reading the Bible taught me to turn the other cheek."
"Mr. Sykes, did you know Mr. Enrique Villalobos before he confessed to assaulting Ms. Tyler?"
"No."
"Really? All that time spent in the same prison and you never met him?"
"It's a big place. You sort of hang out with your own kind."
"And what might your own kind be, Mr. Sykes?" Karp asked.
Before Sykes could answer, Louis objected. "Your honor, may we approach the bench?"
Klinger nodded. "Please, Mr. Louis."
In front of the judge but out of earshot of the jury, Louis angrily whispered, "Your honor, Mr. Karp knows full well that we…I mean you…already ruled that any reference to my clients' alleged gang ties would be unfairly prejudicial and is off-limits."
Karp snorted. "Alleged? Does the truth ever matter to you, Mr. Louis? Your client is the one who just made the statement that he hung out with his own kind, which I take to mean murdering, raping scumbag pieces of human crap."
"Your honor!" Louis complained.
Klinger pointed a finger at Karp. "You've been told to steer away from this subject, Mr. Karp. I won't warn you again."
When they returned to their places, Karp resumed his questioning. "So, your answer is that you never met Mr. Villalobos?"
Sykes nodded. "That's right."
"What about Igor Kaminsky?"
Sykes looked like he was concentrating for a moment then shook his head. "I'm sorry but I don't recall the name."
Karp studied Sykes for a moment, just long enough for the young man to start to fidget in his seat. "No more questions."
Louis then called a psychologist to the stand. William Randolph Florence, a portly, balding man, entered the courtroom and was sworn in. He testified that "even if the police detectives didn't physically or verbally assault the plaintiffs, they were psychologically intimidated into giving the detectives what they wanted…confessions."
Florence noted that he'd conducted a study in which he'd interviewed 110 incarcerated African-American males who told him that "the mere presence of someone in uniform or in a position of authority was enough to prompt this psychological intimidation response. I call it the Florence Psychological Response Syndrome, or FPRS…Fippers, ha ha."
"So let me get this straight," Karp asked on cross-examination. "You talked to a number of men who had been arrested and incarcerated by other men who were wearing uniforms and/or were in a position of authority?"