“Did you ever read Robinson Crusoe as a boy?”
I thought he was going to describe Danny as isolated and alone, without skill or training. “But Robinson Crusoe was a well-educated man, with a knowledge of all the principles of modern science at his disposal. Danny can’t read.”
“No, Mr. Antonelli. He’s not like Robinson Crusoe; he’s like Friday. He has no education, but he isn’t for that reason stupid, and he knows how to survive in the situation in which he finds himself. Reverse it: not Robinson Crusoe on the island, Friday in London, and you have something close to what I mean.”
He had my attention, and more importantly, that of the jury.
Clifford Fox was a marvel of sense and intuition who had listened to the murmurs of a childlike heart and turned them into a blood-chilling account of human indifference and utter depravity. More even than the story he told, the innocence of the manner in which he told it concentrated your mind. You could almost see the burning cigarettes shoved against Danny’s pale skin; you would have sworn you could hear at least the echoes of his screams, until you learned that the screaming only made them want to do it more. Then you heard the silence, and the silence itself became unendurable.
Asking questions, moving him first in one direction, then another, I kept Fox on the stand until he had told the jury everything he had managed to put together from the long hours he had spent talking quietly with the strange young man who sat next to me accused of murder. When he described the way Danny had been kept a prisoner, shackled to a metal frame bed, soiled in his own feces, or chained to a stake in the backyard and made to sleep outside in the dirt and cold, jurors wiped their eyes or used a handkerchief to blow their nose. If the trial had ended right then, that jury would have returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty before they had reached the door to the jury room. I asked one last question.
“Dr. Fox, based on your examination, is the defendant, in your professional opinion, capable of an act of murder?”
It called for a conclusion, an opinion about the ultimate issue in the case. I expected an objection, but Loescher did not rise to make one. Resting her chin on her folded hands, she watched the witness and tried to pretend that she had heard nothing new and that she was as certain of what she was doing as she had been before. I expected a one-word answer, but I did not get that either.
Shifting his weight to his other hip, Dr. Fox crossed his legs and leaned against the arm of the witness chair. “Not if you mean a planned, premeditated act of violence in which he deliberately set out to kill another human being.”
I tried to save it. “That is the definition of murder. Thank you, Dr. Fox,” I said as I sat down.
Fox had been on the stand answering my questions for three hours; in fifteen minutes Loescher managed to undo much of what I had managed to accomplish. Her first question played off my last.
“In other words, Dr. Fox, there are circumstances in which the defendant would be capable of an act of violence, correct?”
Fox raised his eyebrows the way he did at the end of every question, a signal that he was about to answer. “There are circumstances in which all of us are capable of acts of violence.”
With her arms folded in front of her, Loescher moved closer to the witness stand, a slightly amused expression on her mouth.
“Self-defense, for example? To protect himself from harm-or what he perceived to be a threat of harm?”
The eyebrows went up again. “Yes, of course. As I say-”
“So it would be your opinion, would it not, that if the defendant was somewhere he should not have been-a parking structure, for example-and were surprised there, thought that someone was going to harm him, he could in those circumstances commit an act of violence?”
“It’s possible, but-”
“According to your testimony,” she went on before he could finish, “the defendant was subjected to physical torture, sexual abuse, things worse than any of us have ever had to imagine, isn’t that correct?”
“Yes, there is no question-”
“And isn’t it also true, Dr. Fox, that people who are abused as children frequently engage in acts of abuse themselves? And isn’t it also true, Dr. Fox, that children who are subjected to the kind of violence you’ve described here today become not only capable of violence but turn out to be almost incapable of anything else?”
Fox held his ground. “Not this kind of violence,” he replied, sitting straight up. He shuddered with disgust. “No, that isn’t the way someone reacts to that kind of torture. Besides, you forget-”
“Dr. Fox, let me ask you-”
“Objection, your honor.” I was on my feet, pointing angrily at Loescher. “She didn’t let the witness finish his answer.”
Bingham looked at Loescher. Loescher looked at the witness.
The witness looked at Bingham. “You may finish what you started to say,” said the judge.
“I was going to say two things. First, the reaction to the kind of long-term, systematic torture to which the defendant was subjected is fear, not aggression. Second, his feelings of weakness and vulnerability were intensified by his isolation. You have to remember: This is someone who has never been to school, never been around other children, around other people except the ones who abused him.”
Cardinal Richelieu said that give him any seven sentences a man had ever uttered and he could have him condemned; Loescher could have done it with five. She took Fox’s answer as if it was what she had wanted to hear all along.
“I see,” she said, raising her eyebrows in turn. “He was isolated, ignorant and vulnerable and afraid. Correct?”
“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “Exactly.”
Peering down at her midnight blue high heel shoes, that same irritating amused expression returned to her mouth. “Exactly,” she repeated, savoring the word as if it had a value only she understood. “And when you say vulnerable, you mean, don’t you, someone easily taken advantage of, someone without the ability to distinguish between those who mean him well and those who mean him ill?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
She looked down again and repeated this word as well. “And because he was never around other children, because he’s never been around other people, he would be more eager to please someone he thought might be a friend, someone he thought he could trust, someone he thought wouldn’t hurt him?”
“Yes, without question.”
“Without question,” she repeated, moving one shoe slightly ahead of the other. “So, if Mr. Antonelli is right-if there is someone behind both the murder of Judge Jeffries and Judge Griswald, someone able to convince others to do the killing for him-someone as vulnerable, as susceptible to suggestion as the defendant would be the perfect candidate, would he not?”
“No, you don’t-”
Whirling away, she jabbed her finger toward the defendant and talked right over the witness. “He could have killed Judge Griswald because he was caught doing something he shouldn’t have done, or he could have killed him because someone told him to, or he could have killed him for a thousand other strange reasons and there is nothing in your training, your experience, or your psy-chological evaluation of the defendant that can tell us otherwise, is there?” she demanded.
Fox waited until he was sure she was done. “I’m not sure Danny could kill anyone, even in self-defense.”
She rounded on him, staring hard as she drew herself up to her full height. “You didn’t say that at the beginning. Would you like to have the court reporter read back your testimony-the part where you said there were circumstances in which everyone is capable of violence?”
” ‘Acts of violence,’ ” I corrected without rising from my chair.