A Case of Redemption (7 page)

“ ‘Going A-Rod',” I said, “is a reference to beating someone with a baseball bat. A takeoff on Alex Rodriguez, the Yankee third baseman, who's known as A-Rod.”

“Oh, I got that part,” Popofsky said, “even though I'm a Mets fan. Although the way that guy's been playing lately, it just as well could mean that he swung and missed.” Popofsky chuckled at his joke, and then said, “But the thing I don't get is, why'd she have a baseball bat in her bedroom? That's kind of strange for a woman, isn't it?”

“Not really,” Nina answered. “She sang at the opening game of the
World Series, and the teams presented it to her. It was signed by the players or something.”

“Oh,” he said. “I saw the game, but I guess I didn't pay much attention to who sang the national anthem. I never heard of any of those pop stars, anyway.”

“So, is this all something you can help us with?” I asked.

“I don't see why not,” he said cheerfully. “It's all within my area of expertise. In fact, I can tell you right now, if the murder weapon was a baseball bat, there probably won't be any evidence of it in the victim's skull. Major-league bats are made out of northern white ash, and they just don't splinter when they come in contact with a human skull.” He shrugged. “That's the kind of information you acquire from twenty-plus years in a coroner's office. Sad to say, this won't be my first baseball-bat murder. So I'm pretty confident that I'll be able to tell you everything that good ol' Harry Davis tells them.”

“Who?” Nina asked.

Popofsky chuckled. “I guess he's not a household name outside of the forensics world. Harry Davis is the head of the city's medical examiner's office. And I tell you, a bigger SOB you'll never meet. The guy was my boss for twenty years. And don't ask me how I lasted that long.”

“How does he come off in front of a jury?” I asked.

“He's very smart. Even more arrogant, though. Product of the New York City public school system, something I bet you he mentions within the first thirty seconds of his testimony. He's very proud of that. For the past . . . I don't know how long, Davis's main job function has been to serve as a professional witness. Others in the office, which up until a month ago included me, do the work, and when it's showtime, Dr. Harry Davis steps out in front of the cameras and reveals the findings.”

“Here's my first bit of legal advice, Marty. You don't have to outexpert him. All we need is for you to fight him to a draw. If the jury's not going to be able to tell which expert is telling the truth, we'll be awfully close to reasonable doubt.”

“I'll do my best,” Popofsky said, now looking less confident than I would have preferred.

It was time to explain the facts of life.

“One thing that you may not have experienced when you were at the ME's office,” I said, “is that there's a difference between a testifying expert and a consultation expert. Right now, we're going to retain you solely to provide consulting advice to help us as part of our legal representation. That means that what you tell us will be covered by the attorney-client privilege. Later on, we may choose to designate you as our testifying expert, at which time we'll also have to waive the privilege. That's when the real work begins, and we'll be spending a lot of time with you, preparing for testimony.”

“I get it,” he said with a knowing smile. “Just because I'm new to the private sector doesn't mean I don't know how the game's played. If you like my opinion, I'll be your expert. And if you don't, you'll find someone else.”

Spoken like a man who's seen the light.

A
t the time, I thought Darrius Macy was going to be the case of my career.

It wasn't without good reason. Darrius Macy was that year's Cinderella story of the NFL. He'd begun the season as a walk-on at the Jets' training camp, and ended it as the Super Bowl MVP. A full-on superstar, and one with all the trappings, he was on the Wheaties box, hosted
Saturday Night Live,
and hawked half a dozen products on TV, in magazine ads, and on billboards.

And then, when it seemed like there was nowhere to go but up, the bottom fell out. A waitress named Vickie Tiernan, who worked at a fancy New York hotel, claimed that two months after his triumph, Darrius Macy, America's Mr. Everything, and a married father of three, invited her up to his hotel room and raped her.

The confluence of events that fueled Darrius Macy's meteoric rise and even greater fall began when the Jets' starting quarterback went down during the preseason, moving Macy up from third- to second-string. Ahead of him, however, was a former All-Pro named Michael Ross, who led the team to the playoffs with a 10-6 record. The Jets advanced through the playoffs, getting a huge break when the top-seeded Patriots fell to the wild-card Raiders, making the Jets the favorite in the AFC Championship Game. They won by ten, and headed to the Super Bowl against Chicago.

But from the Super Bowl's opening kickoff, which the Jets fumbled, it was clear that it wasn't going to be their day. In the first half, the Jets were within striking distance only once, and that drive ended
with an end-zone interception that the Chicago cornerback ran all the way for a touchdown.

The score was 24–0 when, about five minutes into the third quarter, Ross was crushed under more than a thousand pounds of Bears, and left the game on a stretcher. That's when Darrius Macy came in to take his first NFL snap.

In the next twenty minutes, Macy threw for three touchdowns, bringing the Jets within three. With four and a half minutes to go, the Jets had the ball on their own twenty, when Macy engineered a final drive that left them sixteen yards from victory, with twelve seconds to go. It was enough time for one more play from scrimmage. Touchdown, and the Jets would be world champions; fail, and they'd call a time-out and go for the game-tying field goal.

That one play, however, made Macy the most famous football player in the world.

He faded back to pass, and must have seen a receiver open, because his arm shot forward, releasing the ball. But the pass was swatted at the line of scrimmage and, as if God Himself had a wager on the Jets, the ball fell back into Macy's arms.

Macy turned on a dime and scrambled to the other side of the field. By the time he was able again to look upfield for receivers, the clock read double zero—meaning that the game would end on this play. There'd be no game-tying field goal. It was now or never.

I was watching the game in my living room. For most of it, Sarah was reading, periodically asking me the score, usually after I'd shouted at the screen. But for that last drive, she was keenly focused, and even Alexa, who had been coloring on the floor for most of the second half, seemed interested in the outcome.

It was Sarah who first said, “He's going to run.”

When she said it, Macy was around the twenty-yard line. “Nah, that's too far away,” I said, sounding as if I was far more expert about football than I actually was.

As was usually the case when Sarah and I disagreed, she was
right. Almost as soon as the words left my lips, Macy darted forward.

I've seen the play fifty times by now, and yet I could see it fifty more times and still not look away for a second. It was unbelievable, electrifying. The Bears defenders, who must have seemed miles away when Macy made the decision to head for the end zone, closed in a flash. From the camera angle, it looked as if Macy was alone in taking on the entire Bears defense. He shot to the left, and then juked to the right, like a slalom skier, weaving in and out of 350-pound men as if they were stationary gates.

Seconds before, all seemed hopeless for New York. Now it actually looked like he was going to make it. He hurdled one linesman, spun around another, and literally flew over the last two, landing safely on the other side of the goal line.

“
Yes! Yeeeeeeeesssssss!
” I screamed, standing in front of the TV now, and even Sarah shouted something, because Alexa said, “What just happened?”

“The man on the television just scored a touchdown, and the Jets won the Super Bowl!” I exclaimed.

“Oh,” Alexa said, putting the event in some perspective, as Sarah howled with laughter.

The next time I thought of Darrius Macy was nearly three months later, when Benjamin Ethan called me. It was a Thursday night, and as usual on Thursday nights, I was still in the office at ten p.m.

“Have you ever heard of a football player named Darrius Macy?” Ethan asked.

I remember thinking that it was almost like asking,
Have you ever heard of a president of the United States named Barack Obama?
Of course I'd heard of Darrius Macy.

“Yes” was all I actually said.

“Well, he's in lockup down at the Tombs, awaiting a seven a.m. arraignment tomorrow on rape charges. It'll be yours if you feel like meeting him down at 100 Centre Street.”

“Sure,” I said. “You going to meet me there?”

“No, Daniel, you'll be flying solo on this one. That all right?”

“Better than all right. How come?”

“Sadly for Mr. Macy, and, I suppose, luckily for you, he is something of a spendthrift. I'm told he can scrape together about two hundred grand, but his first priority is putting as much of that as he needs toward making bail. That means there's not going to be enough left over to pique my interest, especially to represent a rapist. But it would be great exposure for you. Lawyer to the stars, and all that.”

I had no qualms about representing a rapist. He had me at “lawyer to the stars.”

“That sounds great,” I said.

“Well, it's not set in stone yet,” Ethan said. “I suspect there'll be some pushback from the powers that be at the firm about conflicts, and, you know, the corporate guys would prefer we not represent any criminal defendants unless they're investment bankers, but if you're up for it, I'll do what I can to make it happen.”

“I'm definitely up for it, Benjamin.”

“Then good luck.”

When I arrived the next morning at 100 Centre Street, the Manhattan Criminal Court building was bursting with reporters. They were camped outside the entrance, in the corridors, and right in front of the courtroom door, with a lucky few getting past security to have the honor of watching the proceedings.

I didn't even have the chance to introduce myself to Macy before the judge, the Honorable Jordan Ringel, a longtime fixture on the criminal bench, asked that I state my appearance for the record.

“Daniel Sorensen, of the law firm Taylor Beckett, Your Honor.”

“Taylor Beckett. Nothing but the best for Mr. Macy, I see,” Judge Ringel said. “So, let's see if you're going to earn your keep, Mr. Sorensen. What say you regarding the issue of bail?”

“We respectfully request that Mr. Macy be released on his own recognizance, Your Honor. Mr. Macy has a very bright future ahead of him, and there is no way he would jeopardize that by attempting to flee the jurisdiction. And as a practical matter, Mr. Macy may very well be the most recognized man in this country. There's nowhere for him to hide, and the charges against him will be known by every airport ticket taker and border patrol agent, so there's no possible way for him to flee the country. In other words, even if he were inclined to flee, which he is not, he couldn't do it.”

“How do the people feel about that?” Judge Ringel asked.

The assistant district attorney handling the calendar call was someone I'd never met before. She was in her forties, and seeing how the calendar call duties usually go to a more junior lawyer, she was undoubtedly there solely for Macy.

“Nancy Wong, for the people,” the prosecutor said. “Given the seriousness of the crime and the potential of a long incarceration, the people request that bail be set at five million dollars.”

Most bail bondsmen require 10 percent of the bail amount down, which meant that Macy wouldn't make bail at all if I didn't get it down to $2 million.

“Your Honor,” I said, “as the court well knows, bail is not punitive, but merely to ensure the defendant's appearance at trial. I am informed that Mr. Macy does not have access to considerable funds. Perhaps if bail were set at one million dollars, that would satisfy the court.”

Judge Ringel laughed. “If I were Solomon, I'd split the difference. But alas, I'm not blessed with such wisdom. I'm only a lowly New York State criminal justice. That said, this justice is inclined to believe Mr. Sorensen's pitch, and so I'm going to set bail at one million dollars.”

Two hours later, I left the courthouse with my newest client. We headed straight to Taylor Beckett's offices.

Macy's wife, Erica, was with us, and he insisted that she sit in on
the meeting. My normal practice was to exclude spouses because they usually inhibited getting to the truth, and that went double here. No one is going to admit to a rape, or even use the defense of consensual sex, with his wife sitting next to him.

No one except Darrius Macy, that is.

“Look, I know I screwed up really bad,” he said, alternating his gaze between his wife and me. “But . . . that woman, she followed me up to my room and . . . basically threw herself at me. I should have said no, so I know I'm not without blame, and it's all on me for hurting Erica and my kids, but, I swear, I did not rape her.”

After Macy had denied the charges against him about ten different ways, I told Erica that I needed to spend some time alone with her husband. When she left the room, I gave him the standard criminal-defense-lawyer speech.

“It is my job to represent you zealously no matter what the facts are, Darrius. So if you're innocent or you're guilty, it doesn't change my job one way or the other. My only responsibility is to protect you. But I can't do my job unless I know the truth. More people go to jail for lying to their lawyers than for committing crimes.” (Needless to say, I doubted that was actually true.) “I wasn't in the hotel room with you, and I don't have the ability to ask Vickie Tiernan what happened, so the only version of events I'm going to hear before trial is from you. And based on that, I'm going to fashion a defense and make arguments to the jury. If one fact ends up being proven wrong, then the whole defense collapses like a house of cards. Jurors, like everybody else, don't like being lied to, and they often conclude that if a defendant lies to them about
anything
, no matter how small, that means that same defendant is probably lying to them about
everything
. So if there's anything—anything at all—that you lie to me about, the odds of your being convicted go up exponentially.”