A Cure for Night (7 page)

11

M
YRA HAD
assigned me the task of trying to speak with Seth Lipton's former roommate, Amin Saberi. We had Amin's name and address in Midwood from the police reports that had been turned over; they'd taken a statement from him. I noticed that Seth Lipton was still listed on the directory at the building's front door. I pressed the buzzer, waited, pressed again. I was getting ready to give up and walk away when a scratchy, unintelligible voice came blaring through the intercom.

"Mr. Saberi?" I said. "I'm a lawyer working on the Lipton case.
Can I come up and speak with you, please?"

There was a silence that began to drag before Amin finally spoke.
"I guess," he said.

I took the elevator up to the fifth floor, then walked the halls until I found Amin's apartment number. Amin opened the door in response to my knock, his brow furrowing slightly when he saw me.
"I thought you were that guy Mr. O'Bannon again," he said. O'Bannon was the lead prosecutor on the case—Amin clearly thinking I was from the DA's office. I shook my head, following Amin into the living room of his apartment, deciding to hold off on admitting I was a defense attorney until I was inside.

The apartment was typical student-shabby, a futon instead of a couch, empty beer bottles lying on the floor. Amin was short, somewhat preppy in a polo shirt and khakis. His voice had the faintest wisp of an accent, but nothing I could place. I guessed he was of South Asian descent, but he seemed pretty thoroughly Americanized.

"No classes today?" I asked, not sure how to work my way into this.

Amin didn't look up at me. "I've got one at two," he said. "Why?"

I shrugged awkwardly. "No reason," I said. "I wanted to ask you
some questions about Seth Lipton."

"Haven't I gone over this enough?" Amin said. "I've talked to the
cops twice, plus that other guy from your office already—"

"I'm not from the DA's office," I interrupted, not wanting to let this misunderstanding go too far.
"I represent Lorenzo Tate."

Amin took a step back, nearly stumbling over the futon that lined one wall across from the TV.
"Are you allowed to come talk to me like this?" Amin asked.

"Of course I am," I said. "In fact, I'm allowed to subpoena you
and force you to testify. But I don't see any reason for that to be necessary.
I'm just trying to get a sense of who Seth Lipton was, and how he came to be in
the wrong place that night."

"That part's easy," Amin said. "Seth was studying sociology, and
for his senior thesis he was doing this thing on the, like, structure of drug
dealers."

"The structure of drug dealers."

"In terms of as a business, basically, but not just that. As a
sort of corporate culture too."

I couldn't resist repeating again. "As a sort of corporate culture," I said.
"I have to admit, I understand every word you're saying, but I've got no idea
what you're talking about."

"It's not that complicated," Amin said dismissively, at last flopping down on the futon he'd just almost fallen onto. I followed suit, sitting in the room's lone chair and taking out a yellow legal pad and a pen.
"The idea was just, like, to do a comparison, the culture of drug dealers and the culture of, you know, like, a more conventional business. But the other thing Seth was doing was, he wasn't just comparing the business models, like you would do in an econ thing, but he was also looking at the culture, the sort of, you know,
code
by which the business was run."

Amin looked at me expectantly, but my look in response was self-consciously skeptical. I found the whole notion trite, fundamentally collegiate.

"Whatever," Amin said dismissively, having picked up that I was not a convert.
"All of his professors thought Seth was brilliant."

"It never occurred to any of his professors that what he was doing
might be dangerous?"

"Seth had the crew he was studying's
cooperation
," Amin said vehemently.
"He was supposed to be protected."

"Was Devin Wallace part of the crew he was studying?"

"The other guy who got shot?" Amin said. "I think so. I'd heard
Seth talk about a dude named Devin down there. He was sort of the boss, far as I
understood it."

"Did you ever hear Seth talk about Lorenzo Tate?"

Amin shook his head. "But Seth never gave me, like, the whole play-by-play," he said.
"He told me more about the big picture. Truth is, I'm not sure I wanted to know
the whole play-by-play."

"Why not?"

Amin looked away, the kid looking like he thought he'd said too much.
"I don't know," Amin said finally. "I guess I'm just not as fearless as Seth
was."

"So this thesis he was doing," I said. "Had he actually written
it?"

"He was working on it, yeah," Amin said. "But he hadn't started
putting together the final product."

"Did he have a rough draft or notes or anything?"

Amin looked back at me, clearly hesitating, trying to gauge the extent to which he could refuse to cooperate with me. I let the silence grow, knowing it would only increase Amin's uncertainty.

"Sure," Amin said. "I mean, he was working on it. Why?"

"I'd like to have a copy of whatever he'd done," I replied.

"Are you allowed to just do that?"

"What do you mean?" I said, smiling. "I'm a lawyer."

12

Y
OU READY
for your field trip?" Myra said when she picked me up outside my building on Saturday morning. A Common CD played on the car stereo—a good deal more mellow than the feminist punk rock that had greeted me the last time I'd been in her car. Myra was drinking take-out deli coffee and smoking a cigarette. I failed to understand how anyone could smoke so much first thing in the morning.

"Sorry if I'm cramping your style," I said. "When Michael
suggested it I didn't really feel like I could say no. But I do realize this
isn't a field trip."

"It sort of is, actually," Myra said. "I mean, there's no real
point to this visit from a legal perspective. It's really just reminding Terrell
that I'm still working for him, trying to make sure he doesn't check out on us."

"I don't imagine Sing Sing will let him check out."

"I mean punch his own ticket," Myra said. "Which Sing Sing
certainly has let people do."

"Are you really worried that Terrell is suicidal?"

"Of course I am," Myra said sharply. "He's a borderline-retarded
twenty-two-year-old who still lived with his mother on the day he was arrested
and now finds himself in the big house for a murder he didn't commit. Being
suicidal would be a pretty rational reaction to his circumstances."

"I hear you," I said.

Myra didn't reply, and we drove in silence for a full minute.

"You're really convinced he's innocent?" I asked, wanting to break the tension.

"Tell you what," Myra said. "After we meet with him, I'll ask
you."

PEOPLE V. GIBBONS
had been the biggest trial anyone on my team had handled in the time I'd been in the office, so I'd picked up a fair amount about it over the past few months. The case came out of a robbery of By Design, a jewelry store in the Fulton Street Mall, three masked men entering with guns drawn, leaving with money and jewelry, and leaving behind a dead store owner.

The store owner had gotten a shot off from his own gun before being killed, hitting one of the thieves. That turned out to be Kawame Jones, who'd been smart enough to travel to Newark before going to a hospital and claiming he'd just been shot in a drive-by. But it hadn't been far enough—the police had quickly connected him to the By Design robbery and placed him under arrest.

Once the police had linked the bullet in Kawame's shoulder to the gun in the store owner's lifeless hand, Kawame had sensibly decided to offer up information in exchange for a plea bargain on felony murder. Kawame had named one supposed accomplice, claiming that he'd never known the names of the other person who'd gone in or the getaway driver. He'd named Terrell Gibbons.

Based on Kawame's statement the police had picked Terrell up for questioning. After fourteen hours in police custody Terrell had confessed not just to being involved in the robbery, but also to being the shooter. The police had never been able to come up with any other direct evidence linking Terrell to the crime: their case had rested entirely on Kawame Jones's pointing the finger at Terrell and Terrell's having pointed the finger at himself.

Ever since his initial confession, Terrell had insisted he'd had no involvement with the murder at By Design, and that he'd confessed only after the detective lied about finding his fingerprints at the scene and told him that he would never go home or see his mother again unless he confessed. Terrell had an IQ located somewhere in the low seventies. This wasn't a characteristic you would look for in a prospective accomplice to an armed robbery. It was, however, exactly what you might look for in picking out a fall guy. And that was what Myra believed Kawame Jones had done.

Myra had tried to present at trial the testimony of a psychology professor at Cornell who had extensively studied false confessions. The judge hadn't allowed it, leaving Myra with no way to challenge the confession except by putting Terrell Gibbons himself on the stand. Terrell had done decently, but unsurprisingly he'd struggled on cross.

Despite Myra's passionate beliefs, it had always seemed obvious to me that she faced an extremely difficult task trying to persuade a jury to acquit. Convincing a jury that someone had confessed to a crime they weren't guilty of was virtually impossible. However hard a defense lawyer worked to put the jury in the shoes of the defendant, few people could imagine themselves admitting to a murder that they hadn't committed. Indeed, even while I understood that false confessions happened, my own understanding was at a certain level of abstraction. It certainly wasn't like I could imagine myself doing such a thing.

The jury had taken less than a day to convict Terrell of murder.

SING SING
was on the edge of town in Ossining, near the Hudson River. It was New York's second-largest prison, one of its oldest, and certainly its most gothic. The prison held over two thousand inmates, more than half of them black. The overwhelming majority were in for violent felonies. About one out of every five was in for murder.

There was a residential street not far from the prison, although a turreted observation post occupied by armed guards made sure that the distance wouldn't be easily breached. The prison was dark brick, grim and foreboding, matching exactly my expectations of what a maximum-security prison should look like.

Myra and I arrived at the front desk in an open but stuffy room that was hardly an improvement over the sticky, humid weather outside, with a series of benches and a small scattering of people. The CO at the desk told us they were conducting count inside, making sure all prisoners were accounted for; it meant that nobody could go into or out of the prison.

"This the real reason you agreed to bring me along?" I asked once we were seated on a bench.
"Keep you company in the waiting room?"

"Actually I brought my cell phone and some case files for that," Myra said.

Because it was an attorney-client visit, we were given a private interview room within the open visiting area, with a glass door we could close for privacy. The main visiting room was expansive, a television set in the corner showing
Jerry Springer
, not exactly the fare I expected in a maximum-security prison. The air was thick and stale. We waited another ten minutes before Terrell was brought in, dressed in a loose prison jumpsuit that emphasized his frailty.

Myra gave Terrell a hug in greeting before introducing me. I was surprised by the gesture: she hadn't exactly struck me as the hugging type. Terrell was pudgy, with a round teddy-bear baby face that made him appear younger than his years. Even in a prison uniform he looked soft and unthreatening—a hard trick to pull off.
"You holding up okay, Terrell?" she asked, keeping a hand on his shoulder while looking closely at him.

"I ain't supposed to be here," Terrell said plaintively. "I didn't
do nothin' wrong."

"I know, Terrell," Myra said. "That's part of why I'm here: to
make sure you know that I still believe in you, that I'm still fighting for
you."

"Ain't nothing you can do for me in here, though, is there?"

"How do you mean?" Myra asked.

"Nothin' you can do to protect me in here," Terrell said. "I come
up in Bed-Stuy; I seen some serious shit, known people who got capped, all that,
but ain't nothin' out there like what it is in here."

"We're not going to be able to get you transferred to another prison," Myra said.
"But we can see about getting you into some kind of protective custody, or get
you away from a particular person who's giving you trouble."

"It ain't one person," Terrell said. "It be everybody. It be this
place."

"The best thing we're going to be able to do for you in that regard is to try to win your appeal and get you out of here," Myra said.

"You think you can win?" Terrell asked. "You really think you can
get me out?"

"It's never easy," Myra said. "But I think the trial judge made
some mistakes; hopefully I can get the appellate court to agree, and we'll at
least get you a new trial. I've got a couple of people from my office helping me
out. Joel here used to work at one of the city's fanciest law firms. We've also
got my boss working on your appeal, who's by far the best and most experienced
appeals lawyer in our office."

"Even if we get a new trial, what's to stop them from getting me
all over again?"

"That's a few steps down the road," Myra said. "If we get a new
trial, we'll take it from there, but I think we'd have a good shot at getting an
acquittal."

"I shouldn't be here," Terrell said again. "I ain't done nothing
to be here for."

"I know," Myra said. "I'm going to do everything I can to fix
that."

"
SO TELL
me, Counselor," I said as we were walking up the steep and crumbling stairway outside of the prison to the parking lot,
"do you really think you can get Terrell's conviction overturned?"

"We've got some issues," Myra said. "But the appellate division
isn't ever exactly eager to overturn murder convictions based on evidentiary
decisions by the trial judge, which is really all we've got here. I can't
pretend it's going to be easy."

"He's not going to make it if he stays here, is he?"

"Not for very long, no," Myra said.

I felt my body shudder slightly and tried to tell myself it was from the sudden breeze, which was, in truth, light and warm.
"I can see why you want to get him out, then," I said.

"Does that mean you think Terrell's innocent?"

"There's no doubt in my mind," I said.