A Trial by Jury (5 page)

Earlier in the week, on the second day of the prosecution's case, the supporting detective had taken the stand. The defense attorney, on cross-examination, pressed him to explain how he had gotten Milcray to “give it up” in that windowless room.

Again and again the detective said only, “All I told him was, ‘Tell me what happened . . . just tell me what happened.' ”

“Nothing else?”

“No. All I said was, ‘Tell me what happened, just tell me the story.' ”

But now, watching the video, one sees how grossly these seemingly neutral promptings distorted what the state really wanted: a “story” hangs together, is treated whole. But once you tell your story into the law, it becomes the object of a precise semantic dissection. The whole of the story is of no interest; instead, patient surgeons of language wait and watch, snip and assay, looking for certain phrases, certain words. Particular locutions trip particular legal switches, and set a heavy machine in motion. Milcray knew nothing of this, but already it was happening as he spoke.

On he went, explaining, the sound from the television speaker tinny, hollow—bottled like the little room itself.

Asked to show how he had handled the knife, he obliges, raising his right arm (in a cast) and supporting it with his left at the elbow, through the sling. He mimes an overhand grip and makes small, apologetic pecking gestures.

Pronouncing final “s” sounds, he has a lisp that seems nearly a hiss; he puts his mouth around words in haste, gobbling them.

“Yessir,” he replies, often.

When he quotes himself as having blurted out, “What the fuck is this?,” he excuses himself for his language, quickly, instinctively, in a whisper.

By the end of the tape, he is holding his bandaged right arm and wincing; he sucks air through his teeth in pain. Asked if he wishes to add anything to his statement, he responds, reasonably, “What's going to happen next?” And then adds, “Can I go home tonight?”

The assistant DA pauses, and repeats his question: Does Milcray wish to add anything to his statement at this time?

He declines.

The high contrast of the image renders his face nearly featureless, makes him a silhouette.

4. The Evidence

A
day of warm weather comes as a surprise; the sun is bright, slanting over the top of the strange, windowless AT&T building that stands near the court. Things are wet, but they sparkle—the asphalt, the granite sidewalks, the dusting of broken glass in the gutters. Taking off my coat, holding my bag between my knees, I think how different the city feels in the sweltering of summer, now a distant memory: for months everyone has been bundled up, covered with many layers, no skin touching the air or available to the eyes. In August, though, in the Village—I am remembering the bare legs and arms.

How much more vulnerable to a knife, a body in the summer.

I walk up Mercer Street, stepping over a sheet of ice spreading glacierlike from a leaky downspout in the shade. Surely my heavy coat would slow down a blade, offer some protection?

I think about that for a moment, wondering what it would feel like to have something partially in one's body and at the same time partially outside; what it would feel like to hold such a thing with one's hands. This thought (tactile, intimate) had preoccupied me long before I found myself in Part 24, though in the courtroom it has passed through my head many times a day. Years earlier, after being struck by a particularly gruesome bit of the
Iliad
(a lance to the lower gut), I had written a short poem, a limping sapphic, about such wounds—about being able to grasp at a shaft piercing the body, about the strange and sudden tangibility of one's insides under such conditions.

I was about Milcray's age at the time, amorous, hungry, prone to unreachable sadness and (I thought) unspeakable desires. The short poem tried to say all this. When I gave it to a woman to read, she said it seemed to her very much about being a boy rather than a girl. Maybe. I wasn't so sure. I took up fencing.

Valentine's Day is approaching. The world feels beautiful; smells, if only for this brief moment in the early afternoon, of spring.

Why would people ever stab each other, in such a fine world as this?

 

T
he prosecution had a great deal of evidence, but most of it for things that the defendant did not dispute. There was, for instance, no shortage of recovered DNA samples, presented by a cordially poised and slightly didactical woman from the forensics laboratory, and these linked the bloods of the victim and the defendant. But this, obviously, was consistent with Milcray's account. More troubling was the presence of seminal proteins on a swab taken from the victim's penis, and this became all the more mysterious when no traces of semen could be found anywhere on either of the condoms recovered under Cuffee's body. Semen also turned up on Monte Milcray's gray cotton briefs, which he had left at the scene in his rushed exit. Nowhere did enough semen turn up for investigators to get a positive identification on its source, or to say how much time had passed since it was deposited.

In addition to this forensic evidence and a selection of objects from the crime scene (the wig, a kimono-cut paisley smoking robe, the blankets, several blood-dabbed chunks of concrete lifted from the sidewalk in front of the apartment, the condoms, the knife itself), the prosecution had Milcray's own statements, a large number of still photographs (of Cuffee's body at the scene and in the morgue, of the crime scene, of the victim's car, etc.), a crime-scene video, a set of phone records, and the testimony of law-enforcement personnel involved in different stages of the investigation.

Many of these men share a manly density, a mass. In my mind's eye I see one of them clearly—Anthony Bonatoni, a crime-scene investigator with the New York City Police Department. Walking into the courtroom, Anthony rolled his shoulders to settle his suit, and patted down the front. It hung on him uneasily, and his chest displayed the unlikely symmetry of an oil drum. He took his oath with the pointed “I do” of an uncomplicated man, seated himself as if at ease, and then tried unsuccessfully to button the neck of his shirt, already filled beyond capacity. Giving up, he tightened his tie. Mr. Mackelwee, the clerk, took his badge number.

Between replies, Anthony seemed to shut down, like something automated, his head slumping forward on his bull neck, and his broad shoulders encroaching on his visage. A little repetitive clenching of the muscles below his jaw indicated that he was in sleep mode—cognitively suspended, but ready to power up at the next question. There was a vulnerability about him here, in an arena where words would be the primary instrument of communication.

And yet this is too cruel, inadequate even as stereotype. For “Tony” Bonatoni offered the sympathetic imagination a warmer array of immediate associations: the image of the deeply earnest, somewhat oversized student reviewing a mediocre spelling exam, considering how to do better next time; the spirit of proms now past. One can conjure up the nuns of his youth, the coaches, the extra sprints after practice. Parochial schools in the outer boroughs create men like these, and they present a perfection not to be ignored, much less scorned. Would I be able to do his job? Not likely.

Tony was not alone. Other bulky officers took the stand, eyeing Milcray's attorney with a defensive anxiety. Asked to establish times, they used military notation with confidence. Explaining the finer points of their investigative work, they spoke in clipped and technical cadences, creating strange sentences like: “These are the samples which were selected by me with the swabbing of the suspected blood for the identification of the medical examiner's office upon the certification of the record reports by me, which I did.”

They had manifestly been prepped to ensure friendly, direct eye-contact with the jury.

Prosecutor: “Officer, would you tell us about the procedure for handling these sample bags?”

Witness: “Sure.” (Turning to face us, helpfully, a pedagogical mien) “After the swabbing of the potential samples of the presumed semen . . .”

But on cross-examination this odd loquacity collapsed.

Defense: “Did you happen to see if the bolt of the door split the frame when it came open?”

Witness: “I saw a door, and I went through.”

Defense: “Thank you, Sergeant. No further questions, your honor.”

 

T
he prosecution also had a very different set of witnesses, on whom a great portion of the state's case depended. Hector “Laverne” Hebreo (to whom I shall here refer as “Hector-Laverne”) and Nahteesha Breen both testified that Milcray frequented the “Fem-Queen Stroll” on Ninth Avenue to ogle parading cross-dressers and drag prostitutes. Moreover, they claimed to have seen Milcray and Cuffee together on a number of occasions, a fact they explained with the surprising and damaging assertion that the victim and the defendant had been, for some time, lovers.

On top of this, Nahteesha, Hector-Laverne, and a third witness, Stevie Trevor, all placed Milcray in the victim's apartment sometime around 12:30 a.m. on the night of the killing.

As Antigua's friends, these three also gave a taste of the flamboyant community of fabulous gender-bending in which Randolph “Antigua” Cuffee moved. We had been prepared for some of this in the process of jury selection. In
voir dire
we had been told not only that the case would involve explicit discussions of homosexual activity, but also that we would need to weigh the testimony of drag performers, male prostitutes, and transvestites. Those unable to countenance such talk, or credit such witnesses, were asked to recuse themselves. No one did.

Perhaps we were somewhat overprepared: as the first few witnesses approached the stand—including the robust Tony Bonatoni himself—I was ready for anything. Could this be a drag act? It seemed unlikely. Maybe. In fact, at some point I probably found myself musing that nearly all the denizens of Part 24 were, under it all, other than they appeared.

The prosecution's three key witnesses did test one's intuitive sense of such things, each presenting a different riff on sexual nonconformity. Hector-Laverne had cinematic eyebrows, pencil-fine and arched like those of a Balinese beauty-mask. His lips continuously pursed, he pastiched every gesture of a certain impatient femininity: a physical sassiness in the head and hands, a sudden and tumbling manner of speech, a tendency to cock his head up voguishly and glance askance, with much eye-rolling and huffy aspiration.

Nahteesha presented another, if no less hyperbolic, character: that of the sultry femme fatale. Whereas Hector-Laverne was fussy in voice and movement, Nahteesha unfolded languorously, her long fingers extended by tapered talons, her diction and intonation smoldering like a young Lauren Bacall's. The judge, in parley with the prosecutor, alluded to Nahteesha as “she,” and then excused himself hastily, but that seemed to be her preference. When asked to explain her occupation, she gave an R-rated encomium to the generosity of her “
wonderful
husband,” followed by a flicker of lashes. More poised than either Hector-Laverne or Stevie (whose partial deafness and speech impediment slowed his responses), Nahteesha made a remarkable impression on the stand, witty and brutal.

She discomfited even the prosecutor, who seemed very anxious to set the rest of us at ease with his slightly unusual star witness. Then, leading her through the first part of her testimony, he inexplicably got tangled up, saying “vegetable,” when he meant “vestibule.” Under the edgy circumstances, it felt like a charged slip—off-color, redolent of tumescent, pendulous legumes. People sniggered. The prosecutor perspired.

Both Nahteesha and Hector-Laverne told roughly the same story: that they had made plans to go out with Antigua, as they called Cuffee, on the night of his death (it was Hector-Laverne's birthday); that they had gone together to his apartment after midnight and had rung his bell; that he had declined to accompany them just then but asked them to return; and that when they did so, after perhaps forty-five minutes, there was no answer. It was Nahteesha who claimed to have gone into the entryway of the building on the first visit and talked with Antigua at the door of his apartment. She asserted that he remained in the doorway, that he was wearing a robe (but no shirt or, “heaven forbid,” wig), that he opened the door sufficiently to allow her to see a young black man (whom she identified as the defendant) sitting bare-chested on the futon, and that (from the sounds) she could tell that a pornographic video was playing on the television. It appeared to her, she added archly, that the young man on the couch had a satisfied, postcoital demeanor.

“What makes you say that, Ms. Breen?”

“ 'Cause that's how my husband looks after we make love.”

She rounded every vowel with slow pleasure.

Before encouraging Nahteesha and Hector-Laverne to return, Antigua reportedly said that “Monte” was inside, that he was behaving strangely, and that he (Cuffee) would try to “get rid of him” in order to be free for the rest of the evening.

On cross-examination, Nahteesha made short work of the defense. Attempting to undermine her portrayal of Antigua as “a gentle giant,” the defense counsel pointedly raised the matter of the dildos, whips, and sadomasochistic imagery found in the apartment.

“Honey,” Nahteesha drawled huskily, with a touch of impatience, “we
all
have whips.”

Undaunted, the attorney pushed on, trying to ferret out what he took to be a troubling inconsistency in her testimony—namely, the assertion that Milcray frequently ogled fem-queens on Ninth Avenue. Why, then, would Milcray have been in a relationship with Antigua, who was, Nahteesha had insisted, very masculine and never appeared in drag? (“Now me, I want to look like Tyra Banks,” she had informed us, “Antigua, he wanted to look like Tyson Beckford.”)

It was an ill-advised tack: “Let me explain something to you,” she replied acidly. “First, the boys start out with us girlfriends, because they can fool themselves. Then, they move on to a man . . . like . . .
you.
”

She gave him a long look.

Several people in the audience laughed hard enough that they had to be warned.

Hector-Laverne said he had seen Antigua in drag a few times but it was highly unusual. To Nahteesha's testimony on the events of the night of the killing he added several other recollections of Milcray, including a description of their having been introduced one evening outside the Watutsi Lounge, and another of the defendant's having made a pass at him inside that bar on a separate occasion, a solicitation Hector-Laverne reportedly rebuffed by protesting that Milcray was “with” Antigua. A squabble ensued, culminating in Hector-Laverne's asking the bartender to have Milcray removed, which, Hector-Laverne asserted, the barkeep did.

Strangely, however, Hector-Laverne remembered Monte Milcray being introduced as “Ali.”

Hector-Laverne, fidgety in his silky black tee shirt, fared less well on cross. He was excitable, too quick to attempt clarification. Pressed to explain how he supported himself, he submitted that he was a hairdresser. Was he licensed?

“No, but I . . .”

The defense attorney cut him off: “Are you aware that it is
illegal
to practice as an unlicensed hairdresser in New York City?”

Hector-Laverne began another explanation.

With a trace of badgering: “Just answer the question, yes or no. . . .”

The prosecutor rose to object “to the tone.”

Defense: “Judge, I withdraw the tone. Mr. Hebreo, let's continue. . . .”

But already he seemed shaken. There turned out to be a number of inconsistencies among his different statements: the one made initially to police, later testimony to the grand jury, and finally his testimony on the stand.

And I sat wondering: “Withdraw the tone? How?”

Hector-Laverne had previously reported only a single meeting with the defendant; now he recalled three or four. In an earlier statement he remembered the young man he met outside the Watutsi Lounge under a different name (curiously, “Mohammed”). His memory of the goings-on at the Watutsi on the night in question (relevant to establishing both the date and the time of different activities) was cloudy: a beauty pageant? a performance by the drag lip-sync artist Piccolo Rainbow? both? He contradicted his earlier statement about the moment he first learned the actual name of the suspect in the case, and, more significantly, got quite crossed up as to whether he had been shown photos of the defendant and the crime scene before he testified at the grand-jury hearing.