Authors: Steve Bogira
IN HIS ARGUMENT
, prosecutor Berlin reminds Locallo that Caruso was eighteen at the time of the attack, his victims just thirteen. Berlin is well aware that the judge himself has a thirteen-year-old son.
When no relatives or friends show their support for a defendant at sentencing, prosecutors sometimes remind the judge that the defendant won’t even be missed if he goes away for a long stretch. On the odd occasion that there is an outpouring of loved ones, prosecutors instead employ the argument Berlin uses now: Caruso apparently “comes from a very supportive family,” Berlin says—which only makes him more reprehensible: “Despite … all the love and support that he’s had at home, he still committed these brutal and horrible crimes.” And the letters and testimony on behalf of Caruso don’t change the bottom line, Berlin says—they don’t change the fact that “two innocent little boys” were “brutally and savagely beaten because of the color of their skin.” He asks for the maximum extended sentence of ten years for the aggravated battery, and the maximum three years for the hate crime, and for the terms to run consecutively, for thirteen years in all.
Locallo has granted Adam’s and Genson’s request to divide their argument.
Adam begins with the legal issues. He first contends that Caruso isn’t subject to consecutive sentencing, since his convictions all stemmed from the same offense. Locallo soon tells Adam he can “move on to another area,” making it clear he won’t be giving Caruso consecutive terms.
This makes the maximum sentence for Caruso ten years, if he qualifies for an extended sentence. Adam, of course, says he doesn’t, because the Bridgeport attack wasn’t
exceptionally
brutal or heinous, as is required for an extended term. He cites several cases in which extended sentences were overturned because the crimes weren’t brutal enough.
Thus Caruso can get no more than five years, Adam says. “While your honor may have a great deal of personal feelings about this case—and we all do; I don’t think anybody in the community doesn’t have their own personal feelings about this case—nevertheless, the law is the law.”
Genson spends much of his argument reading letters to Locallo from Caruso and his parents. He starts with the one from Frank Junior.
Caruso opens his letter by saying that after the beating, he prayed that Lenard would recover from his injuries. (At the state’s table, Mandeltort whispers to Berlin, “Yeah, so he wouldn’t get charged with murder.”) Caruso says he’s also prayed that Locallo would give him the chance to work in his community and Lenard’s “to try and help all people to live in peace and tolerance.”
Caruso says that from an early age he was taught that all outsiders, not just blacks, were a menace to his neighborhood. “The older people would say that if strangers came into the neighborhood our relatives would lose their jobs,” Genson reads. “Our families would not be safe. Drugs would come into the neighborhood. We would lose our houses.” He and others “believed these lies about outsiders, and it is because of this stupidity and prejudice that Lenard and Clevan were hurt.”
Caruso comes as close to admitting guilt as he can without jeopardizing an appeal. “I am sorry for the agony that I have brought to everyone,” Genson reads. “I understand that being sorry does not make everything right. Everyone believes I am a monster. I never could show how I feel. If I could show it, everyone would know how scared I am.”
The Bridgeport attack has been dissected by newspaper columnists, TV commentators, radio talk show hosts and callers, teachers and their students, ministers, civic leaders, and elected officials, including the president and the mayor. During the trial, thirty-one witnesses testified about the crime from myriad perspectives, and the lawyers weighed in with their addresses to the jury. It seems as if most everyone has been heard from about the crime but the person convicted of it. And even now, after Genson
reads Caruso’s letter to the court, it’s impossible to know what part of it, if any, came from Caruso. As Adam Junior would say later, “Eddie did a nice job with the letter.”
Genson next reads the letter from Caruso’s mother, Sherry. She pleads with Locallo to give her son another chance, saying that despite the media portrayals, he’s “shy, loving, kind, very timid,” although he “does get mad like any other normal teenager.” She says she “did everything for Frank. That’s why it’s so hard for him. He is a little boy who needs me.”
Sherry Caruso is slumped forward and sobbing silently in the gallery’s first row as Genson reads her letter. Genson asks Locallo to consider the agony of Caruso’s parents, as well as that of Lenard’s and Clevan’s families, in deciding Caruso’s sentence. Sherry Caruso “has suffered in this case like no other mother I have seen,” he says. Caruso’s father has been similarly devastated: “He now has white hair. He’s lost a good deal of it. He doesn’t work. He walks around crying for his child.”
Locallo is listening attentively on the bench, his eyes on Genson, his chin resting on his fist. Near his elbow is a stack of stapled, four-page, double-spaced documents—copies of the speech the judge wrote a few days ago for this hearing.
Genson concludes his letter-reading with the one from Caruso’s father.
The elder Caruso opens with an apology to Lenard and his mother “for whatever sorrow my son has brought.” He wonders how Wanda McMurray has been able to withstand her ordeal, and he says he and his family have gained strength from her example. These are kinder thoughts than he expressed in the gallery during pretrial court dates, when he questioned McMurray’s competence as a parent.
In his letter, Caruso Senior hurries past the subject of McMurray’s suffering to his family’s own. His account of the misery the case has brought the Carusos is far longer than the victim-impact statements of McMurray and Nicholson. He describes his wife’s heart problems, exacerbated by the case, and the hate mail his family has received. He says Reverend Martin “pastored us in what we thought were our bleakest days” after Frank Junior was charged. “Little did we know how bleak the days would become.” At times during the case he felt it might be easier to die “than to get up every morning with this pain.”
Frank Junior was always small for his age, he continues in the letter. A slight speech impediment and hearing loss in one ear made him shy and withdrawn. Father and son liked watching scary movies together. They’d watch them in the basement with all the lights on, running upstairs at the scary parts. On Frank Junior’s first day of school, Frank Senior was the only father there, and he found it hard to leave his son. As a teen the
younger Caruso “got caught up with an attitude problem … like many young people do.” The elder Caruso attributes this to the corrupting influence of older youths who wouldn’t stay away from Frank Junior even when he warned them to. The source of his son’s racial hatred certainly wasn’t him; he spoke forcefully to his children against ethnic stereotyping.
But now he’s left to agonize over what will happen to his son if he’s sent to prison. One of the hate-mail letters had suggested that Frank Junior would be used as a sex object, Caruso Senior notes in his letter. “If this is true, my God, take him now,” the letter concludes. As Genson reads his letter, the elder Caruso is standing just inside the door to the courtroom, where he’s biting his fist, wiping his eyes, and leaning on the man next to him.
Genson tells Locallo that the attack on Lenard and Clevan was “extraordinarily stupid” and “perhaps racist” and that Frank Junior deserves punishment. But he asks Locallo to also consider “a Frank Caruso that is a loving son, that is a good member of the community,” as reflected in the letters.
Caruso declines Locallo’s invitation to orally address the court before he’s sentenced.
Then, without explanation or introduction, Locallo launches into his prepared remarks.
It’s a remarkably un-Locallo-like sentencing address, ranging far from the issue of the specific defendant before him. He recounts the unwillingness of Rosa Parks to ride in the back of the bus, President Kennedy’s decision to mobilize federal troops to ensure the admission of black students to colleges in Mississippi and Alabama, Martin Luther King’s dream that people be judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Progress has been made, Locallo says, but “sadly, we have miles to go. When we as a nation or city stumble, together we must lift a hand to steady the course and keep moving in the right direction.” Genson is frowning at the defense table; this doesn’t appear to be moving in the right direction for his client.
Locallo lauds the courage Lenard showed in relearning to walk, talk, dress, and eat. He commends the courage of the jurors also, calling them “noble descendants” of the first jury to assemble after the signing of the Magna Carta.
“Where do we as a city go from here?” he asks. “Racist views from both sides must be rejected. Violence against others because they do not share the same race, religion, national ancestry, or sexual orientation must not be tolerated.” He urges citizens to unite against the “enemies of mankind, such as poverty, hunger, disease, discrimination, intolerance, and ignorance.
“Every generation cherishes their children’s future,” the judge concludes. “Every generation has a common goal, and that is to make the world safe for their children, and their children’s children. When one harms a child in the manner shown in this case, justice demands that an appropriate sentence be handed down.”
Locallo finally turns to the matter of Caruso’s sentence. He says he’s decided not to consider the other allegations made against Caruso today because of the conflicting testimony.
But he says he gives great weight to the trial testimony of Jeffrey Gordon, the neighbor who interrupted the beating of Lenard on Princeton. The judge says he vividly recalls Gordon’s description of how one of the three attackers gave Lenard a final kick, even after Gordon had threatened to call police. Locallo says he’s convinced that attacker was Caruso. He says the crime merits an extended sentence since Caruso showed a “complete lack of concern” for Lenard, as evidenced by this last kick he gave him after he’d already been stomped unconscious. At the rear of the gallery, Caruso Senior, his arms folded in front of him, turns his back to the judge. A priest standing next to him gently turns him frontward again.
Locallo places the blame for the beating squarely on the shoulders of Caruso Junior. Attempts to portray Bridgeport residents as racists are unfair to the “hardworking and decent” people of that neighborhood, he says. The judge also fully exonerates Caruso’s parents. “I have no doubt in my mind that Mr. and Mrs. Caruso did the best they could with Frank Junior. It’s not their fault, but he was out of control.”
For the aggravated battery against Clark, “the court finds the appropriate sentence is an extended term of eight years,” he says. And three concurrent years for hate crime. Caruso nods. The gallery is silent; there are scowls but no words from Caruso’s supporters. The judge offers him a contact visit with family before he’s returned to the jail.
The reporters and the sketch artists hurry out of the jury box. Locallo hands the reporters copies of his speech as they pass the bench. Caruso’s guards usher him to the jury room for his contact visit. His parents and sisters see him first. Then it grows into one of the strangest contact visits the courthouse has probably ever experienced. It becomes clear in the courtroom that anyone who wants to say a quick good-bye to Caruso will be allowed to. A line forms, of relatives, friends, and neighbors, and soon it stretches from the jury room to the back of the courtroom. It’s a slow, somber procession, like mourners paying last respects to a VIP lying in state. As the line inches forward, Bruno Caruso and two men in green work shirts grumble to each other in the gallery. “Politics,” one of the green-shirted men huffs. “When’s the election?” growls the other.
• • •
THE FOLLOWING MONDAY
, back in 302, Locallo calls the cases of Victor Jasas and Michael Kwidzinski. Reporters are watching in the jury box, as are Lenard’s and Clevan’s mothers. The two defendants step forward from the gallery to join their lawyers, who are standing with the prosecutors in front of the bench.
Jasas and Kwidzinski will be pleading guilty, prosecutor Mandeltort tells the judge. Jasas will plead guilty to aggravated battery, for which he’ll get thirty months’ felony probation. Kwidzinski will plead guilty to simple battery, a misdemeanor for which he’ll get two years’ probation. Both defendants will also have to do three hundred hours of community service “in some area of racial awareness or racial sensitivity,” Mandeltort says. They’re both acknowledging being “present and legally responsible and accountable for the actions of Frank Caruso” when he punched Lenard and Clevan at 33rd and Shields.
Caruso Senior is watching in the gallery. Genson is here as well, sitting at the defense table. His head is bobbing conspicuously, as it tends to when he’s mad. “I hate to be fucking used,” he mutters as Locallo says he’ll approve the deals.
Locallo trots Jasas and Kwidzinski through their pleas. No one has promised them anything, other than their probation and community service deals, to get them to plead guilty, they both say. They’re doing it of their own free will. Locallo deems the pleas knowing and voluntary. The judge asks the defendants if they have anything to say, but neither does. Locallo formally issues the sentences. Then he tells the defendants he hopes their community service “will at least give you a little bit more enlightenment as to the proper way to deal with individuals who are different than you.”
In the hallway afterward Joseph Lopez, one of Jasas’s two lawyers, gloats about his client’s deal. “Can you believe it? He was charged with attempted murder! He gets probation! Couldn’t turn
that
down.” The prosecutors started with an offer of a five-year prison term, Lopez says. “Then it was three, then two. I turned boot camp down on Friday.”
“It
hurt
not to try this case,” Jasas’s other lawyer, John DeLeon, pipes in. “I was so confident of a not guilty. When [Jasas and his parents] asked me, ‘What do you think we should do?’ it hurt to say, ‘Take it—you’d be a fool not to.’ Anytime you can walk out of this building free, it’s a victory.”