Authors: Steve Bogira
He acknowledges on Genson’s cross that he previously said (in a pretrial hearing) that the three attackers were light-skinned. Genson directs Caruso to stand at the defense table, and he asks Gordon if he’d characterize Caruso as light-skinned. Gordon says he wouldn’t.
THE STATE CLOSES
its case with the testimony of two eighteen-year-old black youths, Lionel Johnson and Larry Dixon, who say Caruso used racial epithets against them in 1995. They both were then attending a grammar school near Armour Square Park, and their basketball team used to practice in the Armour gym. The Armour gym is at 33rd and Shields, where Caruso allegedly confronted Lenard and Clevan. Johnson and Dixon tell the jury that Caruso often played there too and that he used to call them “nigger,” “skunk,” and “monkey” and warn them to get out of the neighborhood.
Testimony regarding other alleged crimes by a defendant can’t be admitted if it’s merely to show the defendant’s character or his propensity to commit the crimes he’s on trial for; the jury isn’t supposed to be deciding whether the defendant is likely to have committed the crimes he’s accused of but whether he actually did. But other-crimes testimony can be admitted when it relates to a defendant’s motive, to his dislike for the victims,
or to his modus operandi. The line between what’s admissible and what isn’t is fine indeed.
Before the trial the prosecutors presented Locallo with a host of assaults and batteries that Caruso allegedly committed in Bridgeport but wasn’t charged with. The prosecutors had learned of these alleged offenses primarily through interviews conducted in the neighborhood by investigators for their office. Besides the alleged threats against Johnson and Dixon, there was a 1994 attack on a white youth in a church parking lot that left the youth unconscious. According to the prosecutors, witnesses said Caruso had been among the attackers. There were also charges by two youth center workers—a white woman and a black man—that Caruso had been among the group of whites who shouted racial slurs at the minority children they escorted to Armour Square Park in 1995 and 1996. The black youth worker said that when he confronted Caruso about the name-calling, Caruso threatened him with a baseball bat. And there was a white woman who said that in 1996 Caruso jabbed her in the face with a baseball bat during a dispute over cars double-parked on 33rd Street by Caruso and his friends. The woman maintained that as Caruso hit her, he said, “Don’t you know I’m syndicate?” and “This is our street.”
A judge may bar testimony about other crimes, even if he deems it relevant, if he considers it too prejudicial. And Locallo had done so with all these charges except the ones involving Johnson and Dixon. Genson had argued vehemently, but in vain, that Johnson’s and Dixon’s testimony was likewise so inflammatory that it was bound to poison the jury’s consideration of whether Caruso had attacked Lenard.
AS USUAL
, Locallo has developed a rapport with the jury. The jurors like his sense of humor and are impressed with how quickly he’s learned their names. One juror, Atif Sheikh, brought a coffee cake in one morning on the birthday of a fellow juror. Sheikh made sure a piece of the cake was sent over to the judge. Locallo reciprocated two days later, bringing in a cake for the jury. “He’s a judge,” Sheikh says later. “Biggest authority in the courtroom. But he’s a very down-to-earth person.”
Locallo and the lawyers have been impressed with the jury’s attentiveness. Through four long days so far, no one’s drifted off. (The full gallery every day, including the reporters and sketch artists, provides extra impetus not to.) Nor has anyone shown signs thus far of partiality. Within the jury there were the usual gripes the first day or two about missed doctor’s appointments and work that was piling up in the jurors’ regular jobs, but then everyone had settled earnestly into the task.
• • •
ON THE TRIAL
’
S FIFTH DAY
Genson calls a string of police officers to highlight minor discrepancies in the state’s case. Caruso himself doesn’t testify.
In the hallway outside the courtroom, Caruso Senior is distributing home-baked cookies, along with complaints about the persecution of his son. He says certain city officials don’t like the role he’s played in unions and Frank Junior is now paying the price. He thinks people should recognize that everyone loses when a defendant is treated unjustly. “When someone takes away my rights, they’re taking away your rights, too,” he tells me. “We’re looking at the erosion of the core of our justice system.”
Frank Junior “isn’t an angel,” his father says. “He’s got a little Bridgeport attitude. But does anyone ever think about what this is like for him if he’s innocent?”
The elder Caruso is especially irked at Mandeltort—“Little Miss Auschwitz,” as he calls her, perhaps unaware she’s Jewish. Earlier today Mandeltort asked Locallo to instruct the Carusos to stay away from Lenard’s mother, Wanda McMurray, during the rest of the trial—this, after McMurray and Frank Junior’s mother had hugged in the hallway. Mandeltort told the judge the hug had been foisted upon McMurray for the benefit of reporters; Genson said it was his understanding the embrace had been spontaneous and mutual. Locallo suggested there be no further contact between the families during the trial. “What’s wrong with that woman?” Caruso Senior now says of Mandeltort.
Caruso Senior’s older brother, Bruno, interjects that a prison term of any length for Frank Junior would be a “death sentence,” because black inmates surely would make him a marked man. “And for what?” Bruno Caruso says. “He’s a kid. Skinny little piece a shit. Can’t even grow a whisker yet.”
The fifty-five-year-old Bruno Caruso holds several offices in local labor unions. He recently left his $220,000 job as president of the Chicago District Council, an umbrella group of the Laborers International that represents low-skilled laborers in twenty-one Chicago-area locals. The international has been investigating the council, under federal pressure, because of the council’s alleged mob ties. A hearing officer concluded in Febuary 1998 that Bruno Caruso was “
at least an associate of the Chicago Outfit,” observing that “the contacts between Bruno Caruso and the mob are too numerous and too repetitive to be accidental.” (Bruno Caruso’s lawyer, Allan Ackerman, will later deny the allegation. Ackerman will maintain that the labor investigation had yielded no evidence that his client was in the outfit, merely evidence that he’d met with reputed mobsters, which had made him a victim of “guilt by association.”) A source close to Genson
says Bruno Caruso is providing the bulk of the money for Frank Junior’s defense.
Bruno Caruso says the Carusos are family people above all else. They have a large dinner gathering every Sunday—brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces. It’s at the Bridgeport home of his eighty-seven-year-old mother, who still does some of the cooking. “I told Ed [Genson] yesterday, I said, ‘Ed, you’re the most important man in the world to my family right now,’ ” Bruno Caruso says in the hallway. “It’s like if someone was seriously ill, the doctor would be the most important man in the world. I said, ‘We’re counting on you. That’s why you’re well paid, but forget the money. We’re counting on you.’ ”
BERLIN
’
S CLOSING ARGUMENT
the following morning is a pep talk to jurors, delivered in front of another jammed gallery. “Some people disappear and one witness is dead,” he says, over Genson’s objection, overruled by Locallo. “Some things don’t change, ladies and gentlemen. The truth doesn’t change, and the will of the people to do justice doesn’t change.” He implores the jurors to “have the courage … to deal with the hard facts that evil men like Frank Caruso confront us with.” He again climaxes his speech with the before-and-after photos of Lenard, which again draw tears. His passionate appeal is marred by one tongue slip: he says that Caruso’s intention in beating Lenard was “to take care of the niggerhood—excuse me, to take care of the neighborhood.”
As in his opening statement, Genson gives his closing argument while perched atop the tall chair brought from his office.
He says much of the state’s case was “theater, an intentional plea by the state’s attorneys to ignore the facts of this case.” The prosecutors’ liberal repetition of the racial epithets allegedly used, their constant pointing and glaring at Caruso, the way they’d had Clevan and Jaramillo descend from the stand and finger Caruso, and the repeated display of Lenard’s intensive-care photo were all designed to elicit an emotional verdict and not a reasoned one, he says. The photo of the injured Lenard “makes you cry, and it ought to,” he says. “The picture makes
me
cry. But it doesn’t show us who committed the crime.”
Genson gestures at Caruso, who happens to be digging his fingernails into the edge of the defense table. Caruso is wearing the same oversize sport coat he’s worn each day of the trial. The subject of the state’s theatrics is “this eighteen-year-old boy,” Genson says, “who sits here uncomfortable in a sports coat that doesn’t fit and a shirt that doesn’t quite fit him and the defendant’s chair he’s not used to sitting in.”
He outlines the state’s case as he sees it. Clevan Nicholson and William
Jaramillo positively identified Caruso as the initiator of the attack—but only after positively identifying Victor Jasas as the offender. Jeffrey Gordon couldn’t positively identify anyone; and in fact, he said the attackers were lighter-skinned than Caruso. That leaves only Thomas Simpson—a “bum,” a “criminal,” a “liar with his own agenda,” Genson says. Having seen the jury’s disdain for Simpson, Genson has decided to disown him; after Adam labored to help Simpson deliver his tale of police coercion, Genson now says much of that testimony probably was fabricated too. “Every time that man opens his mouth he’s lying,” Genson says. But given that, how can anyone believe Simpson’s statements incriminating Caruso? he wonders. “There is certainly reasonable doubt when you put all this together.”
The attempted-murder charge is more theater, Genson goes on. Beating a person badly isn’t attempted murder unless you intend to kill him, he points out—and no intent to kill has been proven. He knows it’s a dangerous point to raise: it’s like insisting that Caruso didn’t beat Lenard, then adding that even if he did, he wasn’t trying to kill him. But if he can’t win the whole war, Genson at least wants to win the most important battle; hence this suggestion to the jury that a compromise is possible.
Genson tells an Old Testament story about a ritual in which the priest and the elders of Jerusalem would send a goat into the wilderness to purge the sins of the community. “It made no difference that the goat didn’t do anything. It made the people feel better. That is what the state is asking you to do here. Frank shouldn’t be the scapegoat for this horrible crime.”
He’s not defending any racism that exists in Bridgeport, he says; he’s defending “the man who hit and beat Lenard Clark.” Then he quickly amends: “I am not defending the man who beat and hit Lenard Clark … I am defending a young man wrongfully accused of a crime.”
He pushes himself off his chair, stands behind the lectern, and scans the jury. He says the urge to “send a message” that racist violence won’t be tolerated shouldn’t enter into deliberations. The jury’s job is simply to decide whether Caruso has been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. “The message I ask you to send to the community is that the rules of law will be followed in this country, this state, this county, this city, and this courthouse. And that emotion, and overzealous police officers, will not circumvent these rules of law. Frank Caruso is not guilty. Send him back to his family.” He gathers his notes and limps back to the defense table.
Bob Galhotra, a public defender recently assigned to Locallo’s courtroom, is among the many lawyers in the gallery, here to enjoy the show and to study the performances of these veteran lawyers. As Genson takes his seat next to Caruso and Mandeltort heads to the lectern with the state’s rebuttal
argument, the young PD tells me softly, “When you spend so much time talking about reasonable doubt, the jurors just figure your guy is guilty.”
Mandeltort calls Caruso a “violent racist street punk,” a “thug,” and a “bum.” She ridicules the “ill-fitting clothing” he’s worn throughout the trial, designed to make him look less menacing, she says. At the defense table, Caruso pokes at a balled-up tissue. “Perhaps he could slide down in that chair just a little more so he wouldn’t look quite so threatening to you,” Mandeltort says. “But remember, that is not the Frank Caruso that Clevan and Lenard met … the Frank Caruso who will ruthlessly beat a thirteen-year-old boy simply because he’s black.”
She blasts the “conspiracy of silence” in Bridgeport. There were other witnesses to the beating on Princeton besides Jeffrey Gordon, she maintains, but none of them would tell police what they’d seen. “Frank Caruso beat Lenard Clark in the streets of Bridgeport because he knew something about Bridgeport,” she says. Genson objects, and Locallo strikes the comment.
Earlier this morning, after Berlin finished his argument and resumed his seat next to her at the state’s table, Mandeltort quietly kidded him about his one mistake—saying niggerhood instead of neighborhood. (“Nice job, Bob.”) But now Mandeltort makes her own slip: she says the evidence shows that Caruso “called Clevan Niggerson—Clevan Nicholson, a nigger.”
It’s the only blemish in her argument. “Counsel stood here in opening statement and asked you for sympathy and justice for Frank Caruso,” she tells the jury. “But the judge will instruct you that you are not to consider sympathy … and you know that he is certainly not entitled to it. However, there will be justice for Frank Caruso today.
“He is having a trial with all the legal protections our judicial system has. He has selected a jury to listen to the evidence. He has a judge to determine the issues of law, and he is being tried in a court of law.… That is more than he gave Lenard Clark on March 21, 1997. Frank Caruso declared himself judge and jury for Clevan Nicholson and Lenard Clark. He tried, convicted, and sentenced Lenard Clark in the street. The sentence was a brutal and savage beating that placed him in a coma, a brutal and savage beating … that has forever changed who he is and how he will live his life. The crime that Lenard committed was being a black kid who came into Bridgeport to save twenty-five cents on air.… That, ladies and gentlemen, is Frank Caruso’s idea of justice. However, true justice in this case is Frank Caruso learning that you can’t beat black children who come into Bridgeport on their bicycles.”