The Fence - Dick Lehr [112]
The Cox case would soon become the worry of federal prosecutors, but Peabody seemed reluctant to let go completely. He recommended the DA’s case be kept in an “active” status just in case one of the police officers testifying before the grand jury would “change his mind whether because of what’s happening internally at BPD or for reasons of conscience.”
The notion of a cop doing an about-face as a matter of conscience seemed fantastical, given his experience with the police department. Peabody then had a thought that seemed to hold out greater promise. It involved the four men in the Lexus: Smut Brown, brothers Tiny and Marquis Evans, and Boogie-Down Tinsley. Throughout his Cox investigation, Peabody had purposefully stayed away from them, not wanting to risk in any way the integrity of a murder case. But the four were all headed for trial in late October for the murder of Lyle Jackson. The trial, observed Peabody, depending on its outcome, “may shake one or two of the lesser culpable defendants into our camp.”
Wouldn’t that be a twist—cooperation not from the cops but from the criminals?
“Hearsay,” he continued, “says that the rear left passenger saw the whole thing and can ID more than one white cop beating Cox.”
Peabody was talking about Smut Brown.
The four were being prosecuted by the DA’s office on the theory the murder was the result of a joint venture, a legal term describing a situation in which one person is held responsible for another’s crime if evidence proves they worked in concert and shared the same mental state. Smut Brown, even though he did not pull the trigger, could be proven guilty of murder if the prosecutor could show that Smut and the other three, as a team, killed Lyle.
Smut was represented by a court-appointed attorney named Robert L. Sheketoff. Sheketoff, forty-seven, had come of age in the late sixties, attending an almost all-black high school in Hartford, Connecticut, and then Brandeis University near Boston, where he majored in politics. For the two decades following his graduation from Yale Law School in 1975, the curly-haired, bespectacled, and bookish-looking trial practitioner had represented all varieties of the accused, from small-time drug dealers like Smut to the underboss of the Boston Mafia, Gennaro J. Angiulo. He’d done so without fanfare; while many lawyers regularly sought media attention, Sheketoff couldn’t be bothered. Despite his low profile, he was the legal profession’s inside secret, a brilliant workhorse determined to hold the government to the test during a criminal trial, admired by other defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges alike for his laser-like skill to instantly assess a witness’s testimony for holes and inconsistencies.
“Trials are like plays—ad-lib plays,” Sheketoff once said, “and you absolutely have to listen to every word. The most important thing you can do is listen to the witness.”
It didn’t always happen with clients, but Sheketoff had grown fond of Robert “Smut” Brown. He didn’t think Smut came close to being a cold-blooded street criminal capable of killing. He’d seen plenty of those types in his career. He saw instead a charmer, with a spark in his eye, who grew up in tough surroundings and had made plenty of bad and stupid choices. He loved his kids. Drug dealer? Yes. Killer? No.
“He had a very good side to him,” Sheketoff said.
With Smut, Sheketoff’s goal was to show the jury Smut had nothing to do with the fatal shooting; that Smut was as surprised by the outburst of gunfire as the patrons fleeing Walaikum’s; that the killing was sudden and not premeditated;