The Fence - Dick Lehr [115]
Sheketoff was stunned. It was a story where Williams, conveniently, ended up as far away from the Cox beating as possible. When it came his turn, Sheketoff rose and immediately went after the Boston police officer. He began by bringing out the fact Williams was caught lying by Internal Affairs about the cruiser he and Burgio rode in.
“It was just considered a minor infraction,” Williams said.
He then went for the jugular and challenged Williams about Cox. Pointing to the area on a map of the dead end where Cox was beaten, he asked, “You and Burgio weren’t over here?”
“No, sir,” Williams said.
“Did you see anyone in that area over here behind your cruiser, in this area?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you see any altercation that involved Officer Cox at any time?”
“No, sir.”
The prosecutor began objecting, and the judge called a timeout. He had the lawyers walk to his bench for a conference outside the earshot of the jury. What, he asked, was Sheketoff up to? “I heard Officer Walker’s testimony,” Sheketoff said. “So it seems to me that this guy was not out chasing anybody. He was out doing something else.”
But what’s the relevance? The judge warned Sheketoff. “I’m not going to have this a trial of whether or not Mr. Cox was injured rightfully or wrongfully by police officers,” he said. “This isn’t going to be a trial of Mr. Cox’s problems.”
Sheketoff had indeed wandered off track. The case at hand was murder, not justice in the Cox beating. But he was outraged and unable to stop himself from momentarily substituting the public’s interest over his client’s. “Not that it really was any of my business,” he conceded later, “but I’m also a citizen of the Commonwealth.”
While Smut and the others were on trial for the murder of Lyle Jackson, the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston began assuming control of the investigation of Mike’s beating. Bob Peabody and Lieutenant Detective Paul Farrahar went over to federal courthouse, a worn, granite and limestone tower built during the Depression in downtown Boston, as part of the transition, to meet the federal prosecutor and FBI agent heading up the new probe. The Cox case had made it to the big leagues—the top of the investigatory food chain, the U.S. attorney, District of Massachusetts, U.S. Department of Justice.
The case was assigned to S. Theodore Merritt, a forty-four-year-old assistant U.S. attorney, originally from New York City. His given name was Stephen, but he went by Ted. Merritt had attended Harvard College and then Villanova Law School. He went to work for the federal government right away, in early 1978, after passing the bar exam. He began as a staff attorney in the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice. Seven years later, in 1985, he moved to Boston to become a prosecutor, first in the Criminal Division and then in the Public Corruption and Special Prosecutions Unit.
In court, the dark-haired Merritt often came off as humorless and all-business. He wore a neatly trimmed mustache and was average in height and build—standing no more than five feet, nine inches tall—but loomed larger, given his intensity. Some opposing attorneys found him menacing, a prosecutor who always made it clear he was acutely aware of the enormous power of the federal government and how it could upset people’s lives. By the mid-1990s, specializing in public corruption, he’d made his mark as a prosecutor who mostly prevailed in court, and when he did, took no prisoners.
His cases included those of the ex-police chief of Winthrop, a town just north of Boston, who for more than a decade accepted $70,000 in bribes from the operator of video-poker machines; the Massachusetts state trooper who, while on duty, beat up a man outside a bar and lied afterward to cover it up; the guard in a county prison who threw a cup of boiling water on an inmate, in restraints, who was awaiting trial for the rape and murder of a young girl. In each, Merritt either won at trial or got