The Fence - Dick Lehr [142]
Judge Young was outspoken in his criticism of trial lawyers who styled themselves as courtroom thespians. He hated that some studied acting. “I’m actually quite hostile to the idea of acting lessons,” he once said. Lawyers, he said, were principally teachers—“teachers of the facts.” It was a demanding task, requiring skills that were “much less than those of an actor and much more the skills of a dedicated teacher. Not glib, not histrionic.”
The judge didn’t have to worry about Steve Roach. For the next fifty minutes, Roach told jurors in workmanlike fashion about Mike’s beating and why the defendants were culpable. “We’re going to show you that these four defendants violated Michael’s civil rights as a result of a brutal beating that took place in the early morning hours of January 25, 1995 and that there was cover-up afterwards.”
Using a map of Woodruff Way blown up into a poster, he pointed out the route of the police chase snaking through the city and then the lineup of cars screeching to a halt at the dead end. He said Williams hit Mike at the fence from behind with either a flashlight or a baton, Burgio kicked him in the face, and Daley got in some licks as well. During the “savage onslaught,” once they realized Mike was a cop, “They ran. They took off. They abandoned him.” That’s the moment the cover-up began.
“They knew they couldn’t claim that this was a suspect who was resisting arrest.” Conley joined the cover-up, he said, by denying he’d seen Mike at the fence—a denial that was the basis for his recent perjury conviction in another trial.
Roach’s own nervousness seemed to show when he faltered while describing Mike’s injuries. “He still has traces of urine in his blood and now it’s four years later.” Realizing the error, he started over. “He still has traces of blood in his urine, rather.”
He never mentioned the blue wall of silence by name, but Roach made clear that police officers were of no help when it came to determining responsibility for the assault. “Not one cop who streamed in that night will come here and say they saw Michael Cox being beaten by a police officer,” he said. For emphasis, he added, “Not one.”
Their case, then, was largely circumstantial. The strategy he and Sinsheimer had devised beforehand was to circle in on the accused by a process of elimination—showing that the assailants had to be the cops they’d accused. To do that, Roach and Sinsheimer decided to rely on Joe Teahan and Gary Ryan, Mike’s gang unit colleagues. Teahan’s account that he and Ryan were in the fourth or fifth car to arrive at the dead end meant the beaters were in the few cars ahead of them. Roach wanted little to do with the fact their accounts were at times contradictory, understanding that he could best seal the deal at the dead end by embracing Teahan and Ryan’s basic storyline about finding Mike alone and bloodied—the functional equivalent of the yellow police tape used at crime scenes.
“One key fact that I would like to point out,” Roach said, “is that Officers Ryan and Teahan closed the universe.” He meant that the only people who could have done the beating were the cops who were at the dead end at the time of Mike’s assault: Craig Jones; Richie Walker, who chased Smut Brown; and then Jimmy Burgio, Dave Williams, and Ian Daley. “The only people who were there who could have done it,” Roach said, “are the three defendants, Daley, Burgio and Williams.”
The point was Roach’s principal and final one: “Ryan and Teahan closed the universe on the people who were there,” he repeated. The evidence in their case, he concluded, will show “that it had to be at least those officers who beat him and at least those officers who covered it up. Thank you.”
Sinsheimer welcomed Roach back to their table. He thought Roach had been terrific. “The culmination of years of work, succinct, boiled down.