The Fence - Dick Lehr [145]
Mike then described the first blow, and how, when he turned to see who’d hit him, he was hit hard again. That’s when Mike’s voice cracked. Tears welled in his eyes, which he wiped away. He fought the emotions, not wanting to lose control completely.
“Where on your head?” Roach asked.
“In the front of my head.”
“Can you point to the jury where you believe you were struck?”
Mike pointed to his forehead. “It’s about a two-inch scar up there.”
Mike was next on the ground on all fours. He looked up. “I could see there was a person standing in front of me who had on boots.” The man was dressed in a dark-colored uniform, “and he was white. And as I started to look up, that person kicked me directly in the mouth.” The beating just kept coming, and he never saw his assailants’ faces. Then he heard someone yell, “Stop, stop, he’s a cop,” and the blows stopped.
Roach asked Mike if he recognized the voice yelling stop.
“It was Dave Williams.”
The testimony had momentum—vivid, horrific, and with few objections from the defense lawyers to offset the flow. The judge was the one who broke the spell after Mike mentioned Williams. “Is this a good place to stop?” he asked Roach. “It’s one o’clock.”
But Roach was feeling sure-footed now. He didn’t want the day to end just yet, not before getting to the gore. “Just a couple of more, your honor?”
“Go ahead.”
“Did you notice whether you had any blood on you?” Roach asked.
“I just knew I was bleeding from all over.”
“Can you describe where all over?”
“Bleeding from my nose, my mouth,” Mike said. “I don’t recall being able to see too well, you know, from my head I knew I was bleeding from all over.”
The jury would be heading home, tasting blood.
“Your honor,” Roach said, “if you wish, we can stop at this time.”
Juror Sharon Schwartz, the suburban homemaker, was moved by Mike’s testimony. “His injuries were grotesque,” she said. Bob McDonough sat there thinking “he was very believable.” The engineer Carol Goslant thought Mike was a “strong witness in that I believed him; he’d been through a terrible ordeal.” The next day’s Boston Globe story read: “Cox wiped away tears as he softly recounted for a federal jury how he went from officer to suspect to brutalized victim in a matter of minutes.”
While nationally Americans were closely following calls for President Clinton’s impeachment for his scandalous relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and while Bostonians were trying to keep up with a number of pressing local matters, from worry that their football team, the New England Patriots, might move to Connecticut, to concern about the sorry performance of public school students on the new statewide standardized tests measuring expertise in English, math, and science, Judge Young’s Courtroom 18 became a world unto itself focused on Mike’s case for justice.
The skies outside were overcast when Mike returned Wednesday morning to finish sharing his memories of the attack. In particular, he recalled for the jurors the moment Ian Daley tried to arrest him at gunpoint and then, once Daley realized he was a cop, muttered, “Oh shit, Oh my God.” Mike remembered later being in the hospital when Dave Williams blurted, “‘I think,’ you know, ‘cops might have done this.’”
Guided by Roach, Mike explained how memories slowly returned as the weeks and months passed; for example, he recalled Dave Williams had yelled, “Stop, stop, he’s a cop,” after running into Williams at a funeral that summer. Roach finished by asking whether he saw Williams sitting in the courtroom. Mike replied he did.
“Could you point him out, please?” Roach said.
“Sure. He’s the gentleman in the front row, the third aisle over.”
Williams sat expressionless, his tall, muscular frame folded into the bench.
Roach was finished but Mike was not; he stayed put to be cross-examined by the lawyers for Williams, Burgio,