A young attorney, whom I’d never met, stepped forward to stand next to Gonzales at the defense table. He looked barely out of law school. Not recognizing him, Judge Morano said, “Introduce yourself and please tell me you’re licensed to practice in the State of New York. I hate wasting time.”
“Your Honor,” the young man said.
As if on cue, the doors to the courtroom opened and Paul Pisani waltzed through the spectators’ gallery.
“I apologize, Judge Morano, for being a few minutes late,” Pisani said. “I’ll be representing Carlos Gonzales in this matter. This young man is an associate of mine.”
I noticed the courtroom door open again. This time, it was Special Agent Longhorn who slipped inside, taking a seat on a back row. Longhorn was too slick to leave a trail but I could feel his cold fingers pulling strings. In my gut, I knew he’d arranged for Pisani to defend Gonzales. The significance of this moment was not lost on me. Longhorn was hoping “Mr. Invincible” would be able to stop me from convicting Gonzales of murder so that the FBI could continue using him as a snitch, rewarding him with a new identity and a clean start. The FBI was protecting a murderer for what Longhorn called “a greater good”—but in reality it was to gain a position he coveted.
So much for all of us being on the same side, I thought.
From the bench, Judge Morano said, “Welcome back, Mr. Pisani, although it’s a bit odd to see you on the defense side of the courtroom.”
“Judge,” Pisani said with a big smile, “I go where the innocent are, whether they’re victims of a crime or have been falsely accused of committing one. All I care about is justice.”
Judge Morano smirked and I felt my stomach churn.
The routine hearing took less than five minutes. As he was being taken away in handcuffs, Gonzales shot me another menacing look. But Pisani was all chuckles and grins as he made his way toward me, pausing to speak to the court clerk and bailiff.
“I seem to remember,” Pisani said, “that you learned how to prosecute a case by studying my old trials. Now you’ll get to see me in action firsthand. There’s a reason for that ‘Mr. Invincible’ moniker.”
What a pompous ass, I thought. I retorted, “Right, and if Jesus Christ had five thousand dollars and you were practicing law, things would be a lot different today.”
He laughed.
“What strings did Agent Longhorn pull to get you involved in this case? Did he promise you a new identity, too, or maybe a box of condoms?”
Pisani’s demeanor and voice changed. I’d hit him hard and he didn’t appreciate it. “I’m looking forward to trying this case against you, Ms. Fox. What did you call the courtroom when we first met—a ‘moral battleground’—yes, those were your words, ‘where a war was being waged between good and evil every day.’ Are you ready for some moral combat, my dear?”
“Do you also remember,” I replied, “that you called me naive when I said that good lawyers don’t leave their conscience outside the courtroom door?”
I glanced over my shoulder at Agent Longhorn, who was still in the courtroom talking to some spectators whom I didn’t recognize. I wasn’t going to let the FBI’s backdoor involvement in this case drop.
“Tell me, what’s it like being in bed with Longhorn?” I immediately regretted my poor choice of words.
Leaning close, Pisani whispered, “I can’t imagine it’s nearly as much fun as being in bed with you, Ms. Fox. But I guess I’ll have to settle for only fucking you in court.”
He walked away.
The Daily published a page-one story the next morning written by Will Harris under the headline:
Feisty Female Prosecutor vs. Mr. Invincible
Former all-star prosecutor Paul Pisani, known as “Mr. Invincible” when he tried cases for the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office, will be going toe-to-toe against Assistant District Attorney Dani Fox in a sensational murder trial of a White Plains man. The first female prosecutor in Westchester County, Fox has emerged as a fiery advocate for battered women.
The matchup is causing courthouse tongues to wag and promises to be one of the most bitterly fought trials in recent memory.
Pisani and Fox once played on the same team, but Pisani abruptly resigned recently from the prosecutor’s office without explanation to join the Manhattan law firm of Hart, Hammerman and Kent.
Known for his eloquence and ability to sway jurors, Pisani is defending Carlos Gonzales, 47, of White Plains, on murder charges. In the indictment, a grand jury charges him with poisoning his second wife, Benita Gonzales.
Pisani said yesterday that his client is innocent. He claimed Fox had a personal grudge against Gonzales because of an earlier case. In that highly publicized trial held in White Plains only a few weeks ago, Gonzales was convicted of twenty-two criminal counts related to incest, rape, sodomy and physical abuse of his teenage daughter. He was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.
Gonzales also is awaiting trial in Manhattan on drug-trafficking and racketeering charges. A spokesman for the Justice Department said no trial date has been set for those federal charges.
In an interview, Pisani pointed out that the Westchester County Medical Examiner’s office originally ruled that Benita Gonzales’s death at the couple’s home on Dec. 22, 1974, was a suicide. But after Gonzales was convicted of brutalizing his daughter, Fox decided to reopen the matter.
“My client didn’t commit a murder,” Pisani said. “Mr. Gonzales did something far worse in Westchester County—he irritated Dani Fox. This case has all the bearings of a personal vendetta being waged by a radical feminist.”
When asked for a comment, Fox replied that she didn’t care if “Paul Pisani, Mickey Mouse, Daffy Duck or Goofy defended Carlos Gonzales. We are confident we can convince twelve Westchester men and women beyond a reasonable doubt that he murdered Benita Gonzales.”
This time, Will Harris had not described me as having bee-stung lips.
47
As I expected, Pisani papered the court with motions, the most important being a change of venue, claiming it would be impossible for his client to get a fair trial in Westchester County because of adverse publicity stemming from his earlier conviction. Miserable Morano rejected all of Pisani’s requests.
Our trial began with voir dire—the questioning of jurors. Pisani asked potential jurors if they’d read about his client in the newspapers or heard about him on the radio or television. Anyone who had was excused. The ones we settled on all claimed that they’d never heard of Gonzales. The fact that the defendant had been convicted of raping and beating his daughter and still faced federal charges in Manhattan could not be mentioned in court. This trial was about one thing and one thing only: Had Gonzales murdered his wife?
What the jurors, judge, and public didn’t know was that it was actually about much, much more. It was about Agent Longhorn and stopping Gonzales from walking out of this courtroom a completely free man with a new face.
After picking seven men and five women jurors, along with two male alternates, we were ready to begin. I spoke first, giving what had become my standard opening. I offered jurors a summary of what the state would prove with testimony and evidence and I used my brief remarks to introduce the major witnesses. While laying out the case, I couldn’t come across as emotional because I knew it would be held against me. When men showed emotion it often was viewed as passion. When women showed emotion in court, jurors viewed it as weak or histrionic.
Pisani did not walk to the podium to deliver his opening statement. Rising from his chair at the defense table, he stood next to his seated client and said, “When Ms. Fox read the indictment, I saw the looks of horror on your faces. My client has been accused of a despicable crime. He’s accused of sending his teenage daughter into a bedroom carrying a glass of milk tainted with cocaine in order to kill his wife, Benita Gonzales. That is absolutely horrific—if it were true.” Reaching over, Pisani placed his hand on Gonzales’s shoulder and said, “I just
want you to know that those charges are not true. Mr. Gonzales did not murder his wife. He loved his wife. He loved her very much. Mr. Gonzales is not guilty. And that brings us to what Judge Morano has given each of us twenty minutes to talk about—getting blamed for something you didn’t do.”
Our moral combat had begun.
48
“Doctor Swante,” I said, “during your autopsy of Benita Gonzales, were you able to determine a cause of death?”
“Yes, I determined that she had died from an overdose of cocaine.”
I’d called the assistant medical examiner as one of my first witnesses because he was my weakest one. It was better to get him out of the way early on.
An immigrant from India, middle-aged and wearing thick glasses, Dr. Swante looked uncomfortable in the witness chair. I’d already gotten his original autopsy report admitted into evidence. In that report, he’d concluded that Benita’s death had been an intentional or unintentional suicide. I’d also submitted his most recent “amended report,” where he had decided that her death was, in fact, “suspicious.” In addition to the autopsy report, I’d gotten the photographs of Benita that he’d taken during his examination admitted as evidence without Pisani objecting.
Knowing he was understandably uncomfortable, I asked, “Doctor Swante, what is a lethal dose of cocaine?”
“A lethal dose by mouth is estimated at from zero-point-five to one-point-three grams per day of cocaine.”
“Were you able during your autopsy to determine how much cocaine Benita Gonzales had in her system when she died?”
“Yes. She had ingested a minimum of five grams of cocaine. That would have been nearly four times more cocaine in her system than what was required for it to be fatal.”
For several minutes, I asked Dr. Swante technical questions about how he had been able to determine the amount of cocaine in her body. Next, I asked him if he knew how the drug had been introduced into her system.
“I concluded this woman ingested the cocaine orally. My toxicology report and examination showed both cocaine and milk in her stomach, which she apparently drank that night.”
“Doctor, I am going to ask you a hypothetical question: If cocaine were mixed with milk, would the person drinking the milk know it?”
“Objection.”
“Your Honor, the hypothetical is based on facts already in evidence.”
“I am going to allow it.”
“Depending on the amount of cocaine,” Dr. Swante said, “it could be tasteless in milk.”
“So, Doctor, based upon your toxicology and the milk and cocaine in her stomach, you can state with a reasonable degree of certainty that she ingested the cocaine orally?”
“I can state the cocaine was in the milk when she drank it that night.”
Because this was such a critical point, I went through another long series of technical questions that clarified how the assistant M.E. had been able to determine that Benita had ingested milk tainted with cocaine. Having provided jurors with sufficient scientific evidence, I moved on.
“Doctor Swante, can you tell us what happens when someone orally ingests a lethal amount of cocaine?”
“Acute ingestion and intoxication causes intense agitation, convulsions, hypertension, rhythm disturbance, and coronary insufficiency.”
“So is it your testimony that a person who ingests cocaine would not simply drift off to sleep?”
For the first time, he smiled and said, “No, no. Benita Gonzales did not have pleasant, sleepy dreams. After she ingested cocaine, her entire body would have begun shaking, she would have vomited and become agitated and ultimately suffered a heart attack. It would have been an extremely painful way to die.”
“It would not be your first choice if you wished to commit suicide?”
“Oh my, no.”
“How long does it take someone who has ingested cocaine for the drug to reach a life-threatening stage?” I asked.
“Two-thirds of deaths occur within five hours after taking an overdose. One-third within one hour after absorption of the drug, depending on whether it was snorted, injected, or ingested. Based on my experience, I estimate Benita Gonzales, given the amount of cocaine that I found in her system, probably took at least fifty-five minutes to die.”
“Nearly an hour, and during this hour, she would have been in intense pain, is that correct?”
“Yes,” Dr. Swante said. “She would have been vomiting and having convulsions.”
“Would someone watching her realize that she was sick and needed immediate medical attention?”
“Objection,” Pisani said. “Calls for speculation.”
“Sustained.”
I didn’t care. Jurors had gotten my point. Benita Gonzales had spent at least an hour in that bedroom thrashing about and being physically ill. If she wasn’t being murdered, why hadn’t her husband driven her to a doctor?
I asked Dr. Swante if he had found any evidence during the autopsy that suggested Benita Gonzales frequently used cocaine or was an addict. Carlos Gonzales had told the police that Benita often used cocaine to lift her out of her depression, and I wanted to use Dr. Swante’s testimony to show that the defendant was a liar.
“A person who regularly uses cocaine would suffer considerable tooth damage. The inside of an addict’s teeth shows decay from continued contact with rocks of cocaine. This would be similar to decay caused by prolonged sucking on a lollipop. I found no evidence of such tooth decay when I examined her teeth. Nor did I find needle marks from frequent drug injections. There was no damage to the interior of her nose—her nostrils—that happens from prolonged snorting of the drug. In my medical opinion, this woman was not a frequent user of cocaine because there were absolutely no signs of frequent cocaine use.”
We’d reached the point where I needed to tackle the toughest question: Why had Dr. Swante initially ruled her death a suicide?
“Is it still your opinion that this woman committed suicide either intentionally or inadvertently?”
Removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes, Dr. Swante replied, “When we collected the body, this woman’s husband told the police that she had been deeply depressed for many days and often used cocaine to lift her spirits. The police officer at the scene told me there was no evidence that suggested foul play. I had several autopsies to perform that night. We were shorthanded because another examiner had called in sick. Based on what the husband and the police reported, I decided this woman had committed suicide. But I now believe this death should be identified as undetermined.”
“Why would you change the manner of death from suicide to undetermined?”
“Because from rereading my notes and the autopsy report, I now believe this woman was not a frequent cocaine user, as was reported to us by her husband. I also find it suspicious that she died at home and was not taken to a hospital when she first began showing signs of distress. This is why I have changed my opinion and now believe the death was suspicious.”
It was now Pisani’s turn to cross-examine. I was about to see “Mr. Invincible” at work.
“Doctor Swante, are you aware that cocaine is a drug that requires higher and higher doses in order for an addict to get high?”
“Yes, that is indeed a medical fact. It becomes necessary for addicts to increase their use to achieve the feelings of elation that they crave.”
“That being the case, if Benita Gonzales frequently used cocaine, she would have to take higher and higher doses to get a feeling of relief, if she were depressed, isn’t that accurate?”
“That is a lot of ‘ifs’ but I would agree. If she used cocaine regularly, she would require higher and higher doses to lift her spirits.”
“Isn’t it true, Doctor Swante, that some addicts have been known to take up to five grams per day of cocaine without going into convulsions or dying?”
“Yes, indeed that is true. But as I testified earlier, there were no telltale signs that this woman was a frequent user or had in any
way built up a tolerance to cocaine.”
“By no signs, you mean no needle marks? No damage to her nostrils from sniffing the drug and, I believe you said, no tooth decay—is that right?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Tell me, Doctor Swante, if someone wanted to hide their addiction, couldn’t they simply brush their teeth after they took the drug orally—wouldn’t that prevent the cocaine from causing tooth damage?”
“I suppose it would.”
“And if they gargled with mouthwash, would that prevent tooth decay?”
“Yes, I suppose it would, too.”
“And mixing it with milk? Wouldn’t that keep the cocaine from rotting someone’s teeth?”
“Yes, if cocaine were taken orally with milk over and over again, I suspect there would be little or no signs of tooth decay.”
“If that is the case, then you really can’t tell us if Benita Gonzales was or wasn’t a frequent user of cocaine, based solely on a lack of tooth decay, can you?”
Pisani had boxed Dr. Swante into a corner, and the physician looked even more uncomfortable than he had been. Dr. Swante said, “There are other indicators besides tooth decay that suggest this woman was not a frequent user of cocaine.”
“Oh really, such as what?”
“Addicts typically show signs of anorexia—massive weight loss—and there were no such signs with this lady.”
“You said ‘typically’ but not always, isn’t that correct?”
“Yes, I assume there are addicts who do not show weight loss,” Dr. Swante said. He was digging himself in deeper and deeper.
“So, Doctor Swante, is it now your testimony that Benita Gonzales could have been an addict?”
“I still believe it is unlikely this woman was a frequent user.”
“But you didn’t answer my question. You said it was unlikely but possible—especially if she mixed cocaine with milk and ate lots of food. Then she could have been a frequent user without showing any traditional signs, isn’t that correct?”
Sly Fox: A Dani Fox Novel Page 23
