After two days of Hafetz’s aggressive and brutal questioning about her background and her knowledge of the case, she had jokingly told government lawyers that she was going to get a T-shirt that read “I Survived Fred Hafetz.”
But they had told her that might be premature. They knew that it was difficult for any witness to survive Hafetz in a courtroom. If Sukhreet thought he was tough on her in his office, they warned, she could expect him to be merciless during his cross-examination. They were right.
Outside the courtroom Hafetz is a charming man who speaks with pride about the accomplishments of his four teenage boys. But once he steps into the well of the court, he becomes a fierce advocate.
It was Monday morning, October 17, when he stood up to take his first shot at Sukhreet. She had just finished giving her most damning testimony about Bess.
Of the three defense attorneys, Hafetz had the hardest job. His task was to present Sukhreet as a perfectly suitable—even extraordinary—job candidate for Bess to have hired in 1983. Having established that, Hafetz intended to do his savage best to damage her credibility in the eyes of the jury.
To emphasize to the jurors that Bess might have been fooled by Sukhreet’s qualifications, Hafetz asked Sukhreet to recite her academic record for the jury again. She seemed to be delighted to talk about her graduate work one more time and to read from the glowing letters of recommendation from her professors at the University of Chicago and New York University.
Then Hafetz suddenly switched the direction of his questions and went in for the kill, hammering away at Sukhreet so relentlessly that he reminded one reporter of a “terrier gnawing at a bone.”
“Am I correct that you received fifteen electroshock treatments to your head at some time after you left DCA?” he began.
“I’m not certain of the number,” Sukhreet said without flinching, “but you are certainly in the ballpark there. That is correct.”
“And this was over how long a period of time?”
“I believe it was over a period of a month,” she replied.
“I see,” he nodded, walking toward her. “When you say electroshock treatments, those are electric or electro-current shock treatments to your brain, are they not?”
“That is correct,” she said cautiously.
“Is that what we are talking about?”
“Yes.” Her voice faltered. A look of fear crossed her face.
“Now, with regard to the electroshock treatment, am I correct, Ms. Gabel, that you have previously testified that the effect of those electroshock treatments on your mind was to make your memory selective, rather like a Swiss cheese with holes in it? Did you make that statement?”
“Yes, I did.”
Sukhreet slumped down in her seat, her credibility collapsing in the face of Hafetz’s surprise attack. Becoming increasingly rattled by his assault, she was unable to remember names, dates, places, or events from 1983. She told Hafetz that the shock treatments were in 1986, about the same time she had had the walk around the block with Bess Myerson, when in fact they had begun the year before. “I get all confused when it comes to those years,” she said. “I have been known to mess up years. More rapidly than seasons generally.”
As he continued to shout questions at her in his loud, insistent voice, Sukhreet fell apart.
At the defense table Bess sat on the edge of her seat, opening and closing her mouth. A slight smile crossed Andy’s lips. Judge Gabel looked distressed, as if she would jump up at any moment and try to restrain Hafetz from shouting at her daughter.
“In an interview with the New York Post yesterday,” Hafetz continued, “did you refer to the prosecutors as ‘the boys’? Yes or no, Ms. Gabel?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember yesterday?”
Sukhreet screwed up her face like an angry little girl. “I don’t remember yesterday.”
Hafetz paused for a beat. He smiled cruelly and then asked sarcastically, “Do you know what day of the week you took the stand last week, Ms. Gabel? Do you recall that?”
“No, I don’t remember.”
“I see,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Did you take the stand last week?”
“Yes,” Sukhreet said disgustedly.
“No Swiss cheese on that, right?” Hafetz shot back.
Hafetz did not let up, continuing his assault hour after hour through Monday afternoon and the following day. Although he was attacking her relentlessly, the prosecutors did not make frequent objections. It was as if they had decided to let Sukhreet hang out to dry.
Despite his brutal, but brilliant, cross-examination, Hafetz was unable to get Sukhreet to back down from her story. He was, however, successful in systematically challenging her credibility and creating the impression that Sukhreet had trouble remembering things. He suggested it was possible that she even made up events. Quoting grand jury testimony she had given sometime in 1987, Hafetz read to the jury, “I’m getting confused between knowing something and thinking something must have been.…”
Then he read aloud from statements that she had given to David Lawrence during the investigation. After telling him an anecdote about life at Andy Capasso’s home in Westhampton Beach, she had said, “Oh, dear, am I making this up?”
By the end of the second day of cross-examination Sukhreet had begun to recover. Instead of giving Hafetz a blank look or a silly answer, she began engaging him in a philosophical debate about the meaning of truth. It became a battle of wits.
When, at one point, he asked her if she was committing perjury, she turned to Keenan and said, “I would request a copy of Black’s Law Dictionary.”
Then, after Hafetz sarcastically asked her if “a thunderbolt struck you and gave you that memory recollection,” she shot back, “No, I haven’t been in the rain lately.”
Several times she gave a persuasive explanation for why she had testified differently about the same event. “The more time that you spend thinking about a particular event,” she said, “searching your memory, trying to remember what happened, being asked the same question not once but twice and three and four times, the more you find that you do recollect.”
But then she would quickly stumble again.
“Both times you were under oath,” Hafetz yelled at her, “both times you swore that you were telling the truth, and both times you gave two different answers, am I right?
“You are absolutely correct, Mr. Hafetz,” she said with a sigh, a sarcastic tone creeping into her weary voice.
“And, Ms. Gabel,” he said, his voice rising, “do we have any guarantee that if you come back next month we are not going to hear yet a third inconsistent story from you?”
“It is conceivable,” she said.
Before walking away from Sukhreet, Hafetz had just one more item on his list: he needed to challenge her testimony against Bess on the obstruction of justice charge.
Following the walk around the block in June 1986, Sukhreet had written a memorandum to her lawyer detailing what Bess had told her that night. Hafetz got Sukhreet to admit that there were at least ten statements that she had attributed to Bess in her testimony that were not contained in the memo to her lawyer, including some of the more damning statements, such as “You can make a lot of trouble,” “We’ve got to get our stories straight,” and “You’ve got to keep your mouth shut.”
Then he took his line of questioning a bit further. He had found a gold nugget in the thousands of pages of Sukhreet’s prior testimony and depositions that the government, under the federal rules of evidence, had to turn over to him and the other defense attorneys.
“Ms. Gabel, am I correct that in an interview of you several months ago by representatives of the defense you stated that your understanding was there was no intent by Ms. Myerson during the course of her discussion with you on that evening to subvert governmental process? Did you make that statement?”
“Yes, I did,” she said, her hands folded on the table in front of her
.
“Am I correct that you have previously testified that Ms. Myerson during the course of this walk did not ask you to change your memory?”
“That’s true,” Sukhreet said.
Michael Feldberg took an entirely different approach to challenge Sukhreet. He didn’t raise his voice. He was gentle, yet he too was merciless, and he too walked a delicate line. He had to destroy her credibility as a witness while being careful at the same time not to attack too hard, for fear that Judge Gabel would rise out of her chair to defend her daughter.
Feldberg began by asking Sukhreet to describe her mother’s reaction when the judge learned that her only child was cooperating with federal investigators pursuing a criminal case against her.
“Isn’t it a fact, Ms. Gabel, that with respect to your conduct in this case your mother has consistently said three words to you?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” she replied, smiling.
“And would you tell the jury, please, what those three words are?”
Turning to the jury, Sukhreet enunciated each word: “Tell the truth.”
“And your mother has said that to you knowing that you have been cooperating with the folks who are prosecuting this criminal case, isn’t that correct?”
“Absolutely,” she said firmly with a smile, adding later, “My mother’s position has never wavered.”
With that out of the way, Feldberg used Sukhreet as a character witness for her mother, asking her to tell the jury about her mother’s record as a fighter for civil rights and fair housing. More than once he had her acknowledge that she had told a reporter that her mother “absolutely could not be bought.”
Feldberg also tried to suggest that her mother had known Bess Myerson well for twenty to twenty-five years and led Sukhreet to tell the jury that Judge Gabel had once told her she thought “Ms. Myerson was a delightful cuckoo.”
At the defense table Bess looked unamused, sitting straight up in her chair, sucking her cheeks in. A few feet away, Judge Gabel stared straight ahead.
Then Feldberg slowly began to set the stage for a devastating cross-examination designed to show that Sukhreet chose to cooperate with the government because she felt she had been insulted publicly by her parents.
“Ms. Gabel, you have had difficulties in your life, have you not?”
“Yes, I have,” Sukhreet said in a tentative voice.
“Unlike your mother, who is married now for forty-four years, your marriage did not turn out successfully, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“Unlike your mother, who completed law school and went on to a career in public service and as a judge, you did not complete your Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, did you?”
“That’s correct.”
“To date?”
“That’s correct.”
“And you have not enjoyed professional success yet, is that correct?” Feldberg lowered his voice with each question.
“That’s correct.”
“You have not enjoyed the kind of public esteem that your mother has enjoyed, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“You have told the prosecutors and other people that you feel that you have had little luck in your life, correct?”
“I am not certain about that. I am not a great believer in luck.”
“That life has been unfortunate in many respects?”
“In some respects,” she replied, frowning. “I don’t know that I have said many.”
“You have suffered from illness?”
“Yes.”
“You suffer from severe unipolar depression?”
“That is the illness that I suffer from, yes.”
“You have told the prosecutors that, correct?”
“Yes, I have.”
“You haven’t hid that from anyone, have you?”
“No.”
“You have told the court, you have told the jury, you told the defense lawyers, and you told the prosecutors, is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“You have been very open about the illness with which you suffer, correct?”
“I have always tried to be.”
“You underwent electroshock treatment for that illness in an attempt to combat it.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you take medication on a daily basis to try to combat the effects of that illness, correct?”
“Yes.”
“You sometimes feel that your parents were less than understanding about you, don’t you?” Feldberg asked, walking over to Hortense Gabel and putting both hands on the back of her chair.
“Yes,” Sukhreet replied matter-of-factly. “I think that’s a good characterization.”
Feldberg put his hands behind his back and slowly walked toward her. “And there came a time on June 10, 1987, when a report was released to the public in which your parents were quoted as saying something about you that upset you. Isn’t that correct?” he queried as he approached the witness.
“That is correct,” Sukhreet answered, an edge to her voice.
“Isn’t it a fact, Ms. Gabel,” he said, his voice suddenly rising as he sought to suggest that Sukhreet’s testimony was motivated by revenge, “that within five days of that, you called up the prosecutors and essentially volunteered to become a member of the prosecution team in this case?”
“I am not certain of the dates, but I think in terms of the timing you are correct.”
Feldberg next tried to show that Sukhreet was also motivated by a need for the attention she had received from the prosecution. “They paid attention to you, didn’t they?”
“Yes, they did,” she admitted.
“At the time you did this, Ms. Gabel, you knew that your mother was under criminal investigation, didn’t you?” His voice grew louder.
“Yes, I did.”
The jurors were riveted by Feldberg’s gentle questioning. Bess leaned forward, straining to listen to every syllable. Judge Gabel sat impassively, staring straight ahead. Dr. Gabel sat directly behind her, his head bowed.
Then Feldberg had Sukhreet recall that the “very next day” the prosecutors and two FBI agents came to her apartment to install a tape-recording device on her telephone to record a conversation with her lawyer, Philip Schaeffer. Although she had not intended to secretly tape-record her mother that night, Feldberg wanted to leave jurors with the impression that she had been manipulated by prosecutors into bringing her mother down.
Feldberg ran no risk in playing the tape, which had been turned over to him during the discovery phase of trial preparation. Judge Gabel had said nothing incriminating during the brief conversation.
A hush fell over the courtroom as Feldberg pushed the cassette into a tape machine hooked up to the courtroom’s sound system and distributed copies of transcripts to jurors. Sukhreet lowered her head as she heard her voice asking her mother if she knew where she might be able to find Schaeffer. Her mother listened without any expression.
Feldberg had accomplished what he had hoped. A look of disgust crossed the faces of several jurors as they listened to the recording and read along on their copies of the transcripts.
“Did you say to anybody on the prosecution team, ‘Is it really okay for me to tape-record a conversation with my mother for you under these circumstances?’”
“No, I did not ask them.”
“Did any member of the prosecution team say to you, ‘Wait a minute. We can’t do this’?”
“No,” Sukhreet answered, glaring at him.
“Did anybody say that in America things like this aren’t done?” he yelled.
“No.”
“Did it occur to you on the evening of June 16, 1987, that in America things like this are not done?”
“No.”
Then he started in on the attack that everyone had been waiting for, trying to compare her actions to those of children who informed on their parents in Nazi Germany.
Lawrence sto
od up and finally objected to the question, but he was overruled.
Feldberg asked the question again. “You have heard of places where prosecutors have used children to inform on their parents, haven’t you?”
“I don’t want to comment on the specifics of that,” Sukhreet replied.
The defense lawyers debated whether to have Goldberg attack Sukhreet, too. Hafetz didn’t think it was necessary, believing that her credibility had been destroyed and that any more hammering at her might be overkill and would evoke sympathy from the jury. But Goldberg wanted to take his shot. “Sukhreet and I were like a perfect combination,” he later said with a smile.
It was Thursday, October 27, Sukhreet’s eighth day on the witness stand. By now even those in the spectator section who had first taken pity on her felt uneasy in her presence. She seemed to be relishing the attention too much, and the scene played out each morning in the courtroom, when she would greet her parents with an affectionate hug and a kiss and then step up to the witness stand to testify against them, was too bizarre.
For days now she had been joining her parents for lunch in the cafeteria but would leave them whenever reporters asked her to join them on the courthouse steps for a “stand-up” interview for that evening’s television news. She seemed thrilled at her newfound celebrity. Every night she happily answered dozens of phone calls at her home from people commenting about her testimony, and even though one caller suggested that she buy “life insurance,” she had no intention of changing her published number.
Goldberg set the tone for his cross-examination right away.
“You have in the course of the proceedings given your mother roses?” he said, pacing around the room.
“Yes, I have.”
“You have. And at times you have blown her a kiss, isn’t that so?”
“I have waved at her.”
“You waved at her, and one time you asked her if she could hear as you pulled the microphone to you?”
“Yes.”
“But those acts don’t reflect your true feelings toward your mother, do they?”
“I believe that they do.”
“Did you tell the prosecutors prior to June 17, 1987, that you harbored deep resentment toward your mother?”
Queen Bess Page 42
