The Corporation

by T. J. English

  Said Kalafus, “José Miguel Battle, you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder and for the murder of Ernestico Torres.”

  Battle looked out over the sea of arresting officers and said nothing. Within the hour, he was on the phone with his esteemed criminal defense lawyer. He would not go down without a fight.

  9

  THE COUNSELOR

  RAYMOND A. BROWN WAS NOT YOUR USUAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY. IN THE state of New Jersey, his home base, he was, at the age of sixty-two, already a legend. There were numerous reasons for this, one being that he was African American, a rarity in the profession. In the early 1950s, when Brown was first admitted to the state bar and became licensed to practice, there were few black lawyers on either side of the aisle. There were, however, many black defendants. Among Brown’s earliest litigations were civil rights cases in New Jersey and the Deep South.

  The civil rights cases gave Brown credibility among the people, but his notoriety came later in a series of high-profile cases that established the lawyer as among the best in his profession.

  By the time of José Miguel Battle’s arrest for his involvement in the Ernesto Torres murder, he and Brown already had a working relationship. In 1974, Brown had been involved in helping Battle with his legal entanglements after he returned from Spain. It was Brown who, on behalf of Battle, negotiated a plea on federal gambling charges and also a charge of unlawful flight from prosecution. Battle had been facing a combined sentence of twelve years. Brown plea-bargained his case down to five years, of which El Padrino served two and half, an unusually light sentence.

  Battle knew that Brown was worth his weight in gold. Not only was the lawyer a tall, elegant black man with tremendous acumen in the courtroom, but with his civil rights background it was implicit in most cases he undertook that not only was his client innocent, but also that he or she was a victim of a grave injustice. Brown was not afraid to take on the powers that be.

  One of his first big trials, in 1964, had been the case of John W. Butenko, of Orange, New Jersey. Butenko, an unassuming employee of the International Telephone & Telegraph Corporation, had been charged with passing secrets of the U.S. Strategic Air Command to Soviet spies operating in the United States. It was a sensational case that garnered international headlines. Butenko was found guilty, but the trial established Raymond Brown as a defense lawyer willing to take on difficult and unpopular cases.

  His fortitude as a lawyer was rooted in his upbringing. Brown was born in Fernandina Beach, Florida, the son of a railroad mechanic. When he was two years old, he moved with his parents to Jersey City. Later in life, he returned to Florida to attend Florida A&M University, which he paid for in part by working as a longshoreman. After college, he served in the U.S. Army, fought in World War II, and stayed in the military as a member of the National Guard. When President Harry Truman officially integrated the U.S. armed forces, Brown became one of the first black officers. He retired from the National Guard in 1970 at the full rank of colonel.

  Having acquired a personal education that included physical labor, academic achievement, and national service, Brown had a sense of justice that was rooted in the real world. Later in life, he would say that what attracted him to the law was having experienced and seen the way people of color were mistreated in the military.

  Under the G.I. Bill, Brown attended Fordham Law School. Upon being admitted to the state bar, he did something very few black lawyers of his era would have thought possible—he opened his own independent practice.

  By the mid-1960s, Brown found himself on the cusp of a new era. Not only was the civil rights era transforming America, but many of the issues brought about by protest marches, sit-ins, and acts of civil disobedience were being played out in courtrooms, where lawyers like Raymond Brown, and many others, became the legal warriors for a generation.

  In 1967, Brown represented boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who, along with a codefendant, was charged with having murdered three people outside a bar in Paterson, New Jersey. What might have been viewed by some as a simple murder case was in the hands of Brown a case of racial prejudice in the criminal justice system. The trial resulted in a conviction for Hurricane Carter, but the verdict was later overturned.

  By the 1970s, Brown’s legal practice found itself serving as virtually the legal wing of the Black Power movement in New Jersey. In 1970, the lawyer represented three members of the Black Panther Party who were accused of shooting up a Newark police station in a drive-by shooting. A few years later, Brown became involved in perhaps his most notorious case, involving Joanne Chesimard, a.k.a. Assata Shakur, who was accused of killing a New Jersey state trooper in a wild shootout involving numerous assailants and troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike.

  With her prodigious Afro and magazine model beauty, Assata Shakur became a striking symbol for her generation. A member of a Black Panther splinter organization known as the Black Liberation Army, she was alleged to have gone on a crime spree in the early 1970s that involved bank robberies and shootings throughout the New York area. Already she had gone on trial in New York for various crimes before she arrived in New Jersey to be tried for murder. Shakur’s legal odyssey led her through numerous convictions, reversals on appeal, more convictions, and more reversals until she eventually escaped from prison in New Jersey and secretly fled to Cuba.

  Raymond Brown and other notable criminal defense attorneys such as William Kunstler represented Assata over the years, always pro bono, either because they believed in the politics of the case or because the notoriety that came from it was payment enough.

  Kunstler was an avowed leftist, but Raymond Brown’s political motives were not as clear. Certainly when it came to civil rights or race-related cases he was an antiestablishment figure. But he was also an ex-military man. He was motivated not so much by leftist or counterculture politics as by the pursuit of freedom as the ultimate right under the U.S. Constitution.

  In representing Battle, Brown, on the face of it, was going against the grain of leftist politics. The left in the U.S. revered Fidel Castro and his revolution. The anti-Castro movement, starting with the Bay of Pigs invasion and everything that came afterward, was viewed by the left as a fascist undertaking. The differences could not have been starker: Assata Shakur found refuge in Cuba. She likely was viewed by Battle and his cohorts as a pro-Castro communist sympathizer.

  Brown saw no contradiction in representing both points of view. He represented other anti-Castro Cuban Americans based in New Jersey, including Armando Santana, the president of the Cuban Nationalist Association (CNA). With their headquarters located in a small storefront office in Union City, the CNA was believed to be the political wing of Omega 7. In representing prominent anti-Castro militants, Brown was equating their struggle with that of the civil rights movement. He was defending the belief that by engaging in counterrevolutionary efforts, the anti-Castro militants were fighting for the freedom of the Cuban people.

  With the Ernesto Torres murder case, Battle’s lawyer did not seem to have a political dimension to defend. Battle was alleged to have conspired in Ernestico’s death because the man had become a threat to his reputation as a Mob boss. To interpret his actions as in any way connected to the struggle for freedom in Cuba seemed like a monumental leap, to say the least.

  Brown and his client had a more immediate problem: Brown was not licensed to practice in Florida. He could not try the case on his own, though he could serve as co-counsel with a lawyer who was licensed in the state.

  Battle needed to find a local lawyer. As with so many things in his life, he did so through a Bay of Pigs connection.

  Alfredo Duran was a local attorney of some renown. He had his own law firm, and eventually he would serve a stint as chairman of the state Democratic Party. He was also a veteran of the 2506 Brigade. He had taken part in the invasion and served time at Isle of Pines prison with Battle. As with so many who had shared that experience, he remained in touch with his fellow brigadis
tas. It was a brotherhood that endured, as many survivors of the invasion excelled in life or struggled to varying degrees. They knew they could count on one another.

  Duran was a corporate, not a criminal defense, lawyer. But when asked by Battle if he could make a recommendation, he immediately thought of a counselor from his law firm named Jack Blumenfeld.

  Blumenfeld was a former prosecutor, now a criminal defense lawyer, who knew the Florida state criminal justice system inside out. He and Ray Brown could hardly have been more different in style and appearance: where Brown was tall, lean, and erudite, Blumenfeld was burly, blunt, and balding. If Brown was a gazelle, Blumenfeld was a bulldog.

  On August 11, 1977, Battle was transferred from Rikers Island prison in New York to Dade County jail, where Blumenfeld, accompanied by Raymond Brown, met his client for the first time.

  Battle was calm, and he immediately struck the lawyer as someone who could take care of himself, even under such extreme conditions as county lockup, the most dangerous form of incarceration. Battle listened well, and he seemed to grasp the legal ramifications of what he was up against. One matter that needed to be dealt with was that the lead prosecutor, Hank Adorno, had offered Battle a plea deal of sorts. If Battle would agree to a six-person jury as opposed to the standard twelve-person jury in a capital case, the prosecutors would waive the death penalty.

  It was generally believed that it was easier for prosecutors to convince six people of guilt than it would be to convince twelve. The smaller jury gave Adorno a tactical advantage. On the other hand, not facing the death penalty was often an attractive option to a defendant.

  In the lawyer-client visiting area at Dade County jail, Brown and Blumenfeld asked Battle what he wanted to do.

  “Let me think about it,” he said.

  Blumenfeld had been told that Battle was an occasional devotee of Santería. He surmised that Battle wanted to consult a babalawo, a spiritual guide, who would seek the input of a higher power. In the Yoruba language, babalawo meant “father of the mysteries.” No doubt in the Dade County jail system there were Cubans, or people of Cuban descent, who were trained babalawos. Battle would meet with one. They would light candles, burn incense, and perhaps engage in other ceremonial efforts to seek divination, and answers, to Battle’s dilemma.

  Raymond Brown was incredulous. “What do you need to think about? This is your life we’re talking about.”

  Battle said, “Listen, I’m not afraid of death. You’re not gonna scare me with death. I faced death in Guatemala training for the invasion, faced death in Cuba with the invasion and in prison at Isle of Pines. I’m not afraid. I’ll make that decision later.”

  Blumenfeld took stock of his new client. He’d heard this man had cojones. Clearly, that was the case.

  A week later, Battle consented to the deal and accepted a six-person jury, not necessarily because he wanted to, but because his babalawo recommended it as being in his best interest.

  SINCE RETURNING FROM VACATION, DETECTIVE JULIO OJEDA HAD RESUMED FULL CONtrol of the Ernestico Torres murder investigation. This involved gathering evidence and tracking down potential witnesses, as well as safeguarding the two most important witnesses so far, Idalia Fernandez and Charley Hernandez.

  The trial was scheduled to begin jury selection in early November. Until then, Idalia and Charley were being kept at separate locations. Idalia was with her daughter in a motel. She had a twenty-four-hour guard. Charley was allowed to stay with his family some of the time, but he often spent his time with Ojeda and the other detectives.

  For a while, the cops lent Charley to agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency. Charley was such a good talker that it was felt he might be adept at working as an undercover agent making drug buys on behalf of the DEA, but it was determined that this might be too dangerous. Instead, he worked for the narcotics agency as a Miami cabdriver whose job it was to cruise the streets looking for illegal activity. The agents told him this might be the beginning of a career in law enforcement, but he quickly discerned that they were not sincere, and so he stopped driving a cab.

  Eventually, Detective Ojeda found another driving job for Charley, one that would bring the government’s star witness in the Ernestico murder case into direct contact with one of the biggest narco gangsters in Miami.

  The moral underpinnings of this arrangement were questionable. Ojeda and his detective partners were headed down a road that would eventually destroy their careers and bring about one of the biggest scandals in the history of the Dade County police department.

  MARIO ESCANDAR WAS ONE OF MIAMI’S FIRST COCAINE KINGPINS. BACK IN THE 1950S, he had run a nightclub in Havana; since his arrival in Miami in 1960, he had been a hustler and a criminal. Though English was not his first language, he adapted quickly. Over six feet tall, with lank black hair, he was a talker who believed he could bullshit his way out of any situation.

  Arrested on various criminal charges, he claimed to have met during his incarceration a who’s who of the American underworld. In 1962, while at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, he had served as an inmate kitchen boss in the prison mess hall. He had helped prepare a special birthday dinner for Mafia boss Vito Genovese. Later, Escandar was approached by someone looking to procure a kitchen knife for mobster Joe Valachi, who believed that Genovese was trying to have him killed. Escandar suggested that Valachi’s emissary try the prison machine shop instead. Apparently, Valachi’s emissary took Escander up on his suggestion. As Escandar remembered it years later, “So [Valachi] got a piece of pipe and a few days later a guy got killed and I was ten feet away from it.” (The “guy” who got killed was a fellow inmate who Valachi believed had been sent to kill him.)

  Joe Valachi went on to become one of the most notorious informants in history, testifying in 1963 in front of a nationally televised congressional committee on organized crime and the Mafia. Mario Escandar, on the other hand, burrowed deeper into the underworld. Upon his release from prison, he became an international dope dealer. In 1970, he was arrested as part of Operation Eagle, the largest heroin and cocaine bust in U.S. history at the time. He was named by Attorney General John Mitchell as one of five “principal subjects” in the raid, which resulted in 133 arrests in ten cities. Heroin and cocaine valued at $2.5 million was seized.

  If convicted, Escandar was looking at a life sentence. It was then that he made the deal of a lifetime. He agreed to become a covert informant for the FBI. He was put back out on the street to continue his life of crime while supplying the feds with information about fellow criminals.

  It was a good deal for Escandar, until in July 1977 he and two criminal partners were arrested by Miami detectives on felony kidnapping and armed robbery charges. The FBI refused to step in on his behalf. Again, he was facing serious time. It was then that Detective Julio Ojeda entered the picture.

  Around the same time that José Miguel Battle was arrested in New York for the murder of Ernesto Torres, Ojeda made a visit to Mario Escandar at the federal prison in Miami. Ojeda had been among the team of detectives who arrested the cagey criminal, and the two men seemed to have made a connection. Ojeda was there to talk with Escandar about two open homicide cases he thought Mario might know something about—the murders of Rolando Masferrer and Johnny Roselli. Escandar had nothing to offer on those crimes, but he was sure he could help the detective out if he were to secretly take him on as an informant.

  The detective saw that having the legendary Mario Escandar on the street as his eyes and ears in the underworld could be a tremendous advantage.

  Once Escandar was released on bail, he and Ojeda formed a relationship that would change Ojeda’s life and that of the entire Dade County homicide squad. Escandar became an informant for Centac-26, a joint unit of Ojeda’s homicide squad and the DEA. What Escandar did not tell cops and agents from this special unit was that he was still at the same time acting as a covert informant for the FBI.

  Meanwhile, Ojeda and his partners Fabio Alonso, Robert Derring
er, Pedro Izaguirre, Charles Zatrapalek, and George Pontigo became criminal partners of Mario Escandar. Starting in mid-1977 and over the next two years, some of them robbed cocaine dealers during illegal raids; kept money they found during murder investigations; stole and then resold marijuana; bribed other police officers to help them steal confiscated cash from the police property room; and used and became hooked on cocaine that was provided to them by Mario Escandar.

  Escandar served as the group’s gang boss, and the detectives became his goon squad. He had a palatial home in Miami Springs, off Okeechobee Road, where the cops regularly met. There they hatched schemes and partied on a regular basis. Escandar supplied the drugs and the women—high-caliber prostitutes whom he provided to the detectives at no charge. It was the Miami high life in spades circa the late 1970s—unlimited cocaine, beautiful women, high crimes and misdemeanors, all of it headquartered at the home of one of the most notorious narco kingpins in the city.

  And all of this was taking place while the Dade district attorney, along with Detective Ojeda and the homicide squad, were preparing for the murder trial of José Miguel Battle.

  Charley Hernandez could hardly believe what he had stumbled into. He’d been living in a motel under armed guard when he was approached by Detective Ojeda, who said, “We want to put you in the home of Mario Escandar. Are you willing? He is a gangster like you. You will get along with him. I know he won’t give you up. You will be safe. We will put you to work as his chauffeur, his driver.”

  Charley agreed, not knowing what he was getting into. He became Escandar’s driver, which mostly involved going on cocaine runs with his new boss. Years later, in a deposition, he recalled, “Mario couldn’t live without cocaine, so he made sure that he had his fix.”