The Corporation

by T. J. English

  Charley also became a middleman in drug transactions, delivering the product and picking up payments. Some of these deals were facilitated by Escandar’s band of dirty detectives.

  Charley served as Escandar’s gofer. He answered the phone and the door if anybody came to the house. He kept the house clean. He took Escandar shopping at the mall. “He had a lot of enemies,” said El Pincero. “I was like a bodyguard for him.”

  The detectives came by the house on a daily basis. Escandar was providing information to get a reduced sentence on his kidnapping charge. He was debriefed by Ojeda and the other detectives. On the weekends, they all partied.

  “It was unbelievable,” said Charley. “Those were some parties . . . The prettiest broads in Florida, the best whores, they went to that house . . . I had a lot of ass, no problem. It was beautiful. The swimming pool, the drugs.”

  Eventually, Idalia Fernandez was also moved into the Escandar house in Miami Springs. Ostensibly, Charley and Idalia were being held at a secret location while preparing to testify at the Battle trial. There was work to be done. Neither of them had ever testified at a trial. No doubt they would be grilled during cross-examination. Everything about their criminal histories would be brought out, and they would be presented as lowlifes and excoriated by some very skilled defense lawyers. It was important that they be prepared, but also apparently that they be relaxed. Idalia smoked marijuana most every day at the Escandar house.

  Not only that, but she undertook an improper sexual relationship with the lead detective, Julio Ojeda. Three or four times a week, when Ojeda came to the house, he and Idalia disappeared into one of the many bedrooms. “Ojeda was getting laid by Idalia,” said Charley. Everyone knew it, including Escandar, who noted later that the detective and witness were often “smooching.”

  No one seemed to find anything wrong in the unseemly arrangement. A lead investigator in a murder case having a sexual relationship with a witness? ¿Cómo no? (Why not?) Cocaine, sex, cops operating as gangsters—it had become the norm, and would continue to be, in the weeks leading up to and during the murder trial of José Miguel Battle.

  ON THE MORNING OF OCTOBER 18, JACK BLUMENFELD WAS IN HIS OFFICE IN MIAMI preparing for the trial, the commencement of which was two weeks away. Blumenfeld knew nothing of the two main witnesses in the case being lodged at the home of one of the city’s preeminent criminals, and that the detectives had become crime partners of Mario Escandar. Not even the prosecutors knew about this arrangement. It was between Escandar and his dirty police partners. Later it would become public, with a sensational trial involving Escandar and the detectives, but at the time it was a well-hidden time bomb, a corrosive fault line buried deep below the surface of the Battle trial.

  That morning—a Thursday—Blumenfeld received a call from the office of Raymond Brown in New Jersey. He assumed it was something having to do with trial preparation, so he was surprised to hear his fellow litigator say, “Jack, we’ve got an extra ticket to game six of the World Series tonight. Yankee Stadium. If you can get on a plane and get up here, the ticket is yours.”

  The tickets belonged to José Miguel Battle, row nine, behind home plate. Battle, of course, was indisposed.

  Blumenfeld wasn’t much of a baseball fan. He hadn’t really been following the series, which had the Yankees up three games to two against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Some might have been attracted to the idea of going to Yankee Stadium for the first time. It had recently been refurbished to its historical glory; it was one of the most revered sporting facilities in the United States. But this all meant very little to Blumenfeld. On top of that, he had work to do. The idea of dropping what he was doing, getting on a plane, and being at the stadium in time for a seven o’clock start time seemed like more trouble than it was worth.

  “That’s a nice offer,” said Blumenfeld. “But I’m swamped with work today. I think I’ll pass.”

  Brown was incredulous. “Jack, are you fucking crazy? How many times in life will you have an opportunity to sit in a box seat at Yankee Stadium for a World Series game between the Yankees and the Dodgers? Besides, our client is offering you his box seats. He’ll take this almost as an insult if you say no.”

  “Well,” said Blumenfeld, “if you put it like that, let me see if I can get a flight.”

  There was an Eastern Air Lines flight leaving at midafternoon that would bring him in to Newark airport. The idea was to land, and quickly check into a hotel in East Orange, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. From there, Raymond Brown’s son, Raymond Brown Jr., would pick Blumenfeld up and they would drive to the Bronx for the game.

  It was a two-and-a-half-hour flight to Newark. Blumenfeld had just enough time to land, make a quick stop at the hotel to drop off his bag, and continue on to Yankee Stadium.

  It was a spectacular fall night at the ballpark. The stadium was already packed to capacity with 54,113 fans by the time Blumenfeld arrived. An usher showed the Miami lawyer and Ray Brown Jr. to their seats. There they met Raymond Brown Sr. and also José Miguel Battle Jr., who was there with a couple friends.

  In the third inning, the Yankees cleanup hitter, Reggie Jackson, came to the plate for the second time (he had walked in the first inning). Jackson hit a line-drive home run into the rightfield bleachers. The crowd went wild. In the next inning, with two men on base, Jackson hit another home run.

  Blumenfeld could hardly believe what he was seeing. Though he was hardly a student of the game, he knew that one player hitting two home runs in a game was rare, even more so in the World Series. And Jackson had hit those two homers on two swings of the bat—no swings and misses, no foul balls. Two swings, two home runs.

  In the eighth inning, Jackson came to the plate and did it once again—one swing of the bat, a towering 450-foot shot to the centerfield bleachers. Everyone went crazy. Nothing like it had ever been done in the history of baseball. The Yankees won the series in style.

  After the game, Blumenfeld was driven back to his hotel in East Orange. He had not even wanted to go to the game—and almost didn’t.

  Already, representing José Miguel Battle Sr. had brought him a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Courtesy of his client, he had witnessed an event of historic proportions. It made him wonder what else might be in store for the future.

  THE TRIAL OFFICIALLY GOT UNDER WAY IN MIAMI ON NOVEMBER 7, WITH AN OPENING statement by co-prosecutor Lance Stelzer. “The story you are about to hear will sound so bizarre that you would expect to see and hear it on television,” Stelzer told the jury. “But it didn’t happen on television. It happened in real life.” The prosecutor knew that with Idalia, a victim, and Charley, an associate of both the victim and the assailant, the testimony he presented to the jury would be unusually intimate. His job as prosecutor was to present the dramatis personae and a narrative that was as compelling as anything the jurors might see in a movie theater. Of the case, he said, “It’s a story which starts with love and ends in hate. It starts with peace and ends with war . . . Starts with birth, the commencement of one life, and ends in the death of another.”

  Stelzer outlined his story; it began with the murder of Pedro Battle, godfather to Ernestico’s child born in Spain. Steltzer described the murder of Pedro Battle, and how Ernestico and Chino Acuna took on the responsibility of avenging that murder. He explained how Charley Hernandez, their primary witness, would in his testimony take them through the tangled set of circumstances that led José Miguel Battle to call for the death of his prodigal son.

  Stelzer informed the jury that they would be hearing taped conversations between Ernesto Torres and the man who engineered his killing. At the time, few in the courtroom knew or even suspected that Battle himself had been one of the triggermen that day. Idalia had revealed it to no one.

  After Stelzer finished his opening remarks, Jack Blumenfeld stood to offer an opening statement for the defense. Blumenfeld’s style as a courtroom practitioner was workmanlike but thorough. If he had been a boxer (and he
did look like one), he was the kind of fighter who would work in close, landing short, sharp punches to the body. He was no Muhammad Ali, like his fellow counselor Raymond Brown, who danced like a butterfly and stung like a bee, but he was effective. He said to the jury, “Ladies and gentlemen . . . the evidence upon which your verdict must be based comes from that witness stand.” Blumenfeld pointed to the empty chair. “I say the evidence, or lack of evidence. And I am going to emphasize that point—lack of evidence—as I go through this opening statement. I say that because Mr. Stelzer has outlined for you during the past hour a story as he told it, which contained a good deal of quantity. I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, that the evidence upon which a verdict must be based has to do with quality, not quantity.”

  The first week of the prosecution’s case dealt mostly with the physical circumstances of the murder itself. Crime scene investigators, forensic examiners, and Dade County assistant medical examiner Dr. Ronald Wright took the stand. A startling detail from the medical examiner’s testimony was that Ernesto Torres, after having been shot multiple times and likely already dead, was shot between the eyes, with the barrel of the gun pressed against his forehead. This coup de grâce was likely delivered as some sort of message to anyone who knew the deceased.

  Idalia was certainly a compelling witness. She described the relationship between her late boyfriend and his boss. She detailed in personal terms how that relationship turned sour, and how Ernesto had come to believe that Battle, among others, was out to kill them. Idalia described being brutally attacked and left for dead by Chino Acuna. But as compelling as her testimony may have been, not much of what she had to say could be used against the defendant. If she was not going to identify Battle as one of the assailants, her testimony brought little hard evidence to bear on his participation in the murder of Ernestico.

  Charley was another story. Since he had been a party to the conspiracy with Battle, his testimony was crucial; it would determine whether Battle walked free or not.

  Charley’s hair had been neatly trimmed, and he wore a white dress shirt. He looked more like a bank clerk than he did the notorious El Pincero, whom Blumenfeld had described in his opening statement as “a sneak thief.” From the witness stand, Charley seemed to be well prepared. The late-night parties at Mario Escandar’s house must have agreed with him, because he came into court relaxed, with little of the fear and anxiety that can overcome some witnesses, especially those with little formal education, or those speaking in a language that is not their native tongue. Charley did not seem intimidated, and as his time on the witness stand progressed over four full days, he sometimes even seemed to be enjoying himself.

  Hank Adorno handled the presentation of Charley’s direct testimony. Given that the witness had by now given many statements; been deposed under oath; taken a lie detector test (he passed); and been rigorously prepared by Adorno and others, his testimony was a recitation of what were to him well-worn facts. It wasn’t until cross-examination by Raymond Brown that his feet were put to the fire.

  The first question asked by Brown was, “Tell me, did you tell this jury that you have a wife and four children in New Jersey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that the compete truth?”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “Do you not have six children?”

  Charley squirmed in his seat. “Two from a previous marriage.”

  “And four from whom?”

  “Four are mine.”

  “Is that a marriage that you have?”

  “No. It’s not a marriage. I have been living with her for ten years. I believe she is my wife.”

  Brown then quickly segued into Charley’s history of stealing from people, sneaking into their homes, and how he sometimes impersonated a police officer, using a police badge he had stolen from a Union City police officer.

  Charley had not been under cross-examination for ten minutes and already Raymond Brown had reduced him to a deceiver and a con man, in both his personal and professional lives.

  The idea of a professional liar, or someone perceived to be one, taking the stand in a criminal trial was nothing new. At the core of criminal prosecutions in the United States was the concept of using a crook to catch a crook. In his opening statement, the prosecutor had repeated the old line, used in courtrooms all over America, about how he wished his witnesses could be upstanding citizens—“angels”—but given the nature of the co-conspirators in this case, you played the hand you were dealt. Normally, defense lawyers were in an easier position; they could use statements made by the witness in earlier settings against them in the courtroom. But Charley had been remarkably consistent since he first began talking to detectives at the Renaissance Hotel in Newark.

  Brown was not having much luck making Charley out to be a degenerate liar. His next order of business was to perhaps turn the jury against the witness simply because they didn’t like him. But Brown didn’t have much success here either. On the stand, Charley Hernandez had a certain streetwise charm. He was unassuming and lighthearted. He always referred to the defense lawyer as “Mr. Brown.” Though Brown tried, he could not get under Charley’s skin. If the trial was to come down to whether or not the jury liked Charley Hernandez, Battle was in trouble.

  There were a few more witnesses, including Detective Ojeda and Detective Kalafus, down from New York City. Kalafus sought to expand the parameters of the case by establishing Battle’s reputation as a bolita boss. Another witness, Monino Herrera, was called in an attempt to take the case in a political direction. Herrera had served in the 2506 Brigade with Battle. He referred to “the cause,” and how he and Battle had been dedicated to the struggle for freedom in Cuba for a long time. The prosecutors interrupted much of his testimony with objections on the grounds of relevance; most of their objections were sustained by the judge.

  In the home stretch of the trial, with only a few days left, Jack Blumenfeld received a staggering piece of information from his secretary, Julie.

  The secretary was an attractive woman in her early thirties. Battle, who was known to have an eye for young women, had taken a liking to her. He chatted with her often on breaks in the courtroom proceedings.

  One afternoon, after chatting with Battle, Julie came to Jack Blumenfeld. She seemed to be shaken by something, which she explained to her boss.

  According to Julie, Battle had admitted to her that he was one of the three gunmen who broke into Ernesto and Idalia’s apartment. He told Julie that when he burst into the apartment, Idalia looked at him; she clearly recognized him. He put a finger to his lips, the universal sign meaning “keep quiet.” Then he rushed toward the rear of the apartment, toward the bedroom, where Ernestico was hiding out.

  Battle went on to describe the shootout, and how he was the one who shot Ernestico between the eyes.

  It was startling information, to say the least. Blumenfeld told Julie, “Okay, thanks for telling me.” Later, he met with Raymond Brown, his co-counsel, to discuss this unusual development.

  The legal issues involved were clear-cut: Battle relaying his version of events to Julie, and Julie telling Blumenfeld, all came under the rubric of attorney-client privilege. Legally, the defense team was not obligated to report this development to anyone. On the issue of whether or not what Battle told Julie was true or not, there was no way to know without further investigation. This was a burden not shouldered by the defense; it was not their job, nor in their interest, to prove that their client had pulled the trigger.

  Battle was facing a sentence of thirty years or more for conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation to commit murder, and first-degree murder. The lawyers had been hired to defend him on these charges. His conversation with Julie was interesting, but the lawyers concluded that it had little bearing on their case. Maybe what Battle had told Julie was true, or maybe he was boasting. The lawyers would never know. They chose to simply ignore their secretary’s private conversation with Battle.

  The trial c
ontinued. It was the goal of all parties involved to present the case to the jury in time for them to reach a verdict before the Thanksgiving holiday.

  Hank Adorno delivered the closing argument for the prosecution, noting that “Mr. Brown and I agree on one thing, and that is that this case stands or it fails on the testimony of Charles Hernandez.”

  It was an unusual admission that required Adorno to spend nearly the entirety of his one-hour closing statement bolstering the testimony and character of El Pincero. Said the prosecutor, “Charlie knows he is a criminal, and Charlie knows that nobody is going to like him for that. He says, ‘I’m going to tell you the truth. If you want to believe me, fine. If you don’t, all right. But I’m not going to lie.’ ” The prosecutor spent the next forty minutes going through each and every statement by Charlie that linked Battle to the crime.

  Near the end of his statement, Adorno became personal in his condemnations of Battle. Acknowledging that Charley was not “a priest or a nun or a businessman,” he explained that “the state has to give you a barracuda, what Charlie is, to get to this animal”—he pointed at Battle—“and that is what he is.”

  “Objection,” interjected Brown, saying to the judge, “Your Honor, I ask for a curative instruction.”

  The judge admonished the prosecutor: “Stick with the evidence. The jury will disregard that last statement.”

  Adorno ended his argument by saying to the jury, “I submit to you that once you look at the evidence in this case and discuss it among yourselves, and apply the law to it, you will reach but one conclusion, and that is to come out here and speak for the people of the State of Florida . . . Come out and say, ‘José Battle, you cannot kill for money.’ Because José Battle kills with this . . .” Adorno held up a twenty-dollar bill. “It is only twenty dollars, but this is what he kills with. This is how much a human life is worth to that man, and I submit that you cannot allow this man to get away with it, and I submit that the only true verdict that speaks the truth in this case is guilty as charged as to each and every one of the counts of this indictment.”