CHAPTER TEN

State criminal trials in Manhattan didn’t happen where the movie-going public thought they did. The one-hundred-foot wide sweeping staircase up to the Greek-temple-looking courthouse at 60 Centre Street actually led to courtrooms filled with civil cases—fights over contracts or asbestos or property. The criminal action was a few doors down in a drab, vaguely greenish building that the criminal court judges shared with the District Attorney’s office. There, at 100 Centre Street, visitors climbed five little stairs—or six if you were going to the north entrance. But that Soviet-looking building made a poor movie set, so the filming was done on the grand staircase up the street at 60 Centre, overlooking Foley Square.

At 100 Centre this morning, they were getting a late start. As in many New York courtrooms, the judge only planned for the jury to hear evidence from ten A.M. to four P.M., with an hour for lunch. And, still, jurors were late, blaming the subway system. After initial court legal instructions, they were finally underway in a third-floor courtroom, and Assistant District Attorney Andy Kwon was on his feet, introducing himself to the jury in People of the State of New York v. Kyra P. Burke. He wore a dark blue off-the-rack suit, looking tall, skinny, and very young. From the defense table, across the dimly lit courtroom, Matthew Parker noticed that Kwon put no notes on the little brown podium centered along the jury rail. In fact, he had nothing at all: no notebook, no charts, no exhibits. He was just going to stand there and talk.

We’re fucked, Parker thought. He knew from his many years as an Assistant US Attorney up the street that the best prosecutors avoided the disease of nervous lawyers—“gilding the lily.” In truth, Parker never fully understood the term—something about putting gold paint on already-perfect flowers to try to improve them, which, of course, killed them—but he got the gist: focus your case on your best facts so the jury can do the same. He liked that these days prosecutors called it going “thin to win.” Of course, he liked it less now that he was a defense lawyer, watching an ADA without notes tell the jury it was all quite straightforward.

Yes, it was simple, ADA Kwon said to the jury. Tony Burke was murdered, Kyra Burke had a powerful motive, the doorman and lobby camera saw her arrive and depart in a tight bracket around his death, and the rest is distraction. He added that there would probably be smoke about the “real killer” being a look-alike with the elevator code and somehow known to Tony Burke. But it was just that, smoke, and . . .

Gotta break up this little prick’s show. Parker was on his feet, deftly buttoning his suit before calling out, “Objection to the arguing, Your Honor. This is supposed to be an opening statement.”

“Sustained,” said New York State Supreme Court Justice Irene Zannis, a large and imposing jurist with a head of curly black hair, who long ago gave up trying to explain to proud Greek relatives that she was not “on the Supreme Court” and that, for reasons lost in the mists of time, New York had chosen to give that title to its lowest level trial court, calling its highest court the Court of Appeals. It was just as well they couldn’t see the linoleum floor and hanging fluorescent lights here on the third floor of a building that towered five—or six—steps above Centre Street in lower Manhattan.

ADA Kwon wasn’t rattled by the objection. He just kept rolling along in an engaging, conversational tone. Give both sides your attention, listen to the judge, apply your common sense. And, if you do that, you will see there is only one just verdict in this case—guilty. Thank you. Then he collected nothing from the podium and sat down.

Kid is good. Fuck.

“Mr. Parker,” the judge called.

“Yes, thank you, Your Honor.” Matthew Parker also brought nothing with him to the podium, nothing except twenty years as an organized crime prosecutor, including ten as chief of the US Attorney’s VOC unit, and fifteen years as a criminal defense lawyer. Thirty-five years of this shit. And now my last at-bat is in fucking New York Supreme.

He pulled himself back into the moment, not because this was his last time, but because he had warmed to this case and to Kyra Burke. He actually believed what he was about to say. And he had to lean into it because, other than the jurors believing Kyra, he didn’t have much to work with.

Without speaking, he looked at the jury, drew a deep breath, and then twisted his upper body away from them to face the defense table on the other side of the courtroom. Raising his arm, finger pointed, he nearly shouted, each word a verbal punch. “That. Is. An. Innocent. Woman. Not just ‘not guilty.’ Completely and totally innocent.”

Turning back to the jurors, he continued in a more normal voice. “It’s not often that a lawyer gets to say that about a client, that a lawyer is permitted by the rules of ethics to say that about a client. But I say it because it’s true. I have the indescribable honor, and the terrifying burden, of representing a woman wrongly accused of murder. And, when we are done, you’ll see it the same way.”

The jurors were wide-eyed and pressed back in their seats, like front-car patrons at Space Mountain. Parker then lowered his voice further, adopting an almost grandfatherly tone. “Now Mr. Kwon over there seems like a real nice fellow, so there’s nothing personal in what I say. This is about the state of New York. They have it wrong. They faced enormous pressure to solve the killing of a former governor, fell in love with a theory, and have been trapped in it, unable to see that they’re walking us all into a miscarriage of justice. They have blinders on and—”

Now it was Andy Kwon’s turn to object. He stood and started to speak, but Justice Zannis didn’t wait for him.

“Yes, sustained. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” The moment she said it she realized she had no idea what that really meant or whether it might be inappropriate in some gendered way. Looking at the jury, she quickly added, “Openings are simply an opportunity for each side to lay out what they believe the evidence will show. Argument comes at the end. Please proceed, Mr. Parker.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Parker said, before turning back to the jury. “The evidence will show that Kyra Burke was home at the time of the former governor’s death. The evidence will show that Kyra also had no reason to harm her estranged husband; in fact, she had every reason to want him healthy and able to sign the generous divorce settlement she expected. The evidence will show that Kyra Burke had no reason to do it, and didn’t do it. And the evidence will also show that other people, including the Mafia, had reason to want to do it.”

He paused, then added, “Mr. Kwon didn’t mention that the state must prove its case to you beyond a reasonable doubt. They can’t take Kyra’s liberty without doing that. Well”—he twisted again, pointing at Kyra and nearly shouting again—“there sits the world’s biggest reason to doubt.”

He turned back to the jurors, almost whispering now. “Thank you for your service to justice.”

The courtroom buzzed as Parker returned to his seat. Justice Zannis rapped her gavel and called for quiet, before adding, “Mr. Kwon, call your first witness.”

The prosecution’s case went in as expected. It opened with a crime-scene technician who displayed pictures of the dead former governor, the insulin bottle on the table, the “suicide note,” the syringe bearing the dead man’s fingerprints on the floor by his chair. The technician showed close-up photos of the syringe, with tiny cotton fibers adhered to its slender steel stem, and pictures of the dead man’s left sleeve, with a small circular hole in the fabric that lined up with the injection site in his skin only when the sleeve was extended.

Next, the medical examiner confirmed that a massive dose of insulin killed Tony Burke and the circumstances of injection were consistent with homicide. That is, he testified, it was highly unlikely that a person intent on suicide would or could inject himself through his shirt and then roll the sleeve up before dying. Based on the police response, he was able to fix the time of death within a small window bracketing eight P.M.

Not a terrible start for Team Kyra, Parker thought as he packed his briefcase. Tomorrow we get slaughtered.