“FUCK THIS, I’M TESTIFYING!”
The words shot out of Anthony Johnson’s mouth like bullets from a gun. And his defense attorney recoiled as if ducking their impact.
“You can’t,” Nash argued. “Karp’ll tear you apart.”
“I can handle his white ass,” Johnson said. “Hell, if those motherfucking jurors can get all choked up by that old whore’s bullshit story, I’ll give them one that will leave them sobbing.”
The pair were speaking in the holding room for prisoners off the courtroom following the disastrous appearances of Schofield and Feldinghaus. The latter had stormed out of the courtroom, slamming the doors as he left.
Watching the theatrics with arched eyebrows, Judge Kershner had looked at Nash and drily asked her to call her next witness. The defense attorney had called Lupe Torres to the stand to repudiate her sister’s testimony and claim that Johnson had been with her when Tony Cippio was murdered, as well as during the attempted murder of Bryce Kim.
After Lupe stepped down, giving Johnson a smile and a wiggle as she walked past the defense table and out of the courtroom, Kershner again asked for the next witness. But there was no one else left, just Johnson.
“Just a moment, Your Honor,” Nash requested, and engaged in an animated conversation with Johnson, who hissed, “Put me on the stand.”
Nash rose and addressed the court. “Your Honor, Lupe Torres was our last witness. However, my client, Mr. Johnson, is contemplating whether to testify to counter these outrageous accusations and fallacious testimony brought forth by the People’s case. As you know, this is a very serious decision, and I ask that he be given the rest of the day to confer with me and make a reasoned choice when the stress of today’s testimony has diminished.”
Kershner, who had seemingly grown less and less amenable to defense requests as the trial went on, furrowed her brow and looked at the clock. “It’s noon,” she said, “and I’m not inclined to delay these proceedings any more than necessary.” She nodded to the jurors. “These good people have put their lives on hold long enough without this court asking them to give even more so that your client can think about this. We’ll take our lunch recess, during which you can confer, and I’ll expect your decision when we return.”
After the judge recessed the court, Johnson and Nash were escorted to the holding pen area, where he refused to hear her out. “They’re laughing at me,” he snarled. “Nobody laughs at me and gets away with it!”
“Can’t you see that Karp’s been egging you on? He set up those witnesses, like Rose Torres, and called you a coward, to get under your skin so that you’ll take the stand. If you do, you’ll expose yourself to questions not just about this case but also your criminal history.”
“Fuck him,” Johnson ranted. “I ain’t no coward. I’m a stone-cold gangsta from the hood. I’m a motherfucking cop killer!”
Johnson saw the look on his attorney’s face and smirked. She’d never asked him if he’d really done it. He’d told her that he was a victim of police lies, and she’d worked with that ever since. These white liberals, he thought, with their little games and political remedies and agendas, are a joke. They didn’t live in the real world—not like him and even Karp.
“Yeah, that’s right, I killed that motherfucking cop while he was begging me for his life so he could go home to his little white wife and little white kids.” He laughed, enjoying the moment of truth. “I shot him down like a dog, and then I turned his ass over just like they said I done, and I looked him in the eye, listened to him beg me for his life, and then put a hot one in his head. Now, what are you going to do about that?”
Nash closed her eyes for a moment and then let out a sigh. “I’m going to do my job,” she said. “None of that matters. I’m going to make the State prove you’re guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s how the system works.”
“The system,” Johnson said, contempt in his voice. “The system is all about keeping the black man in his place. Make him be a good little house nigger, and if he gets uppity, shoot him or put him in the joint. Well, fuck that. If I’m going down, I’m going down fighting. But first I’m going to see if I can talk my way out of this after that shit show defense you put on.”
Nash looked at him coldly. “I did the best I could with what I had to work with. Like you just admitted, you’re a cop killer, and that’s what the evidence says. But I’m still going to do my job because this isn’t just about you, it’s about a bigger picture.”
“Fine.” Johnson laughed. “Do whatever you want so you can go to your little white liberal cocktail parties and fund-raisers, and tell your friends how you tried to save the bad black man from hisself. Now let’s get this done. You ask the right questions, and I’ll come up with the right answers, and maybe one of them dumb motherfucking jurors will buy it.”
After Nash left the room, Johnson dropped the tough façade. He felt a chill, and a voice in his head started telling him that he was going away for a long time, the rest of his life. There’d be no more Lupe Torres or any other bitch to pass the long nights with. His world would be defined by prison walls, steel bars, a community of broken, angry men and prison guards. He’d have a certain cachet as a cop killer, but that in itself would also add to the danger. Prisons were all about pecking order, and taking down a cop killer might be considered a step up for somebody.
As Johnson’s fear grew, so did his anger. He was angry at Big George for not taking care of Tyrone and Maurice Greene. Without them, Karp would have never been able to place him at Marcus Garvey Park. And he should have taken care of DeShawn Lakes and his old man himself, before they could put him with Ricky Watts. But it wasn’t just Big George who had failed him. His old friend Martin Bell, from San Quentin, messed up by not killing Judy Pardo. He sneered. Nash was a fine one to talk about the system when she’d been the one to pass him Vansand’s note about where to find the women’s shelter.
“She knew what she was doing,” he said aloud to himself.
Relying on Moto Juku and pawning the revolver was his mistake. But he’d needed money, and the gun was the only thing of value he had.
“Too many loose ends,” he said to the wall.
Vansand and the rest of the media had abandoned him, too. He could see it in their eyes whenever he turned around in the courtroom. The smiles and nods when he was their meal ticket were now cold-eyed stares and frowns. “Well, fuck them, too. And fuck Hussein Mufti.”
The reverend had come to visit him at the jail only once, and it had ended on a bad note. “What I want to know is what you’re going to do to get me out of this,” Johnson had demanded over the telephone as they’d sat across from each other, divided by Plexiglas and watched by a guard.
“Get you out of this?” Mufti asked.
“Yeah, out of this,” he’d repeated, pointing to his surroundings.
“Get you out of the Tombs?” Mufti said incredulously, and then he’d laughed. “Son, I don’t know what you been smoking, but nobody gets out of the Tombs unless they let you out or, like my man Imani Sefu, they take you out in a body bag.”
Johnson had suggested maybe an attack on the courtroom to spring him. “I’ll give you some names of some of my homies who’ll help.” But Mufti had laughed even louder.
“Boy, you been watching too much television. You better hope that your attorney can convince one of them jurors to save your black ass, or you going to be singing the Attica blues, and there ain’t nothing I can do about that.”
“Are you dump-trucking me?”
Mufti shook his head. “Oh, I’ll continue to speak out about the injustice. And I’m sure somebody in the press or one of the white liberals will take up your cause and demand a retrial. And maybe, if you’re lucky, when enough time goes by you’ll be able to talk some lifer into taking the fall for you. But that’s down the road a ways. Until then, you’ll be doing hard time.”
Johnson realized then that he was on his own, the way it had always been. The only person he could trust was himself. That meant that he was going to take the stand and find the one juror he could con.
There was a knock on the door, and one of the court security officers entered. “It’s time,” the man said.
“You got that straight,” Johnson said, standing up.
A few minutes later, he was seated at the defense table when the judge asked if he’d reached a decision on whether to testify before he brought in the jury.
Nash stood up. “Yes, Your Honor. My client has decided to take the stand and testify in his defense. I’d like the record to note that I am opposed to this and find it ill-advised. I believe that the district attorney has overstepped his authority and purposefully needled and insulted and backed Mr. Johnson into a corner until he feels that he has no choice but to defend himself. It is my opinion that this treatment has caused Mr. Johnson to suffer from a mental breakdown that renders him incapable of properly understanding the ramifications of testifying. So I’m requesting a continuance of this trial until such time as Mr. Johnson’s mental state can be evaluated by a psychologist.”
Kershner looked over at the prosecution table. “Mr. Karp, your response?”
Karp rose from his seat. “My response is that’s utter nonsense. It is certainly Mr. Johnson’s right to take the stand, and while defense counsel is correct to caution him, in the end it is his choice. As for counsel’s concerns about anything I’ve said, I’d remind her that this is a murder trial of someone accused of the heinous, brutal execution of a young police officer who had been doing nothing worse than playing basketball with some children. The evidence clearly shows that he is guilty of this crime, and we’re confident the jury will agree. As for the request for a mental health evaluation, one was already conducted at the beginning of this process and the defendant was found competent, meaning he understood the nature and consequences of the charges against him and was capable of assisting counsel in his defense. It is the People’s position that this is nothing more than stall tactics to delay the inevitable.”
Kershner nodded and looked at Johnson. “Is it my understanding that you wish to testify?”
“That’s right.”
“And you are making this decision after discussing the potential risks of exposing yourself to cross-examination by the district attorney?”
Johnson looked at Karp and sneered. “I ain’t afraid of that man.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Kershner said. “As for your other comments, Ms. Nash, you may argue those on appeal if you wish, but I don’t find that Mr. Karp overstepped. Also, your request that these proceedings be continued until such time as the defendant can undergo another mental evaluation is denied.” She looked at the chief court clerk. “Please bring in the jury.”
“I’d ask that Your Honor admonish the jury regarding Mr. Johnson’s right to decline to testify, and that if Mr. Karp introduces his criminal history, my client is only on trial for these charges,” Nash interjected.
Kershner looked at Karp, who shrugged. “I can do that,” the judge said.
When the jurors were seated, Kershner addressed them. “Before we broke for lunch, I asked defense counsel if the defendant wished to testify on his own behalf, and she requested time to confer with him. That has been accomplished, and the defendant, Mr. Johnson, has decided to testify from the witness stand. But before he is sworn in, I want to remind you that he was under no obligation to speak, and had he chosen differently, it should not have been taken by you as an admission of guilt. As it has been since the beginning of these proceedings, the presumption is that he is innocent and that it is the State’s obligation to prove that he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That presumption remains even after he is called to the stand. Is that clear?”
The jurors nodded. “Good.” The judge continued, “It may or may not occur today, but when a defendant takes the stand, his history, including any prior criminal convictions, which would normally be off-limits, become fair game for the prosecutor to examine. However, I remind you that the defendant is currently on trial only for the two charges before you. While the prosecutor is free to address these issues in order to help you determine the defendant’s credibility, truthfulness, and motivations, it is not to imply that because he was convicted of another crime that makes him guilty of these crimes. Is that clear?”
Again, the jurors nodded as one. Kershner turned to Nash. “Please call your witness.”
“The defense calls Anthony Johnson.”
Johnson rose, assuming what he thought of as a look of righteous indignation and noble purpose. He walked purposefully over to the chief court clerk, who waited by the witness stand to swear him in; afterward, he sat down in the witness chair.
Nash took a deep breath and let it out. She walked slowly into the well of the court. “Mr. Johnson, I’d like to begin by having you talk a little bit about your upbringing . . .”
Johnson thought the initial questioning had gone well. He thought he’d seen some of the jurors actually tearing up when he recounted growing up fatherless, poverty-stricken, and beset by all sorts of dangers in a neighborhood rife with crime and violence. The police were no better than the criminals. “They were all either on the take, or couldn’t have cared less about a little black kid. I had to learn to fend for myself.”
Nash then moved on to his criminal record. He explained that he broke into the old woman’s apartment to steal “so that I could eat” and had not intended to wake her. He denied sexually assaulting the victim. “She said I did, but it wasn’t true,” he claimed. “White women know that if they claim a black man raped them, the cops will come down on him even harder. I only agreed to plead guilty to sexual assault because the cops said they were going to pin some other stuff on me if I didn’t.”
Johnson neglected to mention that the “other stuff” was strangling the woman to death. And he contended that all he took from the apartment was “some jewelry and a little television that I sold.”
When Nash asked him about going to prison on the burglary and sexual assault convictions, he said it changed him forever. “I know it sounds funny, but it was probably the best thing that could’ve happened to me. I was living on the streets, committing crimes and hanging with the wrong people. But I met some people in prison who talked to me about my responsibilities as a black man, and I turned my life around. I found God and a calling to help other young black men.”
“Was prison where you learned about and indeed picked up the banner of black nationalism?” Nash asked.
“Yes. Some experienced long-timers who had been screwed over by the system taught me what it really means to be a black man in white America. And I did a lot of reading, such as about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.”
“But doesn’t black nationalism envision separation between white America and black America?”
Johnson looked thoughtful for a moment before he turned to the jurors to, as he said, “speak from my heart.”
“I wish we lived in a world where all men were treated equal no matter what the color of their skin or their ethnicity. But unfortunately that’s not the way it is. This country has been racist since the slavery days, and while some progress has been made, it’s not enough, and if we wait for the white man to change things, it ain’t gonna happen. I hate to say this, but I think we’d all be better off if we were separated by race. Then we could be more like two friendly countries than white masters and black slaves.”
“And would that include better policing, do you think?”
Johnson nodded. “Yeah, each race would have police officers that come from their communities and understand the culture.”
“And after you got out of prison, did you share these beliefs with others—white and black?”
“Yes. I didn’t seek the spotlight, but I guess my words got some folks thinking. I was even asked to speak at events on college campuses.”
“And how were your views received?”
“By the audience or the authorities?” Johnson asked.
“Well, first by the audience.”
Johnson smiled. “Very well. They could see that I wasn’t advocating violence, or nothing like that. I talked about building a better, separate world where we could interact as equals and partners.”
“Was it during this time that you began to call yourself Nat X?”
“Well, actually Nat X is the name of several black activists, not just me,” he said. “The idea was that we aren’t speaking as individuals but as one for the black community.”
“Where does the name come from?”
“It’s a combination of Nat Turner, a slave who led an uprising in Virginia during the 1700s, and Malcolm X, who also advocated a separate black nation. It’s our attempt to draw a line to connect the slavery days of the past and the slavery days of the present.”
“So your audiences were receptive to your message. What about the authorities?”
“The authorities didn’t like what I had to say, and as they always do, they sent the police to let me know I wasn’t going to be tolerated,” Johnson claimed. “I don’t even really blame the police, though some are worse than others. Most are just pawns like the rest of us; they represent the white power structure that prevents all of us from treating each other as brothers and sisters. But they tried to silence me, just like they did with Malcolm X and Dr. King.”
“How did they do that?”
“Well, at first they just followed me around and showed up where I was speaking. But when I didn’t take the hint, they started getting more aggressive.” He looked at the black men on the jury. “Some of you have probably experienced the police reaction to ‘driving while black,’ but try ‘driving while black and taking on the white establishment.’ It seemed like I couldn’t even get in a car without getting pulled over and hassled.”
“Was there a particular incident last spring that told you they were ramping up their efforts to silence you?”
Johnson nodded. “It was in the evening and I was returning from the cemetery where I laid some flowers on my mother’s grave, when I got pulled over in a sort of deserted part of Oakland. I thought it was just another traffic stop, but it went to another level.”
“What do you mean?”
“They hauled my black ass out of the car and put me on the ground. One of them put a gun to the back of my head and told me if I didn’t shut up, the next time they’d say I had a gun so they had to shoot me.”
“Did you report this incident?”
Johnson laughed. “To who? The police? They was the ones putting a gun to my head. Look, they ain’t all bad, but they go along to get along and they don’t cross that blue line they like to talk about. If there’d been a next time, I’d have had my head blowed off and no one would have said nothing as far as the police.”
“Mr. Johnson, what brought you to New York City last summer?”
Johnson laughed again. “Well, the situation was getting dangerous in the Bay Area, so I thought it might be a good idea to go somewhere where I wasn’t so well known. I hadn’t seen my cousin Ny-Lee Tomes since we was kids. So I called him and he invited me to stay with him.”
“After you arrived, did you continue to speak out about your political thoughts?”
“Well, not much at first,” Johnson said. “To be honest, I was scared and planned on laying low for a while. But Ny-Lee said there was a lot of police brutality going on in the black communities here and that young black men needed someone to look up to who knew what they were going through. He asked if I would be willing to speak to some teens and young men he knew.”
“Yes, of course. Sometimes you have to do what’s right even if you is scared. Like I said, I think of my philosophizing as a calling and that God wants me to be a voice for the black community.”
“So at some point in these talks you gave, did you meet Maurice Greene, DeShawn Lakes, and Ricky Watts?”
“I believe that’s probably true. But to be honest, I spoke to a lot of young men after I got here. Ny-Lee started seeing himself as my manager, like I was some sort of rap star, and he was getting me gigs. But while those names are familiar, and I sort of recognized them two boys when they testified against me, I don’t have particular recollections of speaking to them directly.”
“What about Big George Parker?”
Johnson shook his head and laughed. “George, he was sort of like a big kid. Like me, he’d had it rough growing up, but he was so big most people didn’t realize that he was hurting inside. I met him through Ny-Lee and he just started tagging along with me sometimes.”
“On the day that Officer Tony Cippio was shot, were you at Marcus Garvey Park?”
“Yes,” Johnson acknowledged. “Only it was earlier in the afternoon. I was there hanging out with Big George and Ny-Lee. Then I had some things to do with my girlfriend, Lupe, so I left them there.”
“So you weren’t there when the police officer was shot?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“What about Big George and Ny-Lee?”
Johnson shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, looking troubled. “I mean, I hate to think that my cousin and my friend might have got mixed up in something like that, but like I said, I wasn’t there. And I don’t know if the cop said something or tried harassing somebody and it got out of hand.”
Nash stopped and their eyes met. He could see the word “liar” in hers and he smiled slightly, but there was nothing she could do about it. “What about the party Rose Torres testified about?” she asked.
“There was a little party, but it had nothing to do with no shooting,” Johnson said. “At least not from my perspective. I was thinking about it after I heard Rose testify, and Big George and Ny-Lee was kind of acting funny, like they was suddenly real tough or something. But I was excited about something else.”
“What was that?”
“I was going back to San Francisco. I decided that I’d been gone long enough, and New York isn’t my home; it’s not where my momma is buried or where my friends are that I grew up with. And the best part is Lupe had said she’d go back with me. I’d asked her to marry me, and while she’s a little young and we’re going to have to wait to make it legal, I was happy she’d said yes.”
“That’s it?” Nash asked. “No celebrating shooting a cop? No threatening anybody with a gun?”
“No.” Johnson scowled. “I didn’t even have a gun. That’s just some shit someone made up to get the police off their back. At least that’s what I think.”
“So you left New York City. Do you know if that was before or after Ricky Watts was killed by Officer Bryce Kim?”
“Before. I remember calling Ny-Lee from the road, and he said, ‘It happened again.’ And I said, ‘What happened?’ And he said, ‘A cop shot an unarmed black kid in cold blood, but they is trying to cover it up and say the kid shot first. But he didn’t have no gun.’ That’s what Ny-Lee said.”
“And where were you at the time?”
Johnson shrugged. “I think Denver, Colorado. We was tired of driving my old junker, and I got some old homies that live there, so we stopped for a few days. That’s when I called Ny-Lee to let him know we was okay, and he told me about that kid getting shot.”
“Eventually you reached the San Francisco area and moved in with Moto Juku?”
“Yes, I’d met him a year or so earlier when I first got out of the joint. He was a DJ at one of the clubs. He liked to hang out with me; I think it made him feel tough to kick back with an ex-gangster. He invited us to stay.”
“What about the gun we’ve heard so much about—the silver forty-five-caliber revolver?”
“That was Moto Juku’s. He was real proud of having such a fine piece.”
“But we’ve heard testimony that you pawned it.”
“Yeah, Moto needed some money, but he’s not very streetwise. So since he was letting me stay there, I told him I’d take it to a pawnshop and get him the best price I could. So that’s what I did. I didn’t even know he went to get it back until he showed up at the apartment with it.”
“So why was it in your possession when you were arrested by Detective Fulton?”
“Moto said he saw someone breaking into my car,” Johnson replied. “I have to admit that old habits kicked in. I grabbed the gun off the counter where Moto put it and went to scare the dude off. I didn’t even know if it was loaded or not.”
“Did you point the gun at Detective Fulton?”
“I pointed the gun,” Johnson admitted. “I saw this big black dude going through my car, but like I said I was just trying to scare him.”
“Did you pull the trigger?”
Johnson looked at his lawyer as if she’d asked a stupid question. “Hell, no. Why would I kill somebody over a beat-up old Lincoln with a radio that don’t even work? Now what kind of stupid shit is that?”
“Did Detective Fulton identify himself as a police officer?”
“Not at first. And when he did, I put the weapon down and surrendered. But he threw me to the ground and said I was being arrested for murdering a cop in New York.”
Johnson stopped and looked at the jury. “And here we are.”
“What about the testimony of Moto Juku and Detective Fulton?”
“Lies,” Johnson said.
“Why would the detective lie?”
“Same reason the cops in Oakland stuck a gun to my head. They want to shut me up.”
Nash strolled over to the jury box and looked at their faces as she asked her next questions.
“Did you kill Officer Tony Cippio?”
Johnson shook his head and addressed his answer to the sole black woman on the jury. “I did not kill the officer.”
“Did you collaborate with Ricky Watts and give him the gun to kill Officer Bryce Kim?”
“I don’t even really remember Ricky Watts. I wasn’t there.”
Nash nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Johnson. No further questions.”
Johnson braced himself for what he believed would be an onslaught of questions by Karp. He almost looked forward to showing the jurors and the press his disdain for the man. But then the district attorney surprised him.
“Mr. Johnson, I’m not going to dignify most of this nonsense by asking you questions so that you can repeat your lies,” Karp said, picking up a sheet of paper, as well as the evidence bag holding the revolver, and walking over to the witness stand. “I’ll let the jury decide in their deliberations who was telling the truth, the People’s witnesses with their corroborated, dovetailed, comprehensive mosaic of your crimes, or a desperate killer trying to thwart justice.”
“Objection!” Nash shouted. “I didn’t realize we’d already moved on to summations. This is an extremely improper cross-examination.”
Kershner tilted her head and arched an eyebrow as she looked at Karp. “Sustained. Mr. Karp, save your ad hominem remarks for your summation. Do you have any questions for this witness?”
“Well, I think just a few, Your Honor. Mr. Johnson, I want to ask you about your conviction for burglary and sexual assault.”
“Go ahead, I got nothing to hide,” Johnson shot back. “I paid my debt to society and I’m a changed man.”
“Really? I guess we’ll see about that,” Karp said. “In your testimony, you claimed that all you took from the apartment of Mrs. Clare Dupre was, and I quote, ‘some jewelry and a little television,’ which you then sold.”
Johnson frowned. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Were you aware that Mrs. Dupre’s son, Robert, gave the police a list of items removed by you from the apartment?”
“Yeah, my defense attorney showed me a list. Like I said, some jewelry and a television.”
“You are aware that none of the items you took from the apartment were recovered?”
Johnson shrugged. “Like I said, I sold them so I could eat.”
“Did your defense attorney later inform you after your plea agreement that there was a supplemental list added to the official list of missing items, or actually one item, provided for the record by Robert Dupre?”
Johnson scowled and shook his head. “I don’t know nothing about no supplemental list.”
Karp turned to the judge. “Your Honor, permission for ADA Katz to set up an easel in front of the witness stand so that the jurors can also see it.”
“Go ahead, Mr. Katz.”
With a nod from Karp, Katz got up and grabbed a folded easel that was lying behind the prosecution table. He set it up where Karp indicated, then returned to the prosecution table, where he picked up what appeared to be a large photograph, though it was covered by a blank sheet when he placed it on the easel.
Frowning, Nash got up from her seat and walked over to the end of the jury box so that she could see the demonstration as well.
When everything was set, Karp gave the piece of paper to Johnson and announced, “Your Honor, the witness has been handed People’s Exhibit 42, a certified copy of the aforementioned supplemental list that was dated and signed by both Mr. Dupre and the receiving court clerk the day after Mr. Johnson’s plea agreement for the burglary and sexual assault of Mr. Dupre’s mother.”
“Very well,” Kershner said.
Karp turned back to the witness. “Mr. Johnson, would you please tell the jurors what item is listed on the supplemental police report.”
Johnson was already looking at the paper. His hands began to shake. “This is bullshit,” he said.
“Bullshit is not what’s on the list. In fact,” Karp said, walking over to the easel and revealing the photograph beneath it, “this is what is listed on the report.”
The jurors’ eyes turned to the photograph. “For the record,” Karp said, “this is an enlargement of the certified, dated supplemental police report, People’s Exhibit 42, Mr. Johnson is holding in his hand. Mr. Johnson, would you please read the report and tell the jurors what item is listed there.”
Johnson sat back in his seat and crossed his arms. “This is a lie, and I ain’t reading nothin’.”
“Let the record reflect that the defendant refused a legitimate request from the People to read from the supplemental report,” Karp said. “With the court’s permission, I’ll do it for him.” He turned to the easel. “The item listed is a forty-five-caliber, stainless steel Smith & Wesson Model 460 with an after-market mother-of-pearl grip. Is that correct, Mr. Johnson?”
Johnson refused to answer, which Karp remarked on for the record. He then handed Johnson the gun. “Let the record reflect that the witness has been handed People’s Exhibit 43, a forty-five-caliber, stainless steel Smith & Wesson Model 460 with an after-market mother-of-pearl grip.”
As he looked down at the gun, Johnson could be seen mumbling but not loud enough to be heard. “Mr. Johnson, would you please look on the left side of the gun and locate the serial number above the trigger guard.”
When Johnson didn’t comply, Karp continued. “Would you agree that the serial number on the gun is”—he turned to the easel and read—“according to People’s Exhibit 42, SW 952-3?”
Johnson just kept mumbling and turning the gun over in his hand. He flipped open the empty chamber and snapped it shut.
“Your Honor, let the record reflect that the defendant is unresponsive,” Karp said.
Kershner addressed Johnson. “Mr. Johnson, please answer the district attorney’s questions.”
Johnson looked up at Karp, his eyes filling with hatred and malice. He raised the gun, sighted down the barrel at Karp’s head, and began to pull the trigger. Click. Click. Click.
The court security officers reached him about the same moment he pulled the trigger for the sixth time. One wrested the gun from his hand, and they were about to haul him down when Karp interceded. “Hold on a second.”
Johnson didn’t speak. He just glared at Karp, who didn’t react except to turn to the judge. “The record will reflect, Your Honor, the defendant continued to be unresponsive except to point a gun at me and repeatedly pull the trigger.”
Karp moved toward the defendant. “Mr. Johnson, thank you for showing the jury how you used your forty-five-caliber, mother-of-pearl-handled revolver, loaded with cop-killer bullets, to execute Officer Tony Cippio as he pleaded for his life.”
Johnson lunged out of the grasp of the court officers and tried to climb over the witness box rail to reach his antagonist before he was restrained again. “I’m not done with you, Karp,” he screamed.
“But I am done with you,” Karp replied mildly. “No further questions, Your Honor.”