“SERGEANT KREIDER, YOU TESTIFIED THAT THE ROOM appeared to have been used for torture. Why do you say that?”
“There were bloody tools—pliers, a hammer—on the table, as well as what were determined to be . . .” The police sergeant stopped speaking and passed a hand over his eyes.
A muscular, crew cut, fifteen-year NYPD veteran, Sergeant David Kreider was the SWAT police officer who had discovered Miriam Juma Khalifa’s decapitated body in the basement of the mosque. During trial prep, Karp had talked at length with the officer and knew that the man had been badly shaken by what he’d seen in the mosque—a tough thing to do to a SWAT officer with his experience.
Karp walked over to the witness stand and poured water for the sergeant into a paper cup from a pitcher beside the stand. Giving water to witnesses was a touch he’d picked up many years earlier from his mentor, Mel Glass, who believed that such gestures helped “humanize” the authority figure of the prosecutor. After all, Mel would always remind his acolytes, “We are the good guys!”
He felt for the sergeant, who was obviously having a difficult time recalling that horrible scene, and the water was to allow him to regroup more than quench his thirst.
Kreider took the cup from him. “Thank you,” he said as he raised it to his lips, his hand trembling.
After opening remarks, Karp had immediately jumped into the prosecution case by first calling a civil engineer who produced a set of diagrams that depicted the layout of the crime scene. The owlish-looking man had been making such diagrams for the DAO for thirty years and had described his work, which Karp hung up on an easel, with all the verve of a funeral director.
Karp had then called to the stand the police photographer who’d responded to the scene. The officer, Carrie Nimmo, was a young woman who testified professionally, but it was obvious that she, too, had been affected by Miriam’s death.
When Karp had handed her prints of her photographs taken at the scene and asked if they “fairly and accurately” depicted what she saw there, she had flipped through them quickly, swallowed hard, and nodded. “Yes, this is what I saw.” And even at that, they were not the worst of the photographs she had taken, only the eight he’d felt were necessary.
This jury, he’d told Katz when explaining his reasoning during preparation, would hear plenty of witnesses testify about Miriam Juma Khalifa’s suffering and death without traumatizing them with overly graphic photos.
“In a case like this, displaying the more graphic photos panders to jurors’ emotions. We’re much better off leaving that kind of bottom-fishing and speculation to the defense. And why give O’Dowd a reason to argue that the photographs are so shocking that their value as evidence is far outweighed by their prejudicial effect on the emotions of the jury and unfair to her client?” he’d said. “Leaving them out means fewer grounds for an appellate court to consider.” He preferred a photograph of the pretty, smiling victim holding her young son when she was alive as a reminder to the jurors of what had been lost.
With Nimmo, Karp had been able to do a “double direct,” essentially having the photographer testify twice. The first time was to identify the photographs as being fair and accurate representations of the crime scene, and the second was when Karp had her step down from the witness stand and go over to the easel where the civil engineer’s diagrams hung.
With each of the crime-scene photographs entered into evidence, Karp would have Nimmo draw a circle on the diagram on the easel to indicate where she had been standing when she took the photograph. Then he had her place the exhibit number inside the circle and draw an arrow from the circle in the direction her lens was facing. “And where were you standing when you took the photograph of the digital movie camera, People’s Exhibit six? And for People’s Exhibit seven, the chair with the pool of blood?”
The testimony of the engineer and the photographer had taken up the rest of the morning. Then, after lunch, he’d called Sergeant Kreider to the stand.
As they’d discussed before his appearance on the witness stand, Kreider had let Karp lead him through the tricky business of what an NYPD SWAT officer was doing in the mosque in the first place. With O’Dowd poised and ready to jump to her feet to object to any missteps, they had told the jury that Jabbar had been arrested on another unrelated charge and that the officer and his team were serving a search warrant in connection with that arrest.
Kreider had then described how he’d found the body lying on the floor in a large pool of blood. The head of the deceased, the sergeant had said, his voice growing tight, was on a table in another room “that had apparently been used to torture the young woman.”
“Objection!” O’Dowd had shouted. “What this witness knew about the room is pure conjecture! ‘Apparently’ is just another word for ‘I guess.’ As your honor knows, we will be presenting witness testimony that my client was not even in the mosque, much less a participant in torture, if that is what actually occurred in this room, which has not been established yet.”
“He’s describing a murder scene that he witnessed personally,” Karp had countered.
“There’s no reason for this part of the officer’s testimony except to inflame the jury’s sensibilities with a questionable horror story that has nothing to do with my client,” O’Dowd had shot back.
“It has everything to do with your client, counsel,” Karp had replied evenly. “Mr. Jabbar—”
“Imam Jabbar.”
“Your client is charged with murder that included the use of torture and instruments of torture.”
“You have nothing to place Imam Jabbar in that room!” O’Dowd had bellowed.
Karp had turned to address Judge Mason. “Most respectfully,” he’d said shaking his head, “there she goes again, your honor. As counsel well knows since we engaged in pretrial hearings regarding the torture issue the People have overwhelming evidence, to be sure, that puts the defendant at the scene and as an active participant. So I ask the court to take the sergeant’s testimony subject to connection to the other evidence that will be forthcoming shortly. Everything, as your honor well knows, has an order to it.”
Mason had pursed his lips. While he would thwart Karp where possible, he wasn’t going to obstruct the DA when the facts and the law were so clear. It was obvious that O’Dowd had overstepped the limits of propriety. “You’re correct, Mr. Karp, the record has so reflected. Your objection is overruled, Ms. O’Dowd,” he’d said, looking sorrowfully at the defense attorney.
Karp had nodded. “Thank you, your honor.” He’d waited for O’Dowd to sit back down hard and angry in her seat and then turned back to his witness. “Sergeant Kreider, you said that the room appeared to have been used for torture. Why do you say that?”
As Karp waited for the officer to drink and settle himself, he glanced toward the gallery and happened to catch the eye of the plump middle-aged woman who sat with the defense team in the first bench beyond O’Dowd’s table. She gave him a quick, thin smile but looked quickly back down at her notepad as if embarrassed to have been caught looking. He hadn’t seen her do much else during the trial except take notes and assist Elijah with the file boxes and folders that had to be toted to the courtroom every morning from O’Dowd’s office in Harlem. Maybe she’s learning to be a paralegal, he thought absently, though surprised that O’Dowd would hire a white woman.
“I’m sorry, where were we?” Kreider said as he put the cup back down on the stand’s railing.
“Of course,” Karp replied, turning back to his witness. “I had asked you what gave you the impression that the smaller of the two rooms on the diagram was used for torture. And you said there were bloody tools and . . . ?”
“And the fingernails of the deceased,” Kreider said, finishing the sentence.
“Tell us precisely what you observed,” Karp said.
“The deceased’s hands were a mess,” the sergeant said. “Her fingers were broken and disjointed. Where her fingernails were supposed to be were just bloody stumps. She’d been beaten so badly she was almost unrecognizable.”
Karp paused, waiting for the horror and brutality inflicted on Miriam to filter through each of the jurors. After a few moments, he softly asked the sergeant what, if anything, he had noticed in the room where Miriam’s body was discovered.
“There was a large green handwritten banner—about twelve feet long and maybe three wide—taped to one wall,” Kreider said.
“Do you know what was written on it?” Karp asked.
“I do not,” Kreider replied. “It was a foreign language.”
“Was there anything else of note about the room?” Karp asked.
“There was a digital movie camera,” Kreider said.
“Where was it in relationship to the rest of the room?”
“It was in front . . .” The officer hesitated to gather himself. “It was in front of the body.”
“Was it pointed in any particular direction?”
Kreider tilted his head to the side and looked down at the floor. He looked back up at the jury and nodded. “It was pointed toward the body.”
“Were you, or a crime-scene technician, able to retrieve any information from the camera?” Karp asked.
The officer shook his head. “No, the memory card had been removed.”
“Do you know where the memory card is?”
“No.”
Karp had Kreider get down from the stand and go over to the easel. There he retraced his steps on the diagram of the crime scene, People’s Exhibit one in evidence.
After a few more questions, Karp took his seat, and O’Dowd rose and slowly made her way to the lectern for cross-examination. “Sergeant Kreider,” she began, “if, say, a white Presbyterian minister had been arrested on some charge, would you have obtained a search warrant and then stormed his church looking for so-called evidence?”
Kreider shrugged. “First, we . . . I mean, our SWAT team, didn’t ‘storm’ anything. And second, it depends if there was a reason to enter the church, any church—say we suspected that whatever the defendant was involved in was tied to the church—then yes, we would have searched the church.”
“Or when you say, ‘It depends,’ do you mean it depends on whether he’s a white Presbyterian minister or a black imam of a mosque?” O’Dowd shot back.
Kreider kept his cool. “It didn’t matter what color or nationality Mr. Jabbar was when my team and I were assigned to search the mosque,” the sergeant replied.
“With a heavily armed, jack-booted SWAT team?” O’Dowd asked.
Rising from his seat, Karp interjected. “Objection! Yet again, Ms. O’Dowd dishonors the proceedings with a political rant having absolutely no evidentiary basis.”
“Sustained. Ms. O’Dowd, please let’s keep the rhetoric to a dull roar,” Mason said with a smile.
O’Dowd returned the smile. “But of course, your honor. I didn’t mean to imply that Sergeant Kreider or his men were anything but good soldiers.” She turned back to the witness. “Of course, Sergeant Kreider, it didn’t matter at all to you, did it, that the imam and his congregation were black?”
Kreider cocked his head to the side and held the defense attorney’s stare. “I was unaware that white people are not allowed to be of that faith.”
Karp suppressed a smile. It was good to see Kreider fighting back.
The remark seemed to stun O’Dowd for a moment. She cast a quick glance at the jurors, several of whom had smiled at the sergeant’s rejoinder. “Thank you for the unnecessary and specious comment, sergeant. But let’s stick with actually answering my question: Were you aware that Imam Jabbar and his congregation were African-Americans?”
Kreider nodded. “I knew that he was and that some were. But I did not know that all members of the congregation were black, no.”
“And how did you know that Imam Jabbar was black?”
Karp’s eyebrows shot up. He saw her mistake before she did, and then it was too late. It was obvious she thought Kreider would have to say he had been informed of that fact by a superior or another agency. She was surprised, therefore, by the answer.
“I saw him on the television after the nine-eleven attacks,” Kreider said. “He said that only men of the ‘one true faith’ would have the courage to attack the World Trade Center.”
O’Dowd whirled to face Mason. “Your honor, may we approach the bench?”
“Of course.”
Karp rose and walked to the judge’s dais, where O’Dowd angrily hissed. “I demand a mistrial. The prosecution witness just painted my client as a terrorist for exercising his First Amendment right and took that statement out of context.”
“The First Amendment doesn’t protect the defendant from making offensive comments that might come back to haunt him,” Karp pointed out. “And the witness did not paint the defendant as anything. He was asked a question about how he knew the defendant was black, and he simply, accurately reported.”
“He could have just said that he saw him on television,” O’Dowd snarled.
“Your honor, Ms. O’Dowd opened the door, and the witness, in a manner of speaking, slammed it shut,” Karp said. “Sergeant Kreider was directly responsive to Ms. O’Dowd’s open-ended question.”
O’Dowd glared, and then her face turned red when the judge denied her motion for a mistrial. “Mr. Karp is correct,” Mason said. “You opened the door, and, as Mr. Karp said, the witness was directly responsive to your question. My advice is that you should be more careful.” Both counsels resumed their places, Karp at the prosecution table and O’Dowd at the lectern.
O’Dowd then addressed the witness. “Sergeant Kreider, is it true that the NYPD sent you to serve the search warrant at the request of a federal law-enforcement agency?”
“Yes.”
“Was this agency headed by a man named Stephen Paul Jaxon?”
“I believe that’s correct.”
O’Dowd walked over to the defense table and picked up a piece of paper. She walked to the witness. “Is it also true that in March 2005, you applied to the FBI Academy at Quantico?”
“Yes.”
O’Dowd handed him the piece of paper. “Is this, in fact, a copy of your application?”
The sergeant glanced at it and nodded. “Yes.”
O’Dowd held out her hand and took the piece of paper back from him. “Your honor, I would like this Federal Bureau of Investigation employment application admitted into evidence.”
Karp rose to his feet. He had hoped for this attack on the sergeant’s credibility. During trial prep, he and the sergeant had covered this issue in depth. “Your honor, I request a voir dire on the relevance and provenance of this document. Moreover, your honor, it matters not if the witness applied to the FBI some five years ago.”
“It goes to the witness’s credibility,” O’Dowd retorted. “It is clearly a possible reason why this man might be eager to cooperate with a federal agency in the hopes of getting another job he covets.”
“Local, state, and national law-enforcement agencies cooperate all the time,” Karp replied. “They’re not all auditioning for employment. However, I am entitled to a voir dire on this offer of evidence.”
“Very well, Mr. Karp, proceed, but I want it to be very limited,” Mason said.
Karp turned to the witness and asked, “Sergeant, how are cases assigned to you?”
“Just depends, Mr. Karp, who’s on duty at a particular time when a matter arises that requires the SWAT team to respond to a crime scene.”
“Have you ever requested a specific assignment when a federal agency was the requesting authority?” Karp asked.
“Never.”
“As a matter of fact, is it against the protocols for anyone on the NYPD SWAT team to make such a request?”
“Absolutely.”
“So, it’s fair to say that you go where you’re directed, whether it’s at the behest of a federal agency or anyone else—you follow orders. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
Karp walked over to the defense table and held out his hand for the application. “With respect to this application, you filled it out five years ago. Is that fair to say?”
“Yes.”
“So, there was a period of time when you felt you might want to work for the FBI. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“But your application for employment with the FBI was rejected. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And you never made another application again. Is that correct?”
“You are correct, sir.”
“Your honor, this whole application issue is completely irrelevant to any of the issues of importance before this court; it is of absolutely no value and will prove to have a negative impact on the defense. But I’m going to withdraw my objection. Thank you very much,” he said. He returned to the prosecution table and, with his back to the jury, gave Katz a wink. When seated, he whispered in Katz’s ear, “She took the bait, hook, line, and sinker.”
“Very well, then.” The judge nodded. “Ms. O’Dowd, you may proceed.”
“Thank you, your honor,” O’Dowd said. “Sergeant Kreider, what came of your application?”
“I passed the tests . . .”
“And?”
“I was rejected after a background check.”
“Oh.” O’Dowd feigned surprise. “Why was that?”
“It was a personal issue.”
“And what was this personal issue?”
Kreider took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He and Karp had been over this; they knew it was coming. It didn’t make it easier. “I was placed on leave by the NYPD for being drunk on the job.”
“And for this, you were not allowed to join the FBI. Correct?”
“Yes.”
O’Dowd stroked her chin as though she was trying to put together a difficult picture puzzle. “Does this mean you can never join the FBI?”
“I don’t want to,” Kreider replied. “I’m happy where I’m at.”
“So you say,” O’Dowd countered. “But humor me. Could you still reapply?”
Kreider shook his head. “Yes, technically, but . . .”
“But you’d probably be rejected again, unless perhaps they owed you a favor?”
“No. I was going to say that I like what I do. The FBI was a passing fancy.”
O’Dowd smiled and turned her back on him as she faced the jury. “So you say.” She quickly turned again to the witness. “Sergeant Kreider, was there any particular reason you were the first police officer on the scene when you ‘discovered’ Miriam Juma Khalifa’s body?”
Kreider’s eyebrows converged. “It was my assignment to lead the way into the basement. Others were assigned to different parts of the mosque.”
“It had nothing to do with you wanting to ‘help’ the FBI frame my client?”
“Objection!” Karp roared. “Your honor, it is outrageous that counsel continues to make assertions about the integrity of this man without a scintilla of proof, nor will she be able to provide any evidence during the course of this trial. I would like her admonished for this repeated outlandish and disingenuous effort to redirect the jury’s attention from the facts and into the realm of pure fiction.”
“I am merely asking a question,” O’Dowd said innocently.
“Enough!” Judge Mason barked. “I will sustain the objection, though I will choose whom to admonish in this courtroom, Mr. Karp, and will not be bullied by you. Ms. O’Dowd, please continue, but watch the extracurricular stuff.”
“Of course, your honor. Sergeant Kreider, did you have information beforehand about what you would find in the basement of the Al-Aqsa mosque?”
“No, I did not.”
“You’re sure?”
“Objection. Asked and answered, your honor,” Karp said.
“Sustained. Move on, Ms. O’Dowd,” Mason ordered.
“And you have no idea what became of the digital movie camera’s memory card?”
“No, I do not.”
“So, if that memory card holds information that might prove my client wasn’t in the basement during the murder of the deceased, that information is now missing?”
“Objection, your honor, and likewise, it very well would also show that he was there and engaged in the murder,” Karp said.
“Ms. O’Dowd?” Mason asked, looking at the defense attorney with a raised eyebrow.
“Okay, your honor, I’ll withdraw the question,” she responded.
O’Dowd walked over to the lectern and reviewed her notes. After a moment, she looked up. “Sergeant Kreider, when your heavily armed SWAT team invaded the Al-Aqsa mosque, did you encounter any resistance?”
“We didn’t invade anything. We simply entered, and there was no resistance.”
“So, the NYPD thought it best to send your Special Weapons and Tactics team, weapons drawn, boots thudding up and down the corridors and rooms, to a place of worship.”
“We always approach a search-warrant situation expecting we might meet resistance and better safe than sorry.”
“But all you found, as far as people, were peaceful worshipers?”
“That is correct. And the body of the victim.”
“Sergeant Kreider, do you have anything against people of the Muslim faith?”
“No.”
“Sergeant Kreider, are you a racist?”
Karp jumped up. “Just a minute, your honor. I demand an offer of proof for the bona fides of the legitimacy of that question. A question that comes out of left field. This is just another defense attempt to smear a witness by asking objectionable questions simply for effect.”
“Sustained,” Mason shot back.
“No further questions, your honor.”
Karp didn’t wait for O’Dowd to reach her seat before he was up and walked quickly over to the jury rail. “Sergeant Kreider, how many times have you been shot in the line of duty?” he asked.
“Objection,” O’Dowd, as expected, said. “This subject was not part of my cross-examination, and therefore is improper for redirect.”
“On the contrary, your honor,” Karp argued. “She attacked the witness’s credibility. I am within my rights to rehabilitate this man’s good name.”
Mason thought about it. This was one of those instances where fighting Karp would come back to bite him on the backside. “I’ll allow it. The witness may answer the question.”
“I’ve been shot twice in the line of duty,” Kreider said quietly.
“Have you received any awards of merit, any decorations for bravery?”
“Yes, sir. I have received five Police Combat Crosses, three Medals of Valor, and one Medal of Honor.”
“Was one of the Medals of Valor tied to an incident in which you were shot?”
“What happened?”
“It was a hostage situation. I was trying to get the hostage out of the room when I was shot in the back by one of the kidnappers.”
“Did you almost die?”
“Yes, sir. In fact, I did die, but they were able to revive me at the hospital.”
“Sergeant Kreider, where did this shooting take place?”
“One Hundred Sixteenth and Manhattan Avenue in Harlem.”
“What race was the hostage?”
“She was black.”
“Did that matter to you when you very nearly lost your life to help her?”
“No, sir. It did not. She needed help. I did my job.”
Karp smiled. O’Dowd had chosen the wrong police officer to attack, though she had little choice based on her defense strategy. But now he would administer the coup de grace.
“Sergeant Kreider, would you please tell the jury how you came to be awarded the Medal of Honor?”
A shadow passed over the man’s face, but he nodded. “I really didn’t do anything a lot of other guys didn’t do. But anyway, I was outside the World Trade Center when it was hit on nine-eleven. I went into the building and brought a few people out.”
“A few people?” Karp asked. He walked over to the prosecution table, where Kenny Katz handed him a piece of paper, which he took to the sergeant. “Is this a letter of commendation, signed by the mayor and members of the city council, that accompanied your Medal of Honor?”
“Yes, sir.”
Karp took the letter back. “Your honor, I move that this letter be received in evidence.”
“Ms. O’Dowd?”
“No objection.”
“Very well, the letter is so admitted.”
Karp looked down at the letter. “You just told us you went into the burning tower and brought a few people out. Do you consider more than two hundred people to be a few?”
“I suppose not.”
“It says here in this commendation letter that you went back into the building three times to bring people to safety, and, I quote, ‘at great risk to his own life’ and while others stood by and watched. Is that true?”
“It was something like that. I was just in the wrong place at the right time.”
“For which more than two hundred people, as well as the citizens of this city, are grateful,” Karp said.
Karp stuck his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels as he looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “Sergeant Kreider, you just testified that you were turned down by the FBI because of an alcohol problem. When was this problem?”
Kreider hung his head. “End of 2001, most of 2002.”
“Had you been a big drinker before then?”
The sergeant shook his head and cleared his throat before he could answer. “No, sir. Hardly at all.”
“Do you know why you started drinking heavier at the end of 2001?” Karp asked quietly.
Kreider wiped at his nose and nodded. “My brother . . .” he started, but had to stop and take a sip of water. “My brother, Jon, he was a police officer, too, and he . . .” The sergeant stifled a sob. “He was there, too. We both were. He went in one more time than me, but that last time . . . he didn’t come back out.”
“Your brother died in the World Trade Center?” Karp said softly but clearly.
“Yes.” The sergeant no longer tried to raise his head and look at the jurors. He wiped at his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant Kreider, I truly am,” Karp said. “Was your brother awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously?”
The man’s shoulders were shaking as he cried, but he managed to say, “Yes.”
“And it was after this that you started to drink?”
Kreider lifted his head, his eyes full of the tears that were not yet rolling down his cheeks. “Yes, sir. I went on quite the bender.”
“And you were placed on a leave of absence after you were determined to be under the influence while on the job?”
“Yes, sir. I was drunk pretty much twenty-four/seven.”
“What did you do about it?”
“I had a dream . . .”
“I object. Your honor, are we now going to listen to a recollection of a dream as evidence in a murder trial?” O’Dowd asked.
“Overruled,” the judge said. “You may answer the question, sergeant.”
“I had a dream in which my brother told me to get my shit, pardon the expression, together,” Kreider said, a small smile coming to his face despite the tears. “So I entered rehab, and I’ve been sober since September 11, 2002.”
“But you were still turned down by the FBI?”
“Yes, sir. They get a lot of applications and can afford to be choosy.”
“Why not reapply? Surely, now that you’ve been sober for so long, they might reconsider.”
Kreider shrugged. “They might, but like I said, it was just something I did because of some of the memories I have about nine-eleven. I even thought about it again a couple of years ago, but I realized I couldn’t leave.”
“Why?”
“Because this is my city. These are my people.” The sergeant paused, then grinned. “And my brother would kick my ass when I see him again.”