This is another true story from the files of my friend, Frank Bari, a criminal defense attorney in New York City who worked public defender cases. You can read more of Frank’s stories here, here, and here.
Perhaps after reading these someone will be able to explain to me why no publisher was ever interested in a book about a lawyer with clients like these?

Tony Velasquez was a punk and an idiot.
A Puerto Rican native with a pencil-thin mustache, oily slick black hair and the lithe wiry body of a Solid Gold dancer, Tony liked to think he was smarter than he really was. He wore big glasses with blue gradient-tinted lenses and he must have believed that the more jewelry he wore the better looking he became, because he wore a lot of it.
He was a smalltime drug dealer client Frank had picked up as an 18-b assignment. It was an open and shut case; the guy should have taken a plea and done his time and shut the hell up. But he had this idea that he could beat the rap and he wanted a jury trial.
So here was the state of New York, spending upwards of $80 an hour on jurors, $40 an hour for Frank to defend Tony, another forty bucks for the assistant DA and God only knows how much for the judge, bailiff and courtroom staff to give Tony his constitutional right to be convicted of selling crack by a jury of his peers who had the misfortune to register to vote in the County of New York.
Frank was questioning Tony, who was leaning back on the rear legs of the wooden chair in the witness box. He tried to get Velasquez to take the proffer, but for some reason Tony wanted a trial. Frank assumed he just wanted a chance to be the center of attention for a change.
It had been a straightforward bust. It was the cop’s word against Tony’s and as the advocate for the defense, Frank had worked his ass off to get the best terms he could for his client. Guilt didn’t matter to Frank. Velasquez was a bully and a drug dealer but he was a human and an American and he had civil rights just like everybody else. There wasn’t a victim/victimizer thing here; Tony wasn’t a product of “the System” or anything like that. It boiled down to Frank’s duty as an attorney to his client. He was being paid to do the best job he could for Tony Velasquez and that was that.
The problem was Tony hadn’t given him anything to work with. When you sell drugs to an undercover cop and get arrested, it’s hard to make a case for innocence. Why would the cop lie? She’s got better things to do that come in and waste her time cooling her heels in the courthouse when she could be out busting perps. But Tony was adamant and he had that right, so he was going to get his trial and he was going to get convicted and he was going to get the sentence he deserved.
Putting a guilty defendant on the stand presents an ethical problem for a defense attorney. First, you can’t ask the guy to incriminate himself. Second, you can’t ask him to lie. Of course, the defense doesn’t have to present any kind of case, they just need to show the reasonable doubt apparent in the prosecution’s case. But Tony wanted to testify. Again, Frank wondered why? What good could possibly come from him getting on the stand?
Frank cross-examined the undercover cop, she testified fairly and honestly, and there had been no holes in her story. The witnesses - all cops - had corroborated her tale of the bust. The only question the jury had to decide was whether the stash the cops found near Tony’s corner was his. That was the best Frank could do. The law had Tony for selling, the key to the case was the amount. For Tony that was a big deal. Like most dealers, he kept only so much on his person when he was selling for just such an emergency. If he was busted for possession, it would only be a misdemeanor and he made sure he kept less than sale weight on his person at all times. Being caught with sale weight meant serious time. The problem for Tony was that the cops had discovered a stash of drugs nearby that looked remarkably similar to the stuff Tony was pitching. They said it was his. He denied it.
After the prosecution rested, Frank called Tony to the stand. The middle-aged man was suave, calm and cool as Frank led him through his account of the evening in question. Yeah, he had sold drugs to the officer. No, the drugs they found nearby weren’t his. No, he had no idea they were there. Again, no, he had no idea how they got there. It was a drug-infested neighborhood. Some junkie probably left them and forgot them.
Frank finished with Tony and went back to the defense table. There wasn’t anything else he could do with the witness.
The Assistant DA stood up and shuffled his papers. The young man cleared his throat, jerked his head with some sort of a tic and looked at Tony.
“Do you remember, Mr. Velasquez, how the drugs you sold to Detective Whitmer were packaged?”
Velasquez looked right at the young DA and their eyes locked. The Puerto Rican drug dealer was leaning back in his chair, rocking gently, the front legs of the chair lifting about an inch off the ground.
“Yes,” he replied.
The prosecutor pursed his lips, looked at Velasquez, then to the jury and finally back to the defendant. It was almost like everyone was moving in slow motion.
“Describe for us, please, how the drugs…the crack…was packaged,” the prosecutor said. He was going to establish that the items found under the leaves beneath a forlorn bush near the sidewalk were packaged in a similar fashion. A witness, the cop who found the sale weight drugs, had already described to the jury what the drugs looked like and they had been entered into evidence.
Velasquez sat for a moment, rocking gently. He appeared to be deep in thought, his eyes locked on the prosecutor. Then he slowly turned his gaze toward Frank, still rocking back and forth on the back legs of the dark wooden chair. Frank willed Tony to answer the question. As Frank sat waiting for the response, sweat began to appear on Tony’s brow. He opened his mouth to say something as if he was going to answer and then he leaned back even further.
Tony’s eyes rolled back into his head so only the whites were showing. To courtroom observers, it appeared as if he was looking at the ceiling for the answer, but then he just kept leaning back further and further until his chin was perpendicular to the floor. At that moment, the chair flipped backward and Tony Velasquez disappeared from view.
He fell to the floor with a loud crash.
Then there was silence. No one in the courtroom moved, waiting for Tony to stand up and explain what the hell was going on. But he didn’t. Ten seconds went by and Tony didn’t get up. Twenty seconds and then the bailiff slowly, carefully moved in front of the bench to the witness box. The bailiff peered over and looked down. No one else in the courtroom moved, uttered a sound or breathed. Waiting.
“Uh…Judge…”
The bailiff went around to the entrance of the witness box and knelt down. Then he stood up. He knelt back down and then stood up again. In disbelief, he came to the front of the court room to stand before the judge.
“Judge, this guy’s dead.”
Judge Hastings Brown had been on the Supreme Court bench long enough to have seen everything, but this was the first time a defendant had ever died in his courtroom.
“What the hell do you mean, Jackson?” Brown asked.
As if it was his fault, the bailiff Jackson, stood in front of the judge, palms up, shrugging.
“He’s not breathing. I can’t find a pulse.”
Frank jumped up from the defense table.
“Mistrial!” he yelled.