had started to choose. It wasn’t until my partner, Danny Meyers, filed a federal lawsuit shaming the district attorney’s office that Davidson allowed Tony to shave and change clothes in a holding cell behind the courtroom.
During the two-month trial I was home only long enough to eat and sleep. I might have prevailed with a different judge, but as Wechsler pointed out in the many columns he wrote after the trial was over, Davidson sided with the assistant district attorney at every turn. Some of the rulings were truly bizarre, such as the one that prohibited me from calling a lighting expert to challenge the testimony of a prosecution expert, the deputy director in charge of the engineering division of the New York City Bureau of Gas and Electricity, who claimed that the backlighting from the bank’s plate-glass window on the dark, shadowy side street where the crime occurred was sufficiently bright for the purposes of identifying the shooter. By contrast, my expert, a Broadway lighting designer, would have testified that the killer’s face would have been in a shadow, making his features indistinguishable.
Equally outrageous, not until twenty-two days after the start of Tony’s third trial did Sawyer produce the names and interviews of a number of witnesses who talked to the police during the 1967 investigation, some of whom told different stories about what happened. One witness, according to a police report, said that someone else killed Sergeant Kroll. Another person confessed to the crime. Barely able to prepare for each successive day of the trial, Dan Meyers and I didn’t have the time or the resources to chase down any of the people on that list. The prosecutor said in a pat way that his office and the police had checked out everyone and everything on the list and there was nothing of merit for the court to consider, which Davidson quickly accepted as conclusive enough to rule that what the authorities had done was sufficient.
To defend Tony, before the trial Dan and I had tried to revive the alibis that had been disavowed after Michael Quinn and his wife were thrown in jail as material witnesses. To do that we visited the Quinns at home in Woodside, Queens, and at brother Patrick’s bar to see if they would consider testifying that Tony was at their apartment on the night of the crime, and explain why they disavowed their statements. Concerned that their silence would lead to Tony’s conviction, the Quinns agreed to risk the prosecutor’s ire. Davidson, however, did what he could to frustrate us. He cleared the courtroom the moment I called Michael Quinn to the witness stand, and announced that he would not allow Quinn’s testimony if it included an admission that he’d committed perjury—even if, as we claimed, he had been forced to disavow the alibi by an assistant district attorney. Davidson reacted immediately. He sent for another assistant district attorney to open a prosecution investigation against Michael. I objected, and the colloquy that resulted was typical of our dynamic:
MR. STEEL: Your Honor, may I state that, for the record, we have other witnesses whose testimony you are affecting by this procedure.
THE COURT: Will you sit down or I’ll have you thrown out of this courtroom.
MR. STEEL: That is an open threat to every other member of the Quinn family who wants to testify in this case. You are threatening them all. It is the most outrageous thing I have ever heard.
THE COURT: Do you think it might be necessary for this screaming person to be put in restraint?
MR. STEEL: Do that, Your Honor. Do that.
THE COURT: I have never heard anything like that.
MR. STEEL: I have never heard anything like you, Your Honor. In a murder trial, you are threatening the witnesses of the defense openly in court. I have never heard of a thing like that.
THE COURT: Why don’t you behave yourself? You will have a stroke. Everybody is gathered around you; they are afraid you are going to come up and attack me.
MR. MEYERS: There is nobody afraid.
MR. STEEL: Nobody is going to attack Your Honor. You attack the dignity of this court by being in court.
And with that Judge Davidson held me in summary contempt.
Looking back now at what I said, I can see that I had crossed that invisible line between rational advocacy and an emotional response to outrageous provocation. The Quinns were deeply shaken, and I was beside myself. Nonetheless the Quinns decided not to back down. They