Free Black Water Transit by Carsten Stroud Page A

questioning about anything at all. As a result, information arising from the arrest and interrogation of his client, up to and including information leading to the arrests of the Scarpa brothers, was irrelevant and inadmissible since the information had come during an improper interrogation. Thus to use the information would, in the classic phrase, shock the conscience of the court.
    Like there is such a thing. People have things stuck to the bottom of their shoes that have more conscience than a court of law. The law is a machine for processing and canning garbage meat.
    Anyway, the assistant district attorney—Veronica Stein herself—comes right back with an impassioned assertion that, according to the records and the testimony of the arresting officers—Casey Spandau and Levon Jamal—LoGascio had
not
been formally arrested, had in fact
volunteered
relevant information about the Coryell kidnapping, and since he had not been charged with any involvement with the Coryell abduction at the time, he had no Miranda rights to waive.
    This drew a squawk from Eddie Rubinek, who rose to proclaim that there
was
an accusatory instrument ineffect at the time, a charge under Section 130, sodomy with a minor, a class E felony, so the defendant’s absolute right to counsel had therefore been violated, and it followed that anything said even under a perception of a Miranda waiver in connection with any other matter did not alter the fact of the ARC violation, so whatever followed, however disconnected from the original charge, was tainted and was therefore absolutely inadmissible on technical grounds.
    Nonsense, said the ADA. And even if there had been a violation of LoGascio’s Miranda rights, those rights are not considered a constitutional guarantee, are in fact merely a prophylactic device to guard against self-incriminatory statements made involuntarily, and, for that matter, under
Harris v. New York
, the Supreme Court had ruled that even
intentional
violations of Miranda that resulted in inculpatory statements did not render those statements inadmissible.
    Fah! observed Mr. Rubinek.
    At this point Judge Shabazz leaned forward in her creaking leather chair and spread her hands across the jumble of candy wrappers and legal papers on her desk.
    “I’ve heard enough. I intend to review the
Harris
decision and consider the relevant case law. I will render my decision in this matter in a few … in good time.” She stopped Rubinek in mid-aria by raising her left hand and showing him a pink palm with stubby fingers spread wide.
    “You can wait, Mr. Rubinek. I’ll give you my decision in good time. Into the hall with you both.”
    In other words,
reply hazy, ask again later
. That’s why they called her the Eight Ball.
    Twenty-six minutes later, after a séance with a Moon Doggie and a Monster Big Gulp down in the cafeteria, Judge Euphonia Shabazz returned to her chambers, called in the combatants, and ruled that the LoGascioinformation, whatever it might have been, was inadmissible and that anything flowing from that information had therefore been obtained in a clear and
egregious
—that word was definitely making a comeback—violation of the suspect’s ARC rights—including the inculpatory evidence obtained at the Scarpas’ apartment, the underwear, the forensics—and was, under various loopholes in the Bonehead Justice Machine, totally inadmissible and tainted. As a direct result of this decision, Tony LoGascio and the Scarpa brothers hopped out of the holding cells on Centre Street before nine o’clock that very evening. They scrambled into a gypsy cab, and it was several months before they managed to attract the attention of the NYPD in any memorable way. Mind you, when they did, it was terminal. Now. Observe the following incident.
    About an hour later, as he was walking home from the D train exit on Ninth Street, public defender Eddie Rubinek had his lights professionally punched out by an unknown but highly