With Oscar, I lay the groundwork for the events leading up to the fight. It’s an effort to appeal to the jury’s sense of compassion. Tadeo is a poor kid from a poor family whose only real chance in life so far has been inside the cage. We finally get around to the fight and the courtroom lights go down. The first time through, we watch the fight without interruption. In the semidarkness, I watch the jurors. The women are turned off by the sport’s brutality. The men are thoroughly engrossed. During the rerun, I stop the tape each time Tadeo takes a shot in the face. The truth is that most of these were not that damaging and Crush scored only minor points with them. But to jurors who don’t know any better, a punch to the face, especially one blown out of proportion by Oscar and me, becomes a near-lethal blow. Slowly, methodically, I count them. When they are displayed in such exaggerated manner, one can easily ask how in the world Tadeo stayed on his feet. With 1:20 to go in the second round, Crush is able to yank Tadeo’s head down and bang it into his right knee. It’s a nasty shot all right, but one that hardly fazed Tadeo. Now, though, Oscar and I make it look like the cause of permanent brain damage.
I stop the video after the end of the second round, and through carefully rehearsed questions and answers I elicit from Oscar his impressions of his fighter between rounds. The kid’s eyes were glazed over. He could only grunt, not speak. He was unresponsive to questions fired at him by Norberto and Oscar. He, Oscar, thought about waving the ref over and stopping the fight.
I would put Norberto on the stand to verify these lies, but he has two felony convictions and would be humiliated by Mancini.
Left unsaid in this testimony is the fact that I was also in the corner. I was wearing my bright yellow “Tadeo Zapate” jacket and trying to act as though I was somehow needed. I have explained this to Max and Go Slow and assured them that I saw and heard nothing crucial. I was just a spectator; thus I cannot be considered a witness. Max and Go Slow know I’m here out of love and not money.
We watch the third round and count more blows to Tadeo’s head. Oscar testifies that when the fight was over Tadeo thought he had one more round. He was out of it, barely conscious but still on his feet. After he attacked Sean King and was pulled off by Norberto and others, he was like an enraged animal, unsure of where he was or why he was being restrained. Thirty minutes later, as he was changing in the dressing room while the police watched and waited, he began to come around. He wanted to know what the cops were doing there. He asked who won the fight.
All in all, not a bad job of creating some doubt. However, even a casual viewing of all three rounds clearly shows a fight that was fairly even. Tadeo dished out as much damage as he absorbed.
Mancini gets nowhere on cross. Oscar sticks to the facts he has created. He was there, in the corner, talking to his fighter, and if he says the kid took too many shots to the head, so be it. Max can’t prove otherwise.
Next I call our expert, Dr. Taslman, the retired psychiatrist who now works as a professional witness. He wears a black suit, crisp white shirt, tiny red bow tie, and with his horn-rimmed glasses and long, flowing gray hair he looks incredibly smart. I slowly walk him through his qualifications and tender him as an expert in the field of forensic psychiatry. Max has no objections.
I then ask Dr. Taslman to explain, in layman’s terms, the legal concept of volitional insanity, the standard adopted by our state a decade ago. He smiles at me, then looks at the jurors in much the same way an old professor would enjoy chatting with his adoring students. He says, “Volitional insanity means simply that a person who is mentally healthy does something wrong, and at the time he knows it’s wrong, but at that moment he is so mentally unbalanced, or deranged, he cannot prevent himself from doing it anyway. He knows it’s wrong, but he cannot control himself and thereby commits the crime.”
He has watched the fight many times, and the video of its aftermath. He has spent a few hours with Tadeo. During their first meeting, Tadeo told him he did not remember the attack on Sean King. Indeed, he remembered virtually nothing after the second round. However, during a later session, Tadeo seemed to recollect certain things that happened. For example, he said he remembered the smug look on Crush’s face as his arm was raised in victory. He remembered the crowd screaming its disapproval of the decision. He remembered his brother Miguel yelling something. But he remembered nothing to do with the assault on the referee. Regardless, though, of what he remembered, he was blinded by emotion and had no choice but to attack. He had been robbed and the nearest official was Sean King.
