In the meantime, as Marta stands at Stern’s shoulder, his daughter whispers, “What the hell was that?”
3. Friends
A judge’s chambers are her private offices. Sonny’s, the impressive space afforded the chief judge of the United States District Court, consist of several rooms that occupy nearly a quarter of the top floor of the grand old federal courthouse. Beside the reception area, three small offices house the law clerks, who help the judge write her opinions, and the docket clerk, Luis, who manages the 450 or so civil and criminal cases over which the judge presides. The remaining area is reserved for the chief judge herself. A huge old Federalist desk is by the windows. Shelves of law books with golden bindings, little more than decorations in the computer era, ring the perimeter, and there is a long dark conference table surrounded by leather executive chairs where the judge holds her meetings. Prominent on the walls are family photos of Sonny’s grandchildren and a few courtroom sketches from her earlier career, including one in which Sonny, then an assistant United States Attorney, is portrayed before the jury box, a finger poised. In the background of the watercolor is her trial partner in that case, Moses Appleton, recognizable, like the judge, in leaner, younger days.
Meetings in chambers can be conducted outside the presence of the jury—and the press. Nonetheless, Minnie Aleio, Sonny’s court reporter, has taken a place in the corner with her steno machine that transforms shorthand into a transcript. As Moses edges past Stern to find a place on the other side of the conference table, the United States Attorney, still provoked by what has just gone on in court, whispers, “Man, I didn’t think we were gonna try this case that way.” Moses has always treated the Sterns as a cut above, a better class of defense counsel who, unlike many, eschew underhandedness as a defendant’s right, and Stern registers Moses’s rebuke as troubling.
The judge, who has not bothered to remove her robe, as she ordinarily does in chambers, has chosen to stand at the end of the table, while the lawyers sit, reemphasizing her authority.
“I decided it’s a good moment to have a word with the group. We all know that my long relationships with the lawyers in this case are somewhat unusual. We are all friends here. And we will be friends when this case is over. But I will not allow any of you to impose on my friendship while this case is on trial.” With those words, Sonny levels her dark eyes at Stern. “We had extended discussions last week about how to deal with the delicate matter of the many civil lawsuits that are pending against PT and Dr. Pafko.”
Kiril’s indictment provided a vulture’s meal to the plaintiffs’ bar. Two days after the first Journal article, the Neucriss law firm here in Kindle County had worked its customary magic and had filed multimillion-dollar suits for wrongful death in behalf of five families from across the US, quickly followed by dozens more civil cases brought by the Neucrisses and other personal injury lawyers from coast to coast. Besides those suits, several plaintiffs’ class actions have been filed in behalf of PT’s shareholders, alleging securities law violations and damages of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The distinction between civil cases, brought by private citizens to seek financial compensation for their injuries, and criminal cases, initiated by the government with the usual goal of sending the defendant to prison, often confuses laypeople. That could be expected to include jurors, who might not understand that in order to convict someone for a crime, the evidence must leave them far more certain—no reasonable doubts about guilt—than in a civil case. For that reason, Sonny was initially inclined to forbid any mention of the civil suits, but during last week’s pretrial rulings, she accepted the Sterns’ arguments that fairness requires allowing the jury to know that some witnesses stand to profit by their testimony. Even so, the judge said that she would decide what questions were proper, one witness at a time.
“Giving the benefit of the doubt,” Sonny says now as she stands over the table directing a hard look at Stern, “I suppose I can see, Sandy, how you misinterpreted my ruling and thought it was all right to mention the civil cases briefly. But I was clear as day that there was to be no mention of the money any witness was seeking or had been paid. In fact, Sandy,” Sonny says, “I have a distinct memory of you saying that the jury might take actual settlements as an admission of guilt on Dr. Pafko’s part. Am I wrong about that?”
Stern hesitates briefly, just to give appropriate recognition to the judge’s ire.
“You surely are not, Your Honor, but I found in the moment that I had changed my mind.” In the courtroom, facing the actual jurors and the prospect of the heartsore testimony of persons whose loved one died after taking g-Livia, it was suddenly clear to Stern that Kiril was better off if the jury realized that they did not have to convict Pafko to ensure the grieving families received some compensation. He can see, however, from what swims across the judge’s face that this explanation startles her, and she straightens up.
“Yes, Sandy, but I did not change mine.” With the words, she sets her knuckles on the table, robe billowing, bringing the level of her dark eyes closer to Stern’s. “If you, or any other lawyer, disobey my rulings again, then, old friend or not, I will deal with you appropriately.”
The omen is absorbed in silence.
The chief judge’s long friendship with each of the lawyers in the case is an awkward fact. Stern and she met three decades ago, when Sonny was an Assistant US Attorney investigating Stern’s client, his sister’s husband. It was a difficult time for both of them. Stern was only weeks past Clara’s suicide and Sonny’s marriage was collapsing while she was in the late stage of pregnancy. With both lawyers at sea emotionally, there was a dizzy night when they seemed smitten with each other. The infatuation dissolved in the daylight like a dream, entirely unrealized. Now Stern’s body is in decay, and while Sonny’s robust beauty remains, she has become completely gray and rounder. Yet in Stern’s view, the importance of those kinds of attachments in a life never fully fades.
Marta has a more current bond with the judge. She shared a nanny, Everarda, with Sonny for years. They refer to one another as “besties.” Work, by longstanding agreement, is never part of their conversations, which reinforces their intimacy, since they speak routinely of husbands, children, the travails of family, what is closest to their hearts.
Because of both Sterns’ affinities with the judge, in Sonny’s twenty-five years on the bench in state then federal court, neither Sandy nor Marta has ever tried a case before her. It was Moses’s ascension to US Attorney that complicated matters. As the drawing on Sonny’s wall reflects, Appleton and she were prosecutors together, favored trial partners who forged the bonds of battle. Sonny and her husband, Michael, are probably the best friends Moses and his wife, Sharon, have away from River of Zion Baptist Church, where Moses frequently preaches. When their daughter, Deborah, finished law school, she served for two years as Sonny’s law clerk, overlapping for a year with her co-clerk—Dan Feld.
Furthermore, Sonny cannot simply remove herself from Moses’s cases. The US Attorney is the government’s sole official representative in federal district court, meaning that almost 70 percent of Sonny’s trial docket is consumed by criminal and, sometimes, civil matters brought in Moses’s name. His reputation is at stake in every one of those cases, whether or not he is present in court. Recusal would require Sonny to stop doing the bulk of her job. Worse, it would burden her fellow judges, who would inherit those cases, an especially unbecoming development inasmuch as the chief judge must prod the other district judges to stay up to date with their caseloads.