Doctors (94 page)

“The precedents are legion. For example, in 1961 the father who killed his horribly deformed—”

Edmund Walters did not have time to object.

Judge Novak was already pounding his gavel. “Inadmissible, Dr. Landsmann, inadmissible! I forbid you to proceed in this line of argument.”

Bennett was now deprived of his most powerful argument. He looked helplessly at Mark Sylbert, who gave him a signal with his left hand.

Bennett now glanced at Barney, whose expression seemed to be shouting the words he had spoken after interviewing Hector Campos. (“The guy is very unstable, Ben. He’s a walking time bomb.”)

Yet Bennett reluctantly called the deceased’s brother to the stand.

“Hector,” Bennett asked gently, “were you aware of the extent of Frank’s injuries? Did you know that he was blind, partially deaf, and couldn’t move?”

“Yes.”

“Were you aware that he was in pain?”

“Yes.”

“How did you know that?”

“He told me, sir.”

“In words?”

“Well, no, sir. He could just make noises—like the tape you play. I could easy tell when he mean no and when he mean
yes. That is why, when I asked Frank if he want to die, I know he say yes.”

“And what did you do about it?”

“I buy a gun. I try to shoot at him—but I miss.” He was now holding back tears. “But I miss.
¡Ay! ¡Qué dolor!
so terrible—I miss!” His head was in his hands and he was weeping.

Justice Novak leaned over and asked Bennett, “Would you like me to call a recess?”

“No, sir. He’ll be all right.”

The court watched for nearly a minute as the young man gradually regained control.

“Hector,” Bennett continued gently, “can you tell us why you did it?”

“Frank was hurting so bad. He wanted so much that God please take him to Heaven.”

Bennett looked at Walters. “Your witness, Mr. Attorney General.” And as he walked back, he once again glanced at Barney, who was wiping his brow with relief.

Walters fairly bounded from his seat and eagerly told the jury, “I’ll ask this man one question, one single question, and I’ll be satisfied with his answer, be it yes or no.

“Mr. Campos, did you or did you not ask Dr. Lazarus to use his skills as a physician to kill your brother?”

Hector nodded.

“Please can you just say the
word
—yes or no.”

“Yes,” he replied. “I ask him.”

With a histrionic wave to the jury, Walters proclaimed, “No further questions.”

Bennett was already standing.

“Your Honor, I have some redirect. In fact, like my esteemed colleague, I have but a single question for the witness.”

He paused, tried to comfort the young man with his eyes, and then asked softly, “Hector—yes or no—was it you who injected the cocaine?”

The witness was mute. Bennett tried to prod him gently. “Was it you, Hector?”

“I’ll go to jail,” he muttered, shaking his head from side to side.

He was a pathetic sight. Bennett wavered between sympathy for the young man’s suffering and fear that he would now crack, and his testimony be nullified. He asked again quietly, “Please answer yes or no. An innocent man’s life depends on it. Did you inject the cocaine that killed your brother?”

The young man hesitated again—this time for but an instant—and then said, “Yes. Francisco
begged
me to.”

There was a stirring in the courtroom and Bennett addressed the judge.

“Your Honor, on the basis of this man’s testimony, I move that the indictment be dismissed.”

“Objection.” Walters was in there before Judge Novak could even react. “I believe my young colleague has let a matter slip his mind. He perhaps forgot your instructions on the ‘law of impossibility,’ that in this state a man is guilty even if he
intends
to do a deed that has already been done for him. Therefore, the testimony of Hector Campos has no bearing on the case of Dr. Lazarus.”

Judge Novak turned to Bennett. “Mr. Walters is correct. The issue of intent still validates the charges. Will you call your next witness, please.”

Bennett paused for an instant, waiting for absolute quiet before saying, almost in a whisper, “The defense calls Dr. Seth Lazarus.”

The rest of the courtroom was frozen as Seth, stoop-shouldered, pale, and nervous, slowly made his way to the witness stand.

“I am going to make this short and simple, Dr. Lazarus,” Bennett said. “First, dealing with the prosecution’s questions of intent, will you tell us whether or not you intended to end the life of Captain Campos.”

“I did, sir.”

“Can you tell the jury why?”

“Because he had no life. I mean no viable life. There is a difference between ‘living’ and a life. Being alive is just a biological phenomenon. Chimpanzees and bugs—even trees and bushes are ‘living’ things. But a life is more. It means biography as well as biology. I wanted to alleviate the suffering of someone who was no longer human. I believed Captain Campos deserved the same mercy society always accords a wounded animal.”

Never in his wildest, most optimistic dreams had Edmund Walters imagined that the defense would call the accused to the stand. For the FBI had compiled a dossier on Seth that could keep him on trial for the rest of his natural life.

The prosecutor rushed to cross-examine.

“Dr. Lazarus, when you were in Medical School and in 1959 took a course called ‘Surgical Procedures,’ do you remember the incidents recounted by Dean Holmes, when the lab
animals were slaughtered—or as you scientists put it, ‘sacrificed’? Please answer yes or no.”

Without hesitation, Seth replied, “I did it.”

There was loud, agitated murmuring. Strong feelings had been aroused.

“I have just one more question,” Walters announced. Then he fixed Seth with a riveting gaze.

“Dr. Lazarus, between the days when those lab animals perished and the Marine captain’s murder, did you
ever
‘help’ patients to die?”

“Objection,” Bennett snapped. “This line of questioning is very prejudicial.”

Novak reflected for a moment and then said, “Overruled.”

The court was now as still as a tomb. Barney put an arm around Judy.

There was no reply from the witness stand. Then Walters cajoled:

“Dr. Lazarus, we are very anxiously awaiting a reply. Have you ever ‘helped’ another patient?”

Seth paused and with quiet anger answered, “Yes, Mr. Walters.
Out of mercy.
”

The prosecutor took off his glasses and declared, “No further questions.”

Deadly silence filled the room as Seth returned to his seat.

A moment later, Bennett rose to offer the concluding plea.

He had always thought it unfair that the defense had to speak first and allow the prosecution the last word. Jurors, however well intentioned, were mere reeds in the wind—especially at this late hour of the day. They were more likely to be swayed by whatever impression they were left with at the end.

So he’d better be goddamn good.

“Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. We have heard a lot of emotional words thrown back and forth in this courtroom. Indeed, the facts might almost have been lost in a smokescreen of moral and ethical questions that have nothing whatever to do with the case of Dr. Lazarus.

“I would have thought it sufficient that Hector Campos had confessed under oath to killing his brother before Dr. Lazarus arrived. I’ll grant the prosecution’s citation of the ‘law of impossibility,’ but I put it to you that mercy killing—or, as some of my fellow doctors prefer to call it, ‘death with dignity’—has been practiced since time immemorial. Job in his wretchedness
called out for death. And though it is true that God relieved his suffering, there is no other record of divine intervention in any cancer ward I know of.

“The defendant, Dr. Lazarus, has conceded that he intervened in cases where the patient had no hope of life, and was in desperate pain.”

He paused for breath, and continued softly. “In any case, Dr. Lazarus did not kill Captain Campos. For after his mutilating, agonizing, sense-depriving injuries in Vietnam, Captain Campos was not really alive. The defense rests.”

Attorney General Walters had three silver bullets in his gun and he intended to fire them all.

He started with the AMA.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I should like to comply with the judge’s wish that we restrict this argument to the accused, and so I’ll merely mention in passing, as you heard at trial, the American Medical Association’s 1973 policy statement entitled ‘The Physician and the Dying Patient.’ It declared, and I quote: ‘The intentional termination of the life of one human being by another’—and here they even use the words ‘
mercy killing
’—‘is contrary to that which the medical profession stands for.’ Unquote.

“But forget the AMA. You may recall the defense’s attempt to rope in the Catholic Church by asking Dean Holmes about a single statement made by Pope Pius many years ago. But let us also bear in mind the words of Father O’Connor, the Catholic chaplain of the V.A. Hospital in which Captain Campos died—”

He raised his voice and read, “ ‘The Church is now and always has been against the taking of life in any circumstances.’

“Let me hasten to add that, as we heard at trial, Jewish theologians are no less emphatic on this matter. Maimonides—himself a doctor—wrote that ‘a person who is dying should be regarded as a living person in all respects.’ ”

He paused, then added, “And we heard evidence that the
Koran
explicitly states that euthanasia, even if requested by the victim, is a sin, and those who perform it should be, and I quote, ‘excluded from the heaven forever.’

“The defendant has admitted under oath that he has ‘helped’ people to die. Put another way, he has made a subjective decision as to who lives and who does not. Surely, this is only God’s prerogative. Once upon a time the Nazis did this to six million people and the entire civilized world cried out for their punishment.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we know we are not gods. I pray you will not let us act like Nazis. The prosecution rests.”

The hour was late. The judge earnestly instructed the jury to ignore the emotive pleas from both sides. To pay no heed to the defense’s “philosophizing about life and death” nor the prosecution’s invocation of the bizarre trinity of the AMA, the Catholic Church, and Hitler—none of whom was on trial in these proceedings. They were merely to decide whether Dr. Lazarus was guilty of murder or intent to murder and should therefore be punished.

Nobody slept that night. Nobody.

Though doubtful that a verdict would be rendered even by late afternoon, the principals were all present by the stroke of nine the next morning. Twenty minutes after twelve the jury entered.

The room seemed deprived of oxygen, as if those in it had inhaled all the available air.

Judge Novak took the bench.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he asked, “have you reached a verdict?”

The foreman, Arthur Zinn, a dentist by profession, rose and said, “We have, Your Honor. We find the defendant guilty—”

Bedlam erupted. Novak vigorously hammered his gavel and demanded order. The foreman obviously had not concluded his remarks. When some measure of calm had been restored, the justice once again inquired, “Yes, Dr. Zinn, you were saying …”

“As you ordered us, we based our guilty verdict on the letter of the law. But we have voted unanimously to ask you to impose the most lenient sentence you can.”

The jury had shifted the onus completely to the magistrate. He could send Seth to prison for the rest of his days, or to his house for dinner that night.

“All right,” Novak responded gruffly, glaring at the lawyers, “they’ve asked for leniency. I’ll hear a plea of mitigation from both of you—
and make it brief.
”

Walters rose.

“I think it is pretty clear, Your Honor, that Captain Campos was far from the first one ‘treated’ by this so-called ‘doctor.’ So I think the defendant has the deaths of many people on his head.”

“All right,” said the judge impatiently. “How about you, Dr. Landsmann?”

“Your Honor, the defendant has a spotless record. We plead not only for his sake and that of his wife and family, but for the hundreds of sick people he has conscientiously treated all these years, that you make your sentence as merciful as possible.”

“All right,” said Novak once again, “adjourned until three
P.M.
today.” He slammed his gavel and was gone.

It was twenty after four when the judge reappeared and took the bench.

“Will the defendant rise.”

Seth stood up, leaning on the table before him, unsteady on his feet. It was clear from his eyes that Judge Novak was incensed. Seth’s head began to spin.

“Dr. Lazarus,” the judge began, “the jury has found you guilty. But I would like to add that the attorneys on both sides are also guilty of making this a question of philosophy, religion—and a lot of hokum. They have done you no great service.

“Despite this, one thing has come through to me. You are sincerely committed to alleviating human suffering. No human being should be tortured, whether by a Nazi—
or
a rule book. I therefore sentence you to three years—suspended.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let’s all take our consciences and go home.”

T
he evening after the trial, Seth, Judy, Barney, and Bennett had a victory feast at Le Perroquet.

“I can’t believe it,” Seth kept murmuring to himself as Judy held him tightly, “I can’t believe I’m going home tonight. It was like a bad dream.”

“I’ll wake you up,” Judy said lovingly.

The Lazaruses were so anxious to get home and be alone
that after the Baked Alaska they pleaded tiredness and went off, their arms around each other.

That left Bennett and Barney on their own—and half a magnum of champagne yet to consume.

“Landsmann, you were brilliant out there,” Barney congratulated him.

“No, you’re wrong,” Bennett answered soberly (though getting drunk). “Every goddamn trial is like a roulette wheel. There’s no way of picking the winning number in advance. It depends on the day, the mood of the jury, the attitude of the judge—and most of all, Lady Luck. I mean if medicine isn’t an exact science, law is ten times more of a crapshoot.”