Pushcart drama
The attorney for retired Chicago police officer Anthony "Twan" Doyle, gets the award for most dramatic opening statement in the trial.
Attorney Ralph Meczyk wheeled a Streets and Sanitation pushcart into the courtroom to show the kind of job Doyle has as a kid.
He was a street sweeper, not a street thug, Meczyk said.
To punctuate the end of his opening statement, Meczyk threw the indictment in the case into the yellow pushcart — in effect, throwing out the trash.
The other part of Meczyk's opening centered on a tried-and-true defense: blame the dead guy.
Meczyk has to overcome a series of recordings that the feds secretly made of Doyle when he visiited reputed mob hitman Frank Calabrese Sr. in prison.
The feds say Doyle betrayed his badge by being a gopher for Calabrese Sr., passing messages to the mob and keeping tabs on a murder investigation involving Calabrese Sr.'s brother, Nicholas, who himself is a confessed mob hitman and will testify for the feds.
Meczyk acknowledged that Doyle and Calabrese Sr. were handball playing buddies. But the attorney pointed the finger at another man involved in the meetings, Michael Ricci, a retired Chicago homicide detective who had been charged in the case but died before going to trial.
Meczyk suggested that Ricci and to an extent, Calabrese Sr., were running the show during the prison conversations, while Doyle was busy getting Calabrese Sr. sandwiches, including a chicken cordon bleu and ham on a kaiser roll.
Thoughts?
Funny his attorney doesn't mention the fact that Streets and Sanitation has been mob controlled since it began. He also doesn't explain how Calabrese got him the job. Which is a no-show, no-work job as Leo Caruso and many other mob relatives had.
To me it looks like Doyle's attorney was just trying to justify some retainer money and get on the news. The bit with the pushcart was just to keep in pace with Joe Lopez and his pink shirts. I'm sure the jury will see through it.