Photos of readers

December 31, 2019 • 2:00 pm

Well, today we actually have a drawing of a reader, Ken Kukec. And there’s a reason why it’s a drawing:

Federal courts don’t allow cameras in the courtroom, but here’s a sketch of yours truly with a client readers may recognize. My brother was in Washington, DC, recently and discovered it in the Library of Congress.
The caption to the sketch overstates the situation a bit by referring to me as “his attorney.” Lead counsel was my mentor, Albert Krieger (also pictured in the sketch). I was along for the ride as second chair.
Unlike Dorian Gray, I continue to age while the image in the sketch remains the same.
Here’s the drawing, which is in the collection of the U.S. Library of Congress with the caption below (I’ve bolded Ken’s appearance):

The Dapper Don on Trial:

Flamboyant crime boss John Gotti, “the Dapper Don,” faced trial on several occasions. In 1992 he appeared in United States v. John Gotti et al., in the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. Gotti, sporting a red tie and handkerchief, sits next to his attorney, Ken Kukec. Defense attorney Albert Krieger hands Anthony M. Cardinale, another defense attorney, papers, while Murray Appleman, the sole witness for the defense, testifies. Judge I. Leo Glasser leans forward to listen. When his second in command, Salvatore “The Bull” Gravano, turned on him and became a government witness, Gotti was convicted on charges of murder, racketeering, obstruction of justice, illegal gambling, tax evasion and loan sharking. He died of throat cancer in 2002, while serving a life sentence in prison in Springfield, Missouri.

I asked Ken if he defended a lot of “made men,” and he responded this way:
A few over the years, including a couple from the Chicago “Outfit,” old-timers who grew up in “the Patch.” But none more high-profile than Gotti. I don’t think anyone in the modern era was.
You can read more about Gotti here.

53 thoughts on “Photos of readers”

  1. Wow. Didn’t know you were famous. If I ever kill someone, I’ll know where to go. Or is that not to go.

    The drawing is not fair….we should still have a photo.

  3. I’m speechless with astonishment. You literally rubbed shoulders with The Teflon Don! You ought to make a copy of the drawing and frame it.

    I will refrain from cracking wise lest I find a black car full of thuggish looking dudes parked across the street from my domicile, come to kneecap me.

    1. Reminds me of what Albert told me when I first started working for him as a young lawyer.

      I asked if we had malpractice insurance coverage. He looked at me for a couple beats then said, “Our clients don’t sue. If we commit malpractice, we wind up in the trunk of a Buick parked in the garage at LaGuardia.”

      He was kidding, I think. I haven’t thought of that line in years.

      1. C’mon, I’ve read enough books about the mafia to know that really does happen.

        And I wasn’t conjuring up an imaginary scenario. I don’t and never have had any association with the mafia or any other species of gangster but I was threatened with kneecapping twice — two unrelated instances occurring several years apart, and in each instance a black or dark colored sedan with several men inside was parked across the street from my house. In the first instance I was all of 15 years old! The house was my parents’ house! At that time a studious and pious student at a RC high school. What kind of headlines would kneecapping a 15 year-old girl generate? This first instance was precipitated after I called a phone number I should have known better than to dial. The second occurred after I was briefly kidnaped by my drug-crazed next-door-neighbor, who then threatened to sic a local motorcycle gang with a brutal reputation on me if I went to the police — which is exactly what I did, thus the car. I was hustled out of the house by the back door in disguise in the middle of the night, left town, and never returned.

          1. For real. The kidnapping happened in Berkeley in 1967, maybe 1968. A group of people (including 2 women)led by my neighbor burst in on the pretext of needing to use my phone in an emergency. He said he’d kneecap me if I didn’t tell him where “the shit” was. How the hell would I know, I had no idea what “the shit” was. They shoved me into a car and drove me around the Berkeley hills, threatening to pitch me out of the car and down a ravine if I didn’t tell them “where the shit was.” One of the women slapped me around – equal opportunity thugs. They were convinced I’d taken “the shit” I told them that if they took me back, I’d show them where it was and they drove back. When I got in the house I was able to crawl out the bathroom window and escape. I returned after I went to the police. The goons were so hopped up that they didn’t even know how to properly kidnap someone but they did terrorize the hell out of me and I count myself lucky that the only physical harm I experienced was the woman slapping me around. The car with the thugs was there the next morning — I later found that somebody had ripped off their leader and he decided I must be the guilty one (for some reason he didn’t like me), but I also discovered later that one of the goons who was with him did it — and probably egged him on to go after me. It was so melodramatic that at first I began to chuckle because I thought it must be a drama group practicing method acting; but then I realized this was no joke and the .38 in my ribs was real. The cops did nothing, I heard they said that it was just a bunch of hippies fussing and fighting. I was NEVER a hippie!!!!! How dare anybody accuse me of being a hippie! I ran into the guy some time later in LA, where I’d gone to escape him. He recognized me and started following me around to apologize! He was looping in a deep outer orbit powered by drugs. He wrote a couple of mash notes and brought me stolen goods as appeasement! What a pest. I thought he might kidnap me again just so he could continue to profess his profound remorse. I felt like moving back to Berkeley to escape him, but he finally faded off into the sunset, again, literally, because the last time I saw him he was pushing a big upright piano down Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park. That’s when I decided to go back to school.
            I know from kneecapping.

          2. I think it was much more exciting to hang with John Gotti – in a safe environment, where the roles were clearly defined, but that was The Man, and toute l’amérique was fixated on him.

            And Ken was sitting right next to him! Shoulder to shoulder. I can’t get over that.

            Maybe that bastardized French construction is incorrect. I shouldn’t play around like that in my half-assed ignorant way with someone who reads Proust in French

          4. @Jenny, I wrote you a long response last night and *&$*@#WP just gobbled it up😖. I’ll try again. What a horrendous experience for you in Berkeley! What street did you live on? I assume you were no longer living with your parents? I lived on Stuart Street, right off Telegraph, from ‘70 to ‘72. Near Willard aka Ho Chi Minh Park. I was not really ever a hippy either. This was all a few years before the SLA and the Patty Hearst kidnapping. She and Steven Weed lived a few blocks closer to campus. I used to carpool to my teaching job in West Pittsburg, CA, with Weed’s best friend Scott something. Do you think your kidnappers were early SLA types, or just goons?

          5. Damn, Jenny, you’re a bonafied badass! I probably would have just cried and shit myself until they dropped me off somewhere because they were sick of the smell.

          6. Hey, Beej, I saw Uncut Gems this weekend — a very Turturro-like performance from Adam Sandler in a very un-Adam-Sandler-like film.

            It’s got the style and pacing of a Michael Mann movie, and covers subject-matter worthy of David Mamet — compulsive gamblers, wiseguys, hinky diamond-district jewelers and pawnbrokers, Jews, the works. It lacks the rat-a-tat-tat profane poetry of Mamet-speak, but the dialogue and script are razor sharp. Set during a week in April 2012 encompassing Passover and the Celtics-76ers NBA semi-finals.

            Written and directed by the Safdie brothers, Josh and Benny. Well worth a watch.

          7. I can’t wait to see it! I’ve never been a big fan of Mamet; too much of his dialogue feels unnatural to the point of seeming like it was written by an alien who watched a bunch of mob movies. I love Glengarry Glen Ross and I enjoy House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner, but most of his other movies just don’t work for me. In other words, I’d prefer the subject matter be a fit for him, but written by someone who produces more natural dialogue.

            And who never casts Rebecca Pidgeon.

          8. @BJ:

            I’d add Heist, with Gene Hackman, Sam Rockwell, Danny DeVito, Delroy Lindo (and the ever-present Ms. Pidgeon), to your list.

        2. I’ve heard of cases where a lawyer has taken a beatdown for stealing money from a client. And there have been a handful of high-profile incidents where lawyers (usually civil lawyers who have laundered money or otherwise gotten involved in criminal conduct with a client) have been murdered because they were (or were thought to be) cooperating with law enforcement against their former clients.

          But I know of no harm that’s ever befallen a criminal defense lawyer for losing a case after a good-faith effort. About the most a defense lawyer has to fear is that a defendant who has had a bad outcome will badmouth the lawyer to other potential clients in the local lockup.

          1. Yeah, it’s usually not the lawyers who end up dead in America, though neither lawyers nor judges are safe in southern Italy. I’m surprised that Roy DeMeo and his crew didn’t start killing lawyers since they were so crazy seems like they went around torturing and killing anybody they took a dislike to, however minor, and even innocent people; and Gotti benefitted from his demise. I may have my facts wrong — that was Gotti country so you know all about the Gemini Club and all that. This makes me wonder what stories you have to tell about this experience. Have you written about it? If not, you really must. If you have, is it published and available online?

            I found this NYT article that echoes your comment https://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/05/opinion/defense-lawyers-and-the-mob.html and it starts out with a reference to Gotti having no problem finding counsel vs. low-level mobsters in trouble, and discusses the tangled relationship between lawyers who represent these lesser gangsters and the mob bosses who pay their retainers.

            Please rest assured that in bringing this up, I’m not making any insinuations about your work on Gotti’s defense in that case. My grandfather was a lawyer with a modest private practice and he defended all kinds of people, reprobates and good citizens because he was sworn to defend those who sought his services. That’s what a defense lawyer does; that’w what you did.

  5. Wowza. Gotti was one crazy dude. I guess he got his just desserts in prison, getting pummeled in ’96 and then dying of throat cancer and having his jaw removed (iirc). Either way, good to know even evil men get fair representation in the US. Of course, that photo nullifies any chances of you becoming a law professor among the woke. 😉

  8. It is fascinating tradition to allow sketch artists in the courtroom as a work-around to not allowing photographs.

    But why not photographs? With modern cameras you can take a good picture without a flash, and shutters can be very silent in mirrorless cameras.

    1. I think it’s inevitable that cameras will eventually be allowed in federal courts (as they are in many state courts). Already, there have been pilot programs in certain federal jurisdictions to give the idea a try.

      I think unobtrusive live video cameras in a courtroom are generally a good thing, in that they tend to keep the judges honest, knowing that their rulings will be scrutinized by both legal experts and the general public, and by educating the American people on how justice is done in their name. (Cameras can, nevertheless, be detrimental to defendants in particular instances, especially in cases where the facts are gruesome).

      I also think the OJ Simpson case (in which our host played an off-screen role) set the cause of courtroom cameras back a few decades, what with the way so many of the participants so obviously played for camera time.

    1. That’s not a question to which there’s an easy answer, darwinwins.

      The prosecution had an overwhelming case, between the devastating transcripts of Gotti’s conversations picked up by the bug at the Ravenite and the testimony of his second-in-command, Sammy Gravano (the highest-ranking La Cosa Nostra figure ever to turn prosecution witness).

      The federal justice system had had its fill of “the Teflon Don,” (who had previously beaten the rap in three cases, two state and one federal) and came down on him with all its mighty weight in this case. Plus, we didn’t get any discretionary calls or much leeway from the trial judge. (Much of that had to do with the perceived antics of Bruce Cutler in the earlier cases and the trial judge’s determination that nothing of the sort would occur in his courtroom.)

      On the other hand, any potential unfairness had nothing to do with the number of defense witnesses called. I’m not a fan of putting on a defense case at all. I believe you have to create a reasonable doubt during the cross-examination of the prosecution’s witnesses, or not at all. I’m sure acquittals have been won on occasion during a defense case, but much more often they open the door to damaging evidence the prosecution has kept lying in wait to put on in rebuttal.

      1. Reading about Cutler’s antics, it sounds like he is almost a co-conspirator. Where do defense attorneys draw the line when working with people like Gotti?

  11. That’s very interesting and indeed quite a historical moment! Ken, are you planning to write your memoirs any time soon? Or might that be a risky move in terms of future lifestyle?

  12. Ken,

    What did you think of Al Krieger as a defense lawyer? When I was a prosecutor in the Southern District in the 1980’s, I often asked judges who they thought were the best defense lawyers. Krieger’s name was cited pretty often as the best cross-examiner.

      1. We substituted in for Bruce in that case, because he (and a couple other lawyers) were disqualified after they were named as potential prosecution witnesses, owing to their voices being picked up on court-ordered bugging devices the FBI placed in Gotti’s Ravenite Social Club and its environs.

        (An object lesson, if ever a one was needed, why criminal defense lawyers should never socialize with their clients.)

        Bruce was with us every step of the way during trial preparation and the trial itself. But he was precluded from being in the courtroom itself during the testimony of witnesses (under the so-called “rule of sequestration”), although, unsurprisingly, the prosecution never actually deigned to call him as a witness.

    2. Albert was the best there was. I met him when I was a law clerk for a federal judge right out of law school. He tried a big political corruption case in front of my judge. He was the best lawyer I saw during my clerkship (and won an acquittal in that case), so, when it came time to look for work in the private sector, I wrote him a letter. It so happened that he needed an associate, and he hired me to start as soon as my clerkship was over.

  14. Ken,

    What did you think of Al Krieger as a defense lawyer? When I was a prosecutor in then1980’s, several judges told me he was the best cross-examiner they ever saw. To my regret, I never saw him in action.

  17. Fascinating. Are you inclined to write a book about your experiences? After all, Mr Gotti wasn’t your only mob related client. I suppose there are ethical concerns in play that might prevent it. But you’re a lawyer: what do you know from ethics. 😉

    srsly, you’ve a way with words….is there a book in you?

  18. Good seeing you in action, Ken. If my cousin Carmine (“the Cigar) Galante, formerly of the Bonanno family, had known about you back in the 70s, we would have engaged your services in connection with Carmine’s parole revocation case. Alas, cousin Carmine now sleeps with the fishes.

    1. Albert Krieger first came to prominence representing Joe Bonanno — and, later, his son, Salvatore “Bill” Bonanno. (Albert is the lawyer who surrendered Joe Bonanno in federal court, wearing the exact same clothes, down to his underwear and socks, that the oldman was wearing two years earlier during his 1964 “kidnapping.”)

      Albert is also quoted and discussed copiously in Gay Talese’s celebrated book about the Bonanno Family, Honor Thy Father.

  19. So the real question here is, when are they going to indict Giuliani? Lev Parnas wants to share information with the House in Congress and I would sure like to see Giuliani and Nunes going down soon.

  21. Never has a reader picture generated so much interest, and rightly so!

    Unfortunately, this does mean we’ll have to cancel Ken. Sorry, Ken.

  22. Just an off-hand question: as an artist of sorts myself, I’m interested in the subject’s interpretation of what the artist observed. Are you happy with the rendering? Not to say I could pick you out in a line-up based on the profile, but is it an accurate profile? Just curious, not trying to be weird. I find the piece (especially because of its historical implications) as an important rendition of this famous trial.

    1. Marilyn Church is a wonderful artist, I think (and a lovely person; I had dinner at her Upper-Westside apartment with her and her husband a couple years after the trial). But I find the rendering of me in the sketch kinda generic (intentionally so, I assume, since I wasn’t the focus of the proceedings).

      My mom called me after the sketch was shown on the national news that night to tell me she thought I looked handsome, though, and that’s all that really matters. 🙂

      1. But your mom would have said you looked handsome no matter what🤓 (a face only a mother could love and all😬). Just teasing😻

      2. Aww, your mom sounds sweet. Aren’t they all 🙂

        That would be an interesting and fulfilling niche in the artist profession imo.

  23. There are a lot of court drawings from that trial on the internet. Here is one done by a different artist from a slightly different angle; I think that might be KK’s head at far left, mostly blocked by someone else:
    https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55567aa6e4b0176908695758/1457995112404-VHYE9SGRQAM62PRKA8UQ/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kH1DNs4mnCZuJ4jMaqeH60h7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z5QPOohDIaIeljMHgDF5CVlOqpeNLcJ80NK65_fV7S1US3jbfaWm5D1SD6cX3QbqHRTGcTBmc1esQupHOly7Y70uXhSJvi2zZzx6o5nlUw12g/anthonyquinnatgotti.JPG

  24. This entire post is fascinating. I must dig out my books about Gotti. The more you respond to readers’ comments, the more apparent it becomes that there’s a lot more to this astounding story. Don’t tease us like that — I’m just one of several commenters clamoring for you to write about these experiences. You must.

  26. Fascinating Ken! I’d already thought of you as a cool cat, but wow. Your career seems to have been much more interesting than I supposed!

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