Cross-Examination of Defense Witness ~Mr. Ezra Reisch~

Cross-examination of witness: Mr. Ezra Reisch

Representing the State: Mr. Dragan Rajic, Esq.

Representing the accused: Ms. Lucia Moretti, Esq.

Q: Mr. Dragan Rajic

A: Mr. Ezra Reisch

In Full:

Q. Good day, Mr. Reisch.

A. Good day to you, sir.

Q. (long pause)

The Court: Mr. Rajic? Did you have questions for our witness?

Mr. Rajic: I do, your Honor. I’m just taking a moment to get a measure of this young man. Perhaps imagine myself in the shoes of Dr. Tobias Kane as he met one Ezra Reisch for the first time some two years ago.

The Court: I’d ask, Mr. Rajic, that you cut down on the theatrics and focus more on your cross-examination.

Q. Mr. Reisch, tell me a bit about yourself.

A. That’s sort of a broad question, isn’t it?

Q. Indulge me. You just started med school, didn’t you? Think of this as one of your role-play scenarios. I’m your psychiatrist. This is our first interview. I need to start broad before I can narrow down on what really matters.

Ms. Moretti: Objection. Relevance. Scope. Misleading.

The Court: Normally, I’d agree with you, Ms. Moretti, but given what I’ve let you get away with so far, I’m inclined to allow Mr. Rajic the same latitude. Mr. Rajic, continue with your line of questioning, but make sure you get to the point quickly.

Q. Thank you, your Honor. Back to you, Mr. Reisch. Tell me about yourself.

A. Well, my life isn’t anything to write home about—especially since I don’t have a home to write to. Both of my parents died when I was little. Car accident. Then I bounced my way through relatives and foster homes, all the way into adulthood. You could probably imagine how that went. Not pretty.

Q. Any specifics?

A. How much time do you have? Do you want to know about the time I punched a hole in my uncle’s kitchen wall? Or my first girlfriend, who ended up having to change schools because of all the shit she got for dating me? How about getting myself and three other students expelled from undergrad because we got caught running a cheating ring? It’s all there. ‘Matters of official record’, as you yourself might say. I have nothing to hide.

Q. Evidently not. You sound almost proud of the trail of destruction you left in your wake. Perhaps there’s that ‘bravado’ we’ve been wondering about.

Ms. Moretti: Objection. Relevance. Scope. Argumentative.

The Court: Mr. Rajic, are we getting to that point any time soon?

Mr. Rajic: Your Honor, as my learned colleague so rightly pointed out earlier, this is a case that relies on circumstantial evidence to piece together the truth. If we were to follow Ms. Moretti’s logic, I fail to see how a character assessment of the accused is anything but relevant.

The Court: Very well. Proceed, but you’re on thin ice, counsel.

Q. Work with me, Mr. Reisch, as we tie this back to the case at hand. Please explain to the court how your first meeting with Dr. Kane came about.

A. It came about when I was rock bottom. Like I said, I’d just been expelled. I’d run out of couches to surf. Homeless, penniless, futureless. What would you have done if you were in my shoes? But I guess I didn’t even do a good enough job of that, which is how I ended up in involuntary care.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Q. And Dr. Kane just happened to be the psychiatrist assigned to your care.

A. Yes. A chance encounter. A life-changing one for me.

Q. Some might argue, for the other party, even more so. Please continue. How did what I assume started as a strictly doctor-patient relationship… er, become what it was at the time of Dr. Kane’s death?

A. You hesitated with your choice of word there, Mr. Rajic.

Q. What can I say? There were quite a few different verbs that could’ve applied, but I decided on the most neutral one. Please answer the question, Mr. Reisch.

A. It’s not some big conspiracy, you know. Dr. Kane… he was just a kind, caring man—generous with his time and his feelings. He said it himself, didn’t he? He took pity on me. Simple as that.

Q. So much so that he was willing to breach professional ethics?

A. He gave a young man in the lowest point of his life a place to stay. A path to follow. A future to look forward to. If he breached his ethics to do that, well, I suppose he weighed the underlying risks against the merits of intervention… and came to his own decision.

Q. But surely, you’re far from the first troubled young person with potential he’d come across in his career. Why you in particular? What was it about you that made him deviate from his usual course?

A. How are you so sure it was all down to me?

Q. You were the one variable in a series of constants.

A. How do you know that, though? Maybe it was something else in his life. Something he wrestled with within himself. I seem to recall you yourself digging into some of that earlier, while you were chatting with Ms. Arenas.

Q. Be that as it may, you were unquestionably the catalyst. And my question stands: why?

A. And I don’t think I’m the right person to ask.

Q. (pause) Very well. Let me ask you this, then. What was your reason for visiting Dr. Kane on the night of October 20th, 2024?

A. Do I need a reason to visit my friend?

Q. A friend you hadn’t been in contact with for several months. A friend who—very publicly, I might add—threatened to kill you. Yes, I’d say you’d need a good reason.

A. I wanted to see him one last time. I wanted to say goodbye.

Q. You were leaving? Out of town? Out of state?

A. Something like that. Too much had happened here. Between me, Dr. Kane, and Ms. Arenas. I wanted a fresh start. Somewhere my ‘troubled past’—your words, not mine—wouldn’t follow me.

Q. But you’d just been accepted into medical school. No small feat for anyone but especially for someone of your background. You were willing to throw all that away for a fresh start?

A. Yes. I couldn’t bear the thought of being so close to Dr. Kane while knowing we could never be together.

Q. But then, in your earlier testimony, you said you’d hope to still be a student after this trial is over.

A. Yes. Circumstances change. Have changed. I think that goes without saying.

Q. Sorry, Mr. Reisch, but I just have to say this. You’re just full of contradictions, aren’t you? Flip this flop that. Changing your answers, your beliefs, even your personality to suit whatever—

Ms. Moretti: Objection. Argumentative.

The Court: Sustained. The witness is answering your questions as you ask them. What more do you want from him, Mr Rajic?

Q. (pause) One person who can’t change his answers is Dr. Kane, so let’s go back to him. You rang his doorbell at 8:13 PM on October 20th, 2024. He invited you in after a fairly brief exchange, which—I have to be honest—surprises me somewhat. What did you say to him that he let you in so easily?

A. That I hoped we could talk. That we needed to talk, after everything that had happened. But if you want my opinion, I think he was just happy to see me.

Q. Fake smiles and unearned swagger. Alright, then what happened?

A. We went to his kitchen first. Small talk. Sort of just catching up, you know? He poured me a glass of whiskey. I declined, and he drank it himself.

Q. I see. Then you moved your conversation to the living room?

A. Yes. And that’s when things got heated, after I told him my main reason for seeing him that night.

Q. That you were leaving.

A. Yes. He became upset. Crying. Throwing things. All the things I said in my earlier testimony. And the rest, well, you’ve already heard the rest.

Q. After everything that had happened—your words, not mine—Dr. Kane still wanted you in his life. Couldn’t handle the news of you leaving him.

A. That’s just the kind of man he was. Kind, caring, loving.

Q. Possessive?

A. Your word, not mine.

Q. (pause) At any point during the evening—as you drove to Dr. Kane’s house, as you stood at his porch and asked to catch up, as you declined a drink in his kitchen, and as you went into the living room to say your goodbye—did it never occur to you to imagine how he might react? You claim to know this man well, and I’m inclined to believe you on that front. So you would’ve known about his insecurities, about his volatility, about his crumbling marriage and mental state, let alone his—shall we say—complicated feelings towards you. Did you not stop to think it might be ill-advised—perhaps even disastrous—to have visited him that night and to have sprung your news on him when he was at his most vulnerable?

A. I did.

Q. Yet you went ahead anyway.

A. Yes.

Q. Do you regret it? Do you really wish you could take any of it back?

A. (pause) Are you asking me, or are you asking him?

Q. (long pause) No further questions, your Honor.