The Witness

Nobody ever called Joseph Senatore a typical American boy. Joe is skinny and his shoulders are narrow; his sharp, wise-guy face is sallow and pimply. While other kids were joining the Boy Scouts, Joe was exploring back alleys and hanging around street corners. While other youngsters were preparing for college, Joe was serving time on a robbery rap.

Joe Senatore, at 20, product of the teeming tenements and slums, is what people mean by the phrase "juvenile delinquent." In a quiet Brooklyn courtroom last week, Joe tried to tell why he and his buddies talked tough, acted tough and got tough inside. Judge Samuel Leibowitz had asked Joe, leader of a South Brooklyn gang, if he had anything to say before sentence was passed on a buddy, Anthony

Scarpati, 17, who had shot and killed a member of a rival gang.

Look, Judge. Joe stood up, chewing a wad of gum nervously, but he looked directly at Judge Leibowitz. He talked out of the side of his mouth, and his words came hard and fast. "Look, judge," he said, "sending him to jail isn't going to correct conditions . . . What do you want us to do? It wasn't his fault. Not any more than it was ours. It was an accident." Joe paused, and there was a note of bitterness in his voice. "And you're not going to reform him by sending him to jail for a long time, judge." Judge Leibowitz looked surprised. The blue-ribbon jury (all men) leaned forward.

"No, judge," Joe said, "you're just going to make him bitter. Just as bitter as I am. I was in jail. I know what they did to me there." There was a murmur in the packed courtroom. Joe looked defiant. "Sure I was in jail," he said. "I'm on the right side now, but--" he turned to face the jury, "I still have no respect for the law. How can I? Not when I see the cops cutting in on our crap games and card games. How do you expect us to have respect for the law when the cops themselves don't respect it?"

Unrehearsed. Joe paused. The courtroom was quiet. After a while, he went on: "Look, Your Honor, it's not us kids. It's the neighborhood. We ain't got no place to go. Do you want us to stay home seven nights a week? Look, we go into a poolroom or something, and the cops break in on us . . . We got no place to go!"

Judge Leibowitz, already determined to defer Scarpati's sentence for further study, slowly turned to the jury. "There you have it, gentlemen--unrehearsed, unexpected, but with a thousandfold greater force than if you had read it in some professor's book . . ." He looked down at Joe Senatore. "I agree with you one hundred percent. But what do you think the court should do in this case?"

Said Joe in a small voice: "Judge, I just don't know."

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