Hayford Peirce: Innocent Until Scanned Guilty

“I think,” said the former justice, “that our only hope is to turn the prosecution’s arguments back against them. They’re going to argue that because of the existence of Emily’s clinic, and of others like it, extremely serious doubt can now be cast upon the legitimacy and even the very concept of interrogation by perceptualization enhancement. They’ll shout over and over again until it runs out the jury’s ears that Roderick Bantry is guilty because he was found lying in Linda Rawlings’s blood with the murder weapon in his hand and can’t explain how either he or the weapon got there.”

“Yes,” agreed Sam, “that’s exactly what the Fighting Bobcat will do. And unfortunately for Roderick, it’s a pretty damn good argument. I asked my office to do a little research: in the last fifteen years there have been at least seven instances of cases going to court in which PE has played no role at all because of circumstances similar to Roderick’s. The defendant swore he couldn’t remember what happened; interrogation by PE confirmed it; and the trial was conducted solely on the basis of the physical evidence.”

“ Seven —as many as that.” Shiny black eyes blinked at Sam from a face as dark and wrinkled as a prune. Snow-white hair was pulled into a tight bun on the top of Dolores de la Quinta’s head. “What was the outcome?”

“Of the seven cases? Four guiltys, two innocents, and one mistrial, later dismissed.”

“Hrmph. Not quite the same batting average as the hanging judges have with PE.” The old jurist shook her head. “Nasty stuff, that PE, never did like it. Liked it even less when they overturned the Fifth Amendment in order to legalize it.” Her eyes glinted. “You were responsible for that, weren’t you, young man? You have much to answer for.”

“The painlusters were responsible, Madam Justice. People were fed up with them, the country was coming apart. I was just a tool.”

“And as a tool you did your part to bring it back together?”

Sam spread his hands. “There are no more painlusters.”

“Nor lots of other people who got their heads lopped off legally one way or another over the last thirty years.”

“At least they were all guilty! We know they were. And now there’s no more death penalty.”

Dolores de la Quinta snorted in a distinctly unladylike fashion. “And is that thanks to your daughter and people like her—or merely to the fact that you’d managed to kill off everyone in the country with an ounce of gumption to them?”

Sam grinned bleakly to hide his discomfort. This prickly old dragon was definitely not a pushover. No wonder she had been the most universally reviled Supreme Court Justice of the last century. “I prefer to think that the voice of the people was raised—and listened to in Washington.”

“Hrmph! Spoken like a true politician, never want to take responsibility for anything, not if they can weasel their way out of it.” The thin line of her incredibly wrinkled mouth tightened even further. “Be that as it may, however, Senator Ferron, I do thank you for getting past all my tedious guardians to bring this case to my attention. At least you’re one politician who seems to have enough sense to occasionally think about bolting the barn door before all the horses have fled.”

“So you do agree with me about the scanner? How—”

“Of course I do. If I didn’t, you wouldn’t be sitting here right now, would you? Of course we’ve got to do something about this wretched invention. And if you’d listen for a moment instead of talking all the time, that’s just what I was trying to tell you: how we’ll have to deal with this Fighting Gamecock of yours or whatever he calls himself.

“What we will say to the court, Senator Ferron, sounding, of course, as polite and reasonable as we can possibly be, is that it’s finally time that the citizens of this great country of ours took matters into their own hands and settled this whole scanner business once and for all without waiting for the big domes in Washington up there to tell them what to do, that it’s just too damned important an issue to be left to all those politicians in Congress. Here’s your golden chance, Your Honor, we’ll say to the presiding judge, whoever she may be, to prove whether Roderick Bantry is guilty or not—and in so doing, set a precedent that will go down in history with Marbury vs. Madison, Brown vs. the Board of Education, and Miranda vs. Arizona—if you have the gumption to do it, Your Honor!”

Sam exhaled a tiny sigh of relief. This ancient and legendary jurist apparently saw things exactly the way he did. “Yes,” he murmured, “yes. With any luck at all, that’s an argument that ought to resonate powerfully with a small-town New Mexico judge who wouldn’t mind seeing their name immortalized in the history books.”

“I surely hope so, young man. Because I think that’s about the only chance your son-in-law has for walking out of that courtroom a free man.”

“Yes. And except for the fact that this damn Martinez has now got his entire reputation invested in this one case, I think we could have gotten him to go along with us in trying to establish a precedent. As it is, there’s going to be an enormous amount of pressure on him from every law enforcement agency in the state to allow the scanner’s use. It’s going to be awfully hard for poor old Martinez to argue against utilizing a tool that will wipe out crime overnight.”

“Hmmm. Didn’t I once hear that identical argument being made thirty years or so ago for perceptualization enhancement?”

Sam grimaced. “I should be more precise. There’ll always be the occasional spur-of-the-moment criminal act. What the scanner will do is to keep any perpetrator from ever going undetected.”

The old woman pursed her lips dubiously. “Possibly, possibly. The one thing I’ve learned in my ninety-four years is to be very, very leery whenever I hear the words never or ever —that’s almost an iron-clad guarantee that old Mother Nature or Someone Up There has something up her sleeve that you hadn’t thought about—and that it’s going to happen just exactly the way you didn’t want it to.”

“Yes, I think that’s been the experience of my own life, too—particularly, I’d say, ever since this wretched scanner was first invented.”

“This wretched scanner,” Dolores de la Quinta muttered as she rose slowly to her feet, “this wretched scanner indeed. I certainly hope with all my being that we can get this Roderick Bantry of yours freed—primarily so that I personally can give him the horsewhipping he deserves for burdening us with such a monstrous perversity.”

“You really think it’s monstrous?”

“What I think is of no importance, young man. What I know is that it’s going to cause a monstrous amount of commotion—and that this commotion must be as regulated and as constrained as possible. I am, I hope, above all things a realist. Just because you don’t like the genie that’s come out of a particular lamp doesn’t mean that you can turn your back on him and hope he’ll go away. That’s simply a guarantee that he won’t go away.”

“If only the United States Senate were composed of people like you I’d sleep a lot sounder at night.” Sam took her dry, withered hand in his. “I’ll be forever in your debt for your help, Madam Justice. If you permit, just as soon as we’ve decided who will represent Roderick in—”

“—In court, young man?” Dolores de la Quinta drew herself up to her full five feet and fixed Sam with a basilisk’s stare. “Did you think there was any question of that? I shall represent him—and damn well, too, if I say so myself.” She marched across the room to pull open the door. “I may even sit in that damned chair that my damned family wants me to use to keep from breaking my neck—maybe it’ll make ’em feel sorry for me.”