Hayford Peirce: Innocent Until Scanned Guilty

Pandemonium in the courtroom.

Judge Johansson blinked owlishly and eventually gaveled the room to silence. “A curious suggestion,” he said softly, his shaggy eyebrows drawn into a frown.

“And one totally without precedent!” cried District Attorney Martinez. “With all due respect to the… the aged and distinguished counselor, I have never heard such a nonsensical—”

“He’s been caught completely off guard,” whispered Sam happily. “I can’t believe it! Here he’s prosecuting the inventor of a time scanner and it’s never occurred to him that he might want to use a scanner to defend himself!”

“True,” agreed Dolores de la Quinta, “this particular technique is totally without precedent. But the admission of fingerprints as evidence was once totally without precedent. And so were all the other forensic advances that today we take for granted in the courtroom.” Her ground effect chair moved forward until she was once again directly beneath the judge. “I have three other points to make, Your Honor.

“First: a defendant is entitled to present all relevant evidence in his defense. If that evidence can only be gathered by scanner, then the scanner must be used.

“Second: it has long since been settled that the individual states can provide defendants with rights additional to those already guaranteed under the Federal Constitution. This is clearly a case where those additional rights must be granted. Just because the legal ostriches and stick-in-the-muds in Washington are unable to formulate any coherent code governing the operation of the time scanner, does that mean that the People of New Mexico must be forever deprived of its benefits?”

Three spectators in different parts of the courtroom burst into lusty applause. It rattled on for a surprisingly long moment before Judge Johansson raised his gavel to tap for silence.

“And third,” concluded Dolores de la Quinta, her voice gradually rising to a near-shout, “just as today we find it barely imaginable that a defendant in a nineteenth-century English courtroom was legally barred from testifying on his own behalf, so someday future generations will find it equally unbelievable that a defendant in twenty-first-century New Mexico could also be barred from testifying on his own behalf!”

“Ridiculous!” shouted Roberto Martinez. “Absurd! Absolutely pre—”

“Not preposterous at all,” murmured Dolores de la Quinta in little more than a hoarse whisper as she sank back into her chair as if totally exhausted. “If you, Judge Harold Johansson, now deny the right of my client to testify in your courtroom on his own behalf, you shall be remembered forever in the history of this country, just as Justice Taney is still remembered for his role in the Dred Scott decision. If, on the other hand, you permit Roderick Bantry to prove his innocence by using the time scanner to testify on his own behalf, then—” the old woman shrugged helplessly “—who knows how history will remember you? The choice, Your Honor, is yours.”

“But either way, I believe you are saying, my name will go down in history, is that it?” Judge Johansson smiled as sardonically as his normally cherubic features would permit. “Well, well. Roger Taney, eh? Nicely done, Madam Justice. A nicely sprung trap you have—”

‘Your Honor is not possibly consid—” interrupted the district attorney in horrified tones.

“Do be quiet, Mr. Martinez,” said the judge mildly, “and let me make up my own mind.” He returned his attention to Dolores de la Quinta. “As I understand the workings of the time scanner—and there was an excellent article about them in last month’s Scientific American, it takes both a graviton reader and an Optical Cell Lattice Image Processor, commonly known as an O-CLIP computer, to produce the effect.”

“That is correct, Your Honor.”

“And where would you procure a graviton reader?”

“I wouldn’t need to. There are already a number of them in geostationary orbit, placed there by the University of Hawaii. Readings from those instruments can be input into computers anywhere in the world. Time scans have been made as far back as seven years in the—”

“But these graviton readers were placed in orbit surreptitiously, were they not? There is, in fact, no official confirmation by any accredited authority that they do in fact actually exist? There is no evidentiary trail, so to speak?”

“The Federation, Your Honor. The Federation has—”

“The Federation carries no weight whatsoever in this courtroom, Madam Justice. So I see no way for you to prove to my satisfaction that these hypothetical objects in orbit are actually providing authentic data for the functioning of an O-CLIP computer. Therefore you may not count on using them for your proposed time scanner.”

Dolores de la Quinta gestured impatiently as if brushing away a pesky fly. “There is still no problem, Your Honor. The physics department of the University of New Mexico at Santa Fe is one of the leading research centers in the world in the development of graviton readers. If you would be good enough to direct that they bring an up-to-date model to the courtroom, along with their own independent expert to operate it, that would easily fulfill our needs.”

“Hmmm. The court will take that proposal under advisement.” Judge Johansson pursed his lips. “Then what about the O-CLIP computer, Madam Justice? They are, as you know, strictly regulated by Federal law, and there are very few of them in existence.”

“There is one nearby, in the trauma room of the Sunny and Harmony Hallowell Trauma Center at Eagle Nest Lake. It would be a simple matter to patch it into the courtroom. With, of course, sufficient protocols to satisfy you of its authenticity.

“Hmmm. To use the O-CLIP would also certainly be a violation of Federal law.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not, Your Honor. The Supreme Court has never actually ruled on the constitutionality of the various restrictions placed on O-CLIP computers. There are four separate cases now working their way toward the Court; I believe that eventually all restrictions will be overthrown.”

“The Congress has also placed severe restrictions on the use of time scanners—they have, in fact, expressly forbidden their use. Are you asking this court to participate in a criminal action, Madam Justice?”

“In light of the very serious issues involved, Your Honor, I honestly believe that in this case the rights of the defendant clearly outweigh the constraints of the government.”

“And do you have something to say, Mr. Martinez?”

“Yes, I do, Your Honor!” The district attorney’s face was grim. “First of all, I want to say that the… the learned counselor is talking about witchcraft! She is trying to bully the courtroom back into the days of the Salem witch trials, in which guilt or innocence was determined by whether or not the witches could float! Furthermore…” The Fighting Bobcat continued at some length.

“I see,” said Judge Johansson at last. “What you actually seem to be saying is that you don’t care to see this time scanner used if it might possibly show the innocence of the defendant instead of his guilt.”

“Not at all. Your Honor! What I am saying is—”

“Say no more, Mr. Martinez.” The judge turned to consider the clock on the wall. “Is it sheer coincidence, Madam Justice, that the defendant’s request for this court to engage in what may well be a violation of Federal statutes should come precisely at the end of a Friday afternoon, well after everything in Washington officialdom is solidly closed for the weekend and the chance of a restraining order being issued is vanishingly small? Yes, it is sheer coincidence?” Judge Johansson smiled skeptically. “Well, then, let us take advantage of what small kindnesses fate occasionally hands us.” He gestured to the uniformed bailiff sitting at the side of the courtroom.