Glen Tate: 299 Days: The Stronghold

“Simple. The laws will be simple,” Grant said. “As in, theft of up to $100 in pre-Collapse value is second degree theft. Theft of more than $100 is first degree theft. Second degree theft is a week in jail. First degree theft is between a week and a year. I think we should have a jury decide the sentence. You all live here and it’s your system. You should decide. I’m just throwing out the week and year thing to give you a sense of what I mean by ‘simple’ laws. Every single person out here needs to know what price will be paid for a crime.”

“Second,” Grant said, “the Constitution is how we run this. No unreasonable searches. In an emergency, of course, the constables…”

Right then and there, Grant just picked the term “constables” out of thin air. He needed a term for “cops,” but one that didn’t have any negative connotations to it like “cops” had developed prior to the Collapse. “Constable” had an old English or New England feel to it. A civilized feel. The term implied a part-time, citizen police force. He’d run with it and see how people reacted.

Grant continued, “The constables can run into a house if they’re trying to save a life or chasing someone. They can’t just barge into a house because they feel like it. If they do that, they’re not being constables, they’re being burglars and they should be shot like any other burglar.” That got some gasps from the crowd. Pow nodded. Grant wanted to emphasize that no one was above the law, not even him or the Team.

“Other parts of the Constitution,” Grant said, “that should apply are a jury of your peers. That’s very important. We’re not going to be like the former government that would fine you $10,000 for cutting a tree on your property and then not let a jury of your peers—who probably thought that shouldn’t be a crime at all—determine if you should pay it. Like I said, I would like the jury to decide the sentences. I think it’s reassuring to know that if you are accused of something that a bunch of your neighbors will have the power to acquit you or lower your sentence.”

“Also,” Grant said, “people are innocent until proven guilty. It makes prosecutions a little harder, but you know what? I don’t want to live in a place where I’m guilty until I prove myself innocent. That’s how the old system was, as a practical matter, and I didn’t like it much and I suspect you didn’t, either.” He was using this as a way to remind people how bad the old system was and implying that the Patriot system would be better. Because it would be.

“Of course,” Grant continued, “a person can only be convicted in a trial. A fair trial. No indefinite detentions. No military tribunals. None of that stuff. Trials will be open to the public, with a jury. Always.”

“Also, a defendant gets to confront his or her accuser,” Grant said. “That’s in the Constitution, too.” Grant paused to let all this sink in. It meant that if someone wanted to accuse you of something that could result in you going to jail or getting hanged, he or she had to have the courage to look you in the eye. No anonymous “tips” that led to someone who didn’t like you getting you in jail or killed. Here, in Pierce Point, operating under the Constitution, the jury got to look at the body language of the accuser and see if he or she looked like they were falsely accusing someone.

“A defendant will know the charges against him or her and will have time to prepare a defense,” Grant said. “He or she can have an attorney—although there are no other trained attorneys out here—or any other person to represent them. They can have time to prepare a defense, but they’ll probably be in jail the whole time awaiting trial so they have an incentive to hurry up. But, they can have all the time they need.”

“They’ll have the right to speedy trials, too,” Grant said. “They can have a trial within a few days if they want. A truly innocent person would want that. We won’t let someone rot in jail for a year and then have trial. That’s just like a one-year jail sentence without a trial. You will remember that with all the budget cuts in the past, defendants weren’t getting speedy trials. That’s wrong and we won’t have it out here.”

“Besides, it won’t take us months to prepare for a trial,” Grant said. “We won’t have motions and technicalities. We’ll have simple. Memories of witnesses will be fresh soon after the crime. We’ll get on with it. No twenty-year death row appeals, either. If you’re guilty, and the jury says death, you’re gone.” That got some applause, although that was not Grant’s intention.

“Evidence,” Grant said, introducing a new topic. “We’ll have simple evidence rules; the simple ones that worked just fine in this country for about 150 years until the lawyers,” some people laughed at Grant putting down lawyers, “started complicating everything. No hearsay unless one of the limited exceptions to hearsay applies. I don’t want third-hand stories, with no opportunity for cross examination to test the story, to be sending people to jail or getting them hung.”

“Oh, that’s another thing,” Grant said. “Cross examination. That means the other side questioning a witness to see if there are holes in his or her story. A defendant or his or her representative can cross examine a witness. We’re not convicting people with just one side of the story coming out.”

There was a pause. Rich asked Grant, “What do we do about the mentally ill?”

Grant was glad Rich remembered that topic. “Well, there are some people who, in peacetime, had medications to keep them under control. They don’t have them now. Odds are that several people in Pierce Point are in that category. We can’t have people being a danger to themselves or others. I’m not sure we can treat them, not without all the medicines we took for granted in the past. So we’ll have to keep them confined if they’re a danger. We have a house picked out around here that should do the trick if it comes to that. We would lock it and guard it. If people got better, they would be released. We’d have medical people evaluating them. It would take a hearing and a jury to commit someone. They would need to be a serious danger to be confined. We take liberty very seriously, but we also take community safety seriously.”

That about covered it. “Any questions?” Grant asked.

Someone asked, “Do jurors get paid?” An odd question, but oh well.

Grant thought. He remembered the old system where jurors got $10, lunch, and a parking pass. It was very hard to get people to serve on juries. Some of them lost hundreds of dollars a day by not being able to go to their jobs. Grant said, “Jurors can eat all day at the Grange.” That might not be a big deal now, he thought, but wait until winter when food is scarce. People will be clamoring to be on jury duty.

Mark raised his hand with a smile, “Who will the judge be?” The crowd laughed.

“Well,” Grant said modestly, “me if you’ll have me. I think I’m the only lawyer out here. The lack of lawyers here explains why things are running so smoothly.” More laughs. “Seriously, I will do it but I would need to be elected. And if I start to suck, you need to vote me out.”

“Judge Matson!” someone yelled out. Grant couldn’t help smiling. He flashed back to college when he told Lisa’s parents that he was considering being a judge. Now it was coming true, just in a setting no one could have imagined then.

“Where will the jail be?” someone asked.

“Rich and I were thinking about the abandoned place near here,” Grant said. “Rich, what’s the name of it?”

“The Schenk place,” Rich said. “She died a few years ago and it’s just going to pot. We’d have some guards there. The jail guards can be people who are not as able to do the gate guard duty, which involves more physical activity and probably more shooting.”