Дэймон Найт - Orbit 4

And now they took their places around the long black table, Chief Justice Shelley Pendleton at the south end, Senior Associate Justice Oliver Godwin at the north end, and the other associate justices, in order of seniority, around the sides. The great John Marshall gave them his blessing from his portrait over the ornate marble fireplace.

The face of Chief Justice Shelley Pendleton was a paradox—almost ugly in its craggy, masklike impassivity, yet capable of dissolving into a strangely beautiful humanity, warm, humorous, even humble. It was whispered that he had retired to his office and wept after his first affirmation of a death penalty, and that the widow was still receiving a pension from the manager of his immense personal estate. Before his appointment, he had been a well-known figure on Wall Street. Edmonds admired the man. He found it incredible that such lucid opinions could flow from such a complicated intellect. It used to bother him, until he finally concluded that the Chief Justice considered all possible angles, sifted out the major controlling aspects, weighed them against each other in a multi-dimensional balance, and accepted the answer. The Pendleton technique involved all factors of legal precedent . . . stare decisis . . . logic . . . the common law . . . social needs . . . and a fine prophetic grasp of the impact of a given decision on future similar cases. Marshall had been a constitutionalist, Holmes a historian, Brandeis a sociologist, Cardozo a liberal, and Warren a humanist—but Pendleton was none of these; for he was all.

The Chief Justice spoke rapidly and concisely. “The first case on our agenda is Frank Tyson, petitioner, v. New York. Petition for certiorari to the Court of Appeals of New York. All of you know what this one is about, so I need restate the facts but briefly. Tyson was indicted, tried, and convicted of killing our late President Cromway in the entrance of the United Nations Building, with one bullet from a telescopic-sighted rifle, from a window in an empty room in a nearby building. Tyson’s palmprint was found on the rifle, and ballistics tests showed that the bullet taken from the President’s body was fired from the rifle. An elevator operator named Philip Dopher testified that he saw Tyson leave the room, carrying something, and hurry down the stairs. Tyson, a porter in the building, contends that he was supervising a shipment of files to a warehouse for storage, that he heard a shot in the empty room, went in to investigate, found the rifle, picked it up, then looked out the window, took in the scene instantly, and realized that he was holding the weapon that had just killed a President of the United States. He panicked, thinking only to get rid of the rifle.

He ran down the side stairs with it and hid it, unobserved, in a crate of files standing by the freight elevator. Seconds later, the movers took the crate down the elevator to the van waiting on the other side of the building. And there, in that warehouse, it was eventually—found.”

He paused and looked around at the intent faces.

“Thus far, the case does not present a federal question. I want you to ignore the enormity of the crime and the fact that a President of the United States was murdered. All of us knew him personally, and we all have an abiding respect and affection for his memory; some of us are here by his appointment. These aspects standing alone cannot possibly warrant our review. The sole issue of relevance to us, and indeed, the sole ground urged as basis for reversal, is the alleged violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution by officers of the State of New York, in that their warrant to search the warehouse was not issued ‘upon probable cause.’ Specifically, petitioner contends that the officers hired a clairvoyant, one Dr. Drago, to read petitioner’s mind, without his consent, thereby to visualize the location of the rifle, and that the New York magistrate issued the warrant to search the warehouse on this so-called information, and on nothing else. The primary question therefore seems to be, can clairvoyance adequately substitute for the routine and legally sufficient visual and aural observations as basis for a sworn statement on which a search warrant may validly issue? If we accept this as the heart of the matter, we may have to consider ancillary questions. For example, is there actually such a thing as clairvoyance? If we can satisfy ourselves here and now that there is not, then we would of course have some basis for deciding that the warrant was not issued on probable cause: and Tyson might be freed. On the other hand, if we can decide here and now that clairvoyance does exist, we have no escape from the next question: Was the exercise of this power an unconstitutional invasion of Tyson’s right of privacy? If it was not, then he was properly convicted. But if it was an improper invasion, then of course the evidence developed by it—the rifle, and his fingerprints on the rifle, would be inadmissible under the Fifth Amendment, and again he would go free.”

He shifted restlessly in his chair. “There is more. Mrs. Nord, will you please step to the door and ask the marshal to bring in Exhibit Q?”

For over a century, no clerks, messengers, or secretaries had been permitted in the room during conference. The duty of doorman fell to the juniormost appointee.

Helen Nord stepped to the door, waited until the marshal and his assistant had placed the object on the felt pad in the center of the great table, and closed the door after they left.

“As you know,” resumed the Chief Justice, “this is the safe. And you know what it is said to contain. During Tyson’s trial, the so-called clairvoyant, Dr. Drago, testified that he had placed a suitably cushioned auto-developing camera inside, then locked tire safe, and delivered it into the custody of the trial court—but without the combination. So far as the record goes, Drago is the only one who knows the combination. If we grant certiorari, he will provide the combination. In fact, he is waiting in my outer office at the moment. He refuses to give the combination to anyone but me. But back to the facts. At the trial, New York put Drago on the stand to prove the existence of clairvoyance, and hence that the warrant was validly issued. Drago testified that his clairvoyant power—he called it ‘psi’—was erratic, that it comes and goes, and could not always be called up at will. But he said he could prove it existed. He then predicted, over petitioner’s objection, that New York would convict Tyson, that we would grant certiorari, and that the majority of us would reverse Tyson’s conviction, holding that the warrant was not issued upon probable cause. He further predicted that most of us would deny the existence of psi. His proof to the contrary is supposed to be inside Exhibit Q, which we are invited to open after handing down our predicted decision?”

“What colossal impertinence!” roared Oliver Godwin. His white handlebar mustache trembled indignantly.

“Mr. Godwin/’ said Justice Roland Burke coldly, “since the days of John Marshall it has been the custom at these conferences that each of us will be heard in turn without interruption, starting with the Chief Justice and proceeding down the line in order of seniority. I will ask you to await your turn.”

The hard blue eyes of the Senior Associate Justice crackled. He said gravely, “Sorry, Roly. Sometimes I forget you’re no longer barely passing my course in torts, back at Harvard Law. Ah, what a time you had with proximate cause, and those prolix, tautological so-called briefs. In fact, you still do. You used nearly fifty words just to tell me to shut up.”

The ample cheeks of Justice Burke turned pink. “I’d resent that, if you weren’t a senile old man, who should have retired long ago.” He concluded primly, “You confuse tautology with logic.”