Illegal Alien

*15*

Dale and Frank were meeting in a restaurant over lunch. Dale was eating a clubhouse sandwich, French fries, and a Caesar salad; Frank was having a grilled chicken breast and tossed salad with fat-free Italian dressing.

“Doesn’t the fact that there are samples of Tosok blood at the crime scene create problems for us?” asked Frank, after swallowing a piece of radicchio.

“Why?” asked Dale.

“Well, if Tosok biochemistry is anything like human biochemistry, the prosecution should be able to get some sort of genetic fingerprint off it to prove it’s Hask’s blood.”

“They could only do that if they had samples of the blood of the other Tosoks, to match it against.”

“Well, surely they’ll subpoena them.”

Dale made a grim little smile. “If they try that, I’ll be all over them like ugly on an ape.” He took a bite of his sandwich.

“What? Why?”

The lawyer swallowed, and took a swig of Pepsi. “You know how DNA testing got started?”

Frank shook his head.

“It started in Leicester, England. In 1983, someone there raped and strangled a fifteen-year-old girl. The police couldn’t come up with a single suspect. Three years later, in ’86, the same damned thing happened again: another fifteen-year-old, raped and choked to death. This time, the police arrested a guy named—what was it now?—Buckley, Buckland, something like that. He confessed to the recent murder, but not the one three years before.

“Coincidentally, a British geneticist working right there at the University of Leicester had recently been in the news, because he’d invented a technique for finding genetic markers for disease. He called his technique restriction fragment-length polymorphism; that’s the RFLP they kept talking about in the Simpson criminal trial. One of its incidental uses was that it could distinguish one person’s DNA from another, so the cops called him up and said, look, we’ve got the guy who killed one of the girls, but we want to prove he killed both of them. If we send you semen samples collected from both bodies, can you prove that the DNA in them came from the same guy?

The scientist—Jeffreys, his name was—said, sure thing, send them over.”

Frank nodded, and took a sip of coffee.

“Well, guess what?” said Dale. “Jeffreys proved the semen samples both came from the same man—but that man was not the guy who had confessed. The police were furious, but they had to let Buckland go. Now, what to do? How to catch the real murderer? Well, the cops decided they’d ask all male residents of the area between seventeen and thirty-four to submit a blood specimen so that they could be ‘eliminated from the inquiries.’ ” Dale shook his head. “Genteel Brits! Anyway, four thousand men came forward, but none of them matched the killer. Eventually, though, they found that a coworker of a man named Colin Pitchfork—the name should have tipped them off, don’t you think?—had donated a sample in Pitchfork’s place. The police took a sample from Pitchfork, who, of course, was the murderer. That was the first case in which DNA fingerprinting was ever used.”

“Terrific,” said Frank.

“No,” said Dale. “No, it stank to high heaven. Don’t you see? A whole population of people were treated like suspects solely because they were males in a likely age group. They weren’t forced to donate blood, but the idea caught on like wildfire in the community—and anyone who didn’t make a donation was suspect. See? It was a gross violation of civil rights. Suddenly people were being compelled to prove themselves innocent, instead of being assumed to be so. If a cop came up to me and said, look, you’re black and we think our criminal is black, so you prove to me you’re not the criminal, I’d have that person busted off the force. Well, asking the Tosoks to give up blood specimens is the same thing: you belong to this group, therefore prove to us that you’re innocent. No, we can prevent that from happening, I’m sure.”

“But they’re only seven of them!”

“It’s still a civil-rights issue,” said Dale. “Trust me.”

“So the prosecution won’t try to introduce the blood evidence?”

“On the contrary, I’m sure they will. It’ll be a fight, but we’ll win—at least on that point.”

“You’re sure?”

Rice took another bite of his sandwich. “Well—nothing’s ever completely certain.”

Frank frowned. “I was afraid of that.”

Pretrial motions were supervised by the same judge who would preside over the actual trial: Drucilla Pringle. Pringle was forty-nine years old. She was the kind of woman usually referred to as “handsome” rather than “beautiful,” with smooth, cold features. Her skin was white; her hair chestnut brown, cut short. She wore wire-frame glasses and little makeup.

The biggest fight at this stage was over whether the trial should be televised. Judge Pringle ultimately ruled that it would be, given the extraordinary interest the peoples of the entire world had in the outcome of the case. But there were dozens of other motions as well.

“Your Honor,” said Dale, “we move that the jury be sequestered. The media interest in this trial will be huge, and there’s no way to keep the jury from being exposed to possibly biased coverage.”

“Your Honor,” said Ziegler, “I think we’ve all been conscious ever since Simpson of the incredible hardship sequestration poses. Surely with a trial that may go on at great length, we can’t make prisoners out of all the jurors and alternates.”

“I’ve read your brief on this, Mr. Rice,” said Drucilla Pringle, “but I agree with Ms. Ziegler. The jurors will be instructed to avoid media coverage, but they will get to go home and sleep in their own beds each night.”

“Very well,” said Dale. “We move that no photographic evidence of Dr. Calhoun’s corpse be introduced. Such evidence could only serve to inflame the jury.”

“Your Honor,” said Linda Ziegler, rising, “the People vigorously oppose any limitation on photographic evidence. The jury questionnaire will enable us to screen out particularly squeamish individuals. Obviously, a significant portion of our case hinges on demonstrating that the method of killing is one no human would employ. There’s no better evidence of the method than the crime-scene photos showing the mutilated corpse.”

Judge Pringle frowned while she considered this. Finally: “You lose this one, Mr. Rice. But, Ms. Ziegler, I will shut you down so fast it’ll make your head spin if your use of the photos ever goes beyond the merely probative.”

“Very well,” said Dale, “but we further move, Your Honor, out of deference to Dr. Calhoun’s family, that only the jury be shown the photos of the corpse and removed organs.”

“The public is entitled to something, Mr. Rice,” said Pringle.

“We suggest stylized drawings be made, representing the injuries.”

“You’re setting me up for another battle with the media lawyers,” said Pringle, “and I’m not convinced your concern is over the family’s feelings.

You’re hoping for a hung jury, and don’t want to inflame the potential jurors for any second trial.”

Dale spread his arms. “You do me a disservice, Your Honor.”

Pringle scowled, unconvinced. “Pending review of the arguments from the media attorneys, I’ll agree to a ban on publication of the pictures while this trial is in progress; I’ll reserve judgment on whether the ban should remain in place following the handing down of a verdict.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” said Dale. “Next, the defense moves…”

The jury questionnaire, prepared jointly by the prosecution and the defense, contained three hundred and eleven questions. It started off predictably enough, asking for information about age, ethnicity, marital status, employment, level of education, spouse or partner’s background, previous legal or courtroom experiences, political affiliation, organization memberships, and so on. It also asked if the potential juror knew the defendant, the decedent, any of the lawyers, the judge, or any of the courtroom staff.

In addition, it asked about the prospective juror’s beliefs concerning the legal process:

The questionnaire also looked at possible bias from exposure to the extensive news coverage of the Calhoun murder:

It also asked about the Tosoks:

And then came what Linda Ziegler had dubbed the “space-cadet questions”:

Members of LASFS, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, helped in putting together a series of such questions. Apparently, anyone who agreed with the ALF, Star Trek, or Mork Mindy portrayals of aliens would be biased in favor of the defense, whereas those who liked the Babylon 5, Lost in Space, or X-Files portrayals would be biased toward the prosecution.

Regardless of which way they leaned, any out-and-out SF fans or space buffs had to be disqualified, hence these questions:

As with most Los Angeles trials likely to generate considerable media interest, The People of California v. Hask was scheduled into the main downtown Criminal Courts Building. That meant that jury pool had to be drawn from residents of central L.A. A thousand people were summoned.

Of course, not all of them showed up. Men, in particular, often simply disregard jury-duty notices; since little follow-up is ever done, they usually get away with it.

Every one of those who did show up was asked to fill in the jury questionnaire. Over seven hundred prospective jurors were eliminated based on their responses.

Among the reasons potential jurors were excused: they were single parents, or had an elderly relative living with them, or were in a precarious financial situation. One man had the irritable bowel syndrome—and a doctor’s note to prove it. Another was on a waiting list for a kidney transplant and could not guarantee he’d remain available until the end of the trial. A woman in her seventh month of pregnancy was let go as well.

Also struck from the list: all those who had difficulty seeing or hearing or who couldn’t read or write English effectively. Five people were dismissed because they knew one of the lawyers or court staff members—one had been to a lecture Dale had given once and had gotten him to autograph a book.

The remaining one hundred and eighty-five potential jurors—as always in central L.A., predominantly black, predominantly female, predominantly blue-collar or unemployed—were then examined by the lawyers during the process known as voir dire. And, at long last, a total of twelve jurors and six alternates were selected.

Kelkad, captain of the starship, had just returned to Valcour Hall from a meeting at Rockwell International. Frank was in the lounge on the fourth floor with Hask, and they greeted Kelkad as he came off the elevator. “How are the repairs going?” the human asked.

Kelkad’s tuft waved in a way that signaled disappointment. “Slowly.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Frank.

“I suppose it cannot be helped,” said Kelkad. “But, although your race is backward technically, I am most impressed by the speed with which your engineers have grasped our concepts. They really are remarkable.”

Frank grinned. “Darn clever, these humans, eh? Better watch it, Kelkad. Before you know it, we’ll leapfrog right past you.”

Kelkad didn’t laugh. But there was nothing unusual about that.