Illegal Alien

*16*

Judge Pringle’s courtroom was on the ninth floor of the Los Angeles County Criminal Courts Building—the floor the Simpson criminal trial had been held on, the floor that required all persons to be searched before entering it.

The walls were paneled in California redwood. Pringle’s bench was mounted against the back wall, beneath a carved wooden version of the California state seal. The California flag, with its brown bear, was hanging from one pole to the judge’s right of the bench, and a U.S. flag hung from another.

On the bench the judge had a computer monitor, an open laptop computer, and over a dozen law books held up by black metal bookends.

Facing the bench was the defense table, on the judge’s right, and the prosecution table, on her left. Each of the tables had a computer monitor and a video monitor mounted on it. In between them was a lectern where the lawyer asking questions could stand—the days when attorneys loomed right into the witness’s face, a la Perry Mason, were long gone.

The jury box was next to the prosecution table. It held a double row of seven padded chairs; two of the alternates would sit with the main jurors.

The actual jurors—seven women and five men; six blacks, three Latinos, two whites, and an Asian—all wore bar-coded badges.

Next to the jury box, the camera for Court TV was set up; it was actually controlled by a technician at the back of the room, using two little joysticks.

At the side of the room, behind the bailiffs desk, six Tosok chairs had been installed so that Kelkad, Rendo, Torbat, Dodnaskak, Stant, and Ged could watch their shipmate stand trial; the Tosoks had spent the last several weeks screening videotapes of various previous murder trials so that they would understand procedures and proper conduct.

Frank Nobilio had a seat in the first row of the public gallery, directly behind where Dale Rice was sitting. Frank had been allowed this spot as a courtesy; he didn’t have to line up overnight along with the other members of the public. On Rice’s left sat Hask, in a special chair. As always, he was wearing a grayish-brown tunic covered with many pockets.

Rice’s right sat Michiko Katayama, his associate, a slim thirty-five-old woman.

Judge Pringle, clad in black judicial robes, wrote something on a legal pad then looked up. “Are counsel ready to proceed?”

“Ready, Your Honor,” said Linda Ziegler.

“Ready, Your Honor,” said Dale Rice. As was his tradition on the first day of trial, he was wearing an absolutely pristine white silk tie; he wouldn’t get to speak, except for objections, until after the prosecution’s opening statement, but he wanted to send a message of innocence to jury in those crucial first moments.

“You may begin, Ms. Ziegler,” said Pringle.

Ziegler got up from the prosecution table and came over to stand in front of the jury box. She was wearing a navy-blue jacket over a white blouse.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as you know from voir dire, my name is Linda Ziegler, and I’m a senior deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County. My associate in this case is Trina Diamond; you’ll hear from her later in the trial.

“You don’t need me to tell you that this is an unusual case. The defendant in this trial is not a human being. Rather, he is an alien, an estraterrestrial, an entity from another world. We’re all sophisticated people, ladies and gentlemen. We’ve all been around. But, still, I know from the discussions during voir dire that you are like me. You might have believed that life on other worlds was theoretically possible—we live in a big universe, after all, and it seemed unlikely, if we stopped to think about it, that this one tiny planet orbiting an unremarkable star, might be the only home of life in all of creation—but you never thought that the question would be anything more than the subject of documentaries on The Learning Channel, or shows like the decedent’s Great Balls of Fire!

“But all that’s changed in the last few months, hasn’t it? Aliens have come to Earth! As a species, we rose remarkably well to this event. Perhaps remembering all of our own botched encounters between formerly isolated peoples on this world, we managed to deal with the arrival of the starship in a civilized manner.

“And, you know, it was wonderful to meet the Tosok aliens, wasn’t it? We extended the hand of friendship to these new arrivals.

“But things did not stay wonderful for long, ladies and gentleman, and that’s why you’re here today. Dr. Cletus Calhoun was—there’s no other word for it, is there?—was butchered, his body carved up, his organs scattered about. I see some of you wincing, and I do regret, dear people, that we will have to dwell on the details of this grisly crime during the course of the trial.

“As you know, Hask, one of the seven Tosoks who have come to Earth, has been charged in the death of Dr. Calhoun. Ms. Diamond and I, on behalf of the People of California, will demonstrate to you, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Hask did, willfully, knowing full well what he was doing, murder Dr. Calhoun. We are seeking a conviction on the charge of first-degree murder. To substantiate such a charge, we have to demonstrate that the method was within the reach of the defendant—and it was, and we shall prove that to you, beyond all reasonable doubt. And, because we are seeking a first-degree conviction, we must also demonstrate that this crime was no spontaneous act of self-defense, nor a momentary lapse into unthinking rage, but rather was premeditated, was contemplated in advance, was planned by the defendant, and carried out—indeed, was executed—with purposeful deliberation—and this, too, we shall prove to you, beyond all reasonable doubt…”

Eventually, it was Dale’s turn. He rose slowly and crossed in front of the prosecution’s table as he made his way over to stand in front of the jury box. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “my name, as you may recall, is Dale Rice, and I’m representing the defendant, Hask. My co-counsel is Ms. Michiko Katayama.

“Now, I bet all of you have seen Perry Mason, but I don’t want you to have any unrealistic ideas about what a defense attorney does. Good ol’ Perry, he used to browbeat everyone on the witness stand until someone other than the defendant confessed. Well, that’s unlikely to happen in this trial.

The State has accused my client of murder, but as the judge will instruct you, the simple fact that he’s been accused is not to be taken at all as evidence of guilt. My client has pleaded innocent. And you must understand that he has no obligation—absolutely none—to prove his innocence.

“Nor do we, as his defense lawyers, have any obligation to provide an alternative explanation of how Cletus Calhoun came to be dead. The most natural thing in the world for you to ask yourselves is, ‘Well, if Hask didn’t do it, who did?’ But you cannot convict based on that question. You can only convict based on the actual evidence in this case. And if that evidence leaves a reasonable doubt in your mind about my client’s guilt, then you must acquit him, even if that means the murder Cletus Calhoun remains unsolved. Yes, the crime in question was horrible and brutal, and yes, we all want someone to pay for it. But you are in a tricky position: the only person you can make pay for it is my client. So, you must exercise great caution and great restraint: you must be sure that your natural desire to see someone pay, combined with the fact that the only person you have the ability to punish is Hask, does not sway you to find him guilty when there is still doubt in your mind about whether he really did commit the crime.

“There’s another unusual circumstance in this case. It’s conceivable that if Hask did not commit the murder, then perhaps one of the other Tosoks did.

But you can no more allow the wrong Tosok to be punished than you could allow the wrong human to be punished. The mentality that ‘one of them did it, so one of them should pay’ can have no place your deliberations. Each of the seven Tosoks is an individual. You must be convinced beyond reasonable doubt that this specific Tosok, my client Hask, committed the murder if you are to find him personally responsible for it…”