Illegal Alien

*38*

There was still the matter of The People of the State of California v. Hask.

After the arrest of the other Tosoks, Hask and Seltar had gone public with their story, and Hask retook the witness stand to tell it all. There was no doubt now that he had indeed killed Cletus Calhoun—Dale had been wrong in assuming Seltar had been directly involved.

Linda Ziegler made her closing argument, Dale followed with a passionate plea for leniency in his summation and argument, then—as California law allowed—Ziegler got the final word, presenting a summation that reminded the jurors that Cletus Calhoun was dead, and regardless of everything else, someone had to answer for that crime.

Finally, Judge Pringle took the jury through CALJIC: the California Jury Instructions—Criminal. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” she began, “you have heard all the arguments of the attorneys, and now it is my duty to instruct you on the law as it applies to this case. You will have these instructions in written form in the jury room to refer to during your deliberations. You must base your decision on the facts and the law.

“You have two duties to perform. First, you must determine the facts from the evidence received in the trial and not from any other sources. A ‘fact’ is something proved directly or circumstantially by the evidence or by stipulation. A stipulation is an agreement between attorneys regarding the facts.

“Second, you must apply the law as I state it to you to the facts, as you determine them, and in this way arrive at your verdict.

“Note this well: you must accept and follow the law as I state it to you, whether or not you agree with the law. If anything concerning the law said by the attorneys in their arguments or at any other time during the trial conflicts with my explanation of the law, you must follow my directions…”

The jury instructions took most of the afternoon, but finally they came to an end.

“You shall now retire,” said Drucilla Pringle, her voice noticeably hoarse by this point, “and select one of your number to act as foreperson. He or she will preside over your deliberations. In order to reach verdicts, all twelve jurors must agree to the decision. As soon as all of you have agreed upon the verdicts, so that when polled, each may state truthfully that the verdicts express his or her vote, have the forms dated and signed by your foreperson and then return with them to this courtroom.”

“What if the jury brings in a conviction?” asked Dale. He and Frank had returned to Dale’s office; there was no telling how many hours or days the jury would spend deliberating. Hask was off spending what might be his final few hours of freedom with Seltar.

“Then we appeal, no?” said Frank.

Dale sighed. “Everyone says that. But, you know, we can’t appeal a jury verdict per se. They’re not subject to any kind of review. You can only get an appeal if the judge has made a mistake. In this kind of case, it has to be a mistake in law. If Pringle sustained objections she should have overruled, if she disallowed evidence she should have allowed, or if her instructions to the jury were flawed, then we can get an appeal hearing—but that’s no guarantee that the verdict will be overturned.”

“Oh,” said Frank. “You always hear about appeals. I thought we automatically got another shot.”

“No. Which is why I asked the question: what do we do if the verdict is guilty?”

“I don’t know,” said Frank. “Any ideas?”

“Yes. Have a word with your boss.”

“Excuse me?”

“There are only two people in this world who are more powerful than that jury. One is the governor of California, and the other is the president of the United States.”

Frank nodded. “An executive pardon.”

“Exactly. There’s no way the governor is going to go against Monty Ajax when he knows that Ajax is going to be running in the next gubernatorial race—so that leaves the president.”

“Christ, I don’t know. He hates stuff like this, especially in an election year.”

“We have a client who did indeed kill a human being,” said Dale. “This may be Hask’s only hope, and—”

Dale’s intercom buzzed. He pounded the button. “Yes, Karen?”

“The courthouse just called. The jury has a verdict.”

Frank jumped to his feet, and even old Dale Rice managed to move his vast bulk quickly.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?” asked Judge Pringle.

Frank was seated behind Dale and Michiko. Hask had also returned; his tuft was moving in agitation. His front eyes were locked on the jury box; his back eyes were locked on Seltar, who was sitting alone in the bank of six Tosok chairs at the side of the courtroom. There was a hush over the room; every spectator and every reporter was leaning forward.

The foreperson, a thin black man in his early thirties, rose. “We have, Your Honor.”

“Please hand it to the clerk.” The paper was passed to the clerk, who carried the sheet to the judge’s bench. Drucilla Pringle unfolded the page and read the verdict. Judges were supposed to be stone-faced—they knew every eye in the court was on them at such moments. But Pringle was unable to prevent one of her eyebrows from climbing her forehead. She refolded the verdict and handed it back to the clerk.

“You may read the verdict, Mr. Ortiz.”

The clerk cleared his throat, then: “We, the jury in the above entitled case, find the defendant, Hask, not guilty of the crime of first-degree murder of Cletus Robert Calhoun, in violation of Penal Code section 187, as charged in count one of the information.

“And we further find that the defendant did not use a deadly weapon, to wit an alien cutting device, in the commission of this crime.

“And we further find that in the commission and attempted commission of the above offense the defendant, Hask, did not personally inflict great bodily injury upon Cletus Robert Calhoun, and was not an accomplice to the above offense, within the meaning of Penal Code section 12022.7.”

Frank let out a great cheer and reached over the wooden fence to thump Dale on the back. Michiko Katayama had thrown her arms as far around her boss as they would go and was hugging him. Seltar rushed over to embrace Hask across the wooden barrier between the audience section and the defense table.

For her part, Linda Ziegler was absolutely stunned, her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open a bit. Next to her, her second chair, Trina Diamond, just kept blinking.

“This is your verdict, so say you one, so say you all?” asked Judge Pringle, facing the jury.

The jurors nodded. “Yes,” they replied in unison.

“Counsel, do you wish the jurors polled?”

“No, ma’am,” said Dale, grinning from ear to ear.

“The People?” said the judge.

“Ah, no,” said Ziegler, after a moment. “No, Your Honor.”

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do you wish to address the lawyers?”

The jurors looked at each other. They certainly were under no obligation to do so, but California law permitted them this opportunity. The foreperson turned to Pringle. “Nothing we say now can weaken the power of our verdict?” he asked.

“That’s correct,” said Pringle. “What’s done is done.”

The foreperson nodded. “Then, yes, we would like to say something to the lawyers.”

“Go ahead, Mr. Foreperson.”

The man took a deep breath, then looked at Ziegler. “I’m sorry, Ms. Ziegler. You should have won. You had him dead to rights. I mean, we all agreed that he did do it. He did kill Mr. Calhoun.”

Ziegler’s eyes went even wider. “Jury nullification,” she said.

The foreperson looked at Pringle. “Your Honor, you instructed us in the law. But, well, we couldn’t bring ourselves to apply it.” He looked to Ziegler again. “Hask didn’t mean to kill Calhoun, so it wasn’t premeditated. Still, we could have found him guilty of a lesser charge, like involuntary manslaughter. But if we’d found him guilty, there might have been an appeal—the defense can appeal guilty verdicts, but the prosecution can’t appeal innocent ones, isn’t that right, judge?”

Pringle nodded. “In most cases, that’s essentially correct.”

“So we let him go. We let him go so he wouldn’t be jailed; after all, we all agreed he presented no threat to anyone else.” The foreperson looked at the other jury members, then turned back to the judge. He shrugged a little. “Yes, the rest of the crew are now in prison—but Kelkad did send a message to his home world, and other Tosoks will be coming to Earth at some point. Who knows what changes there have been in Tosok society in two hundred years? We thought that if these new Tosoks saw that we are a reasonable, compassionate, and forgiving people, then maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t wipe our planet clean of life.”

“I don’t understand,” said Frank. He stopped the grinning Dale before the lawyer stepped out of the courtroom into the crowd of waiting reporters. “What is—what did Ziegler call it?—‘jury nullification’? What’s that?”

“The jury is the conscience of the community,” said Dale. “They can do whatever they damn well please.”

“But the judge said they had to follow the law, whether they agreed with it or not.”

Dale shrugged. “Judges always say that—but, in fact, there’s no legislation to that effect, and plenty of precedent to the contrary. The jury never has to explain or justify its decision to anyone, and there’s no mechanism for punishing jurors for making a verdict that goes against the evidence. If they want to let someone go free, they’re entitled to do that.”

“Thank God for juries,” said Frank.

“For once,” said Dale, still grinning from ear to ear, “I agree with you.”