"An expert witness," Billy Flynn had told me, "is the fellow with credentials that you pay to testify to what you want him to testify to. An incompetent expert witness is one called by the other side."
Summed it up pretty well, I thought. So one distinguished jerk says the sky is blue, and another says the sky is black. You have only a vague idea of what the sky is, having never seen it. Who do you believe?
Why, the one who presents himself best on the stand, of course. The one who best survives the withering cross-examination leveled by the other side. Before we even sat down around the table, the Judge had already consulted the three or four best experts in the field—any field. And it was largely a formality, since the Judge was already conversant with everything in the field, and brought to the problem the experience of a million trials, a billion pieces of evidence.
Oh, it was a black day for the legal profession when the JPT was finally implemented. Public confidence in a JPT verdict began at a level best described as dubious, but over fifteen years had soared. It was so high now that there was a widespread perception that anyone who asked for a jury trial must be guilty. Which had, naturally, tainted the jury pool. Which had left lawyers in the uncomfortable position of arguing to retain the old system because... well, because it was the only method for having their guilty clients acquitted.
I'll leave it to you to imagine how this argument played with the taxpayers.
A black day indeed.
And things were certainly not looking good for old Sparky. What could the little wirehead have in mind?
"All evidence currently under submission having been presented, the court will now hear arguments."
Which is where the real fun begins in JPT court.
"Your Honor, I would—"
"Everybody's calling me 'Your Honor.' Flattery will get you nowhere."
There was laughter from the audience.
"I'm simply following my client's lead," said Flynn, affably. "And why not? I was trained in respect for the court, and even if this one doesn't demand it, I do respect it, and showing respect hurts nothing. And I would not dream of attempting flattery." More laughter. "So, Your Honor, I will state at the outset that my client did in fact kill John Valentine, in the manner and on the date specified. And that he did so in self-defense."
"You could have saved the court twenty minutes of summation if you had said that up front," the lead prosecutor rasped, cuttingly. This was a truly hard, squinty-eyed woman with what looked like stainless-steel hair and brass mascara, a regular harpy. But possibly I'm prejudiced.
Her name was Roxy Hart, and she was, naturally, the chief prosecutor for King City and she had her eye on the mayor's chair. This was a perfect opportunity for her to get her face before the voters, though she must have thought long and hard about it. Putting murderers in jail is always politically popular, but little "Sparky" did have his defenders and die-hard fans. But my decision to go before the Judge had made it virtually no-lose for her. She hardly had to do any work. It had all been done for her by the police department seventy years ago, and it was so open-and-shut she could be seen as simply playing out the string. The criticism, if any, should fall upon the Judge. She would be walking a fine line, Billy told me, between being tough on crime and not being too ruthless with a popular figure.
"She'll bluster for a while," he said, "then she won't oppose a reduction in the charges. Manslaughter, something like that."
"The assertion that this killing was self-defense is ludicrous," she went on. "John Valentine was armed with a stage sword, a prop. There has been no evidence introduced that he was trying to kill Kenneth Valentine."
"That 'prop' had an edge sharp enough to shave with," Billy countered. "Both witnesses saw numerous wounds on my client. Whether John actually meant to kill my client is something we will never know, but it is clear that he meant to butcher him a bit. In this circumstance, it is reasonable for Kenneth to feel fear for his life, which is the test of self-defense."
"This was no more or less than a fencing lesson."
"A very bloody one, and a—"
"A fencing lesson like a dozen other lessons during that time. We can bring witnesses to testify that, on the stage today, wounds are not uncommon, indeed, are even expected while one learns the craft of fencing. The wounds sustained by the younger Valentine did not prevent him from fleeing the scene of the crime. Without medical attention of any kind, he went to the Texas disneyland, where he was attended by the resident doctor, who has stated that the wounds were not life-threatening."
"It's easy to determine that after the fact, not so easy to know when you're being used as a human pincushion."
"Oh, please! You're grandstanding for the polls."
Which, naturally, is what they both were doing.
It went on like that for a few minutes, each of them shouting over the other. The Judge let it go; the CC has no trouble following a dozen conversations at once.
You know who had benefited the most from the new system? Dramatists. For centuries playwrights have written scenes, entirely fantasy, of courtroom confrontations. People accept them because drama cannot take the time to be boring, and that is exactly what court is. Boring. Many people never realize this until they get into court themselves, and see how staggeringly slow the proceedings can be.
Because the Judge does not care about decorum and allows almost limitless latitude in what can be said, things can get very hot indeed in the argument phase of a JPT trial. Shouting matches are the standard, and fistfights are common.
But why allow all this horseplay at all? The Judge is not going to be swayed by emotion, is it?
Only in one sense, and that is in the polls Prosecutor Hart mentioned. The polls: the reason people called the JPT system the Court of Common Sense. The last stand of the jury system. The only part of the new regime that lawyers actually like, because it is the only part that lets them appeal to emotion.
Before a trial, and most especially during the trial, the Judge had its fingers on the public pulse. Since the CC was in constant contact with virtually every citizen of Luna (with a few exceptions, like the Outer Amish, my father, and me), this process wasn't intrusive. The average citizen had dozens of transactions with the CC every day. During one of them, the Judge might ask, "Suppose a man steals a loaf of bread..." or whatever might be at issue in the case. The citizen would listen, ask questions, then deliver an opinion on the matter. Was it fair? Did the proposed penalty conform with the intent of the lawmakers, and not just the letter of the law? Would following the letter of the law result in an injustice, or unwarranted leniency? Was the crime in fact worse than the lawmakers had envisioned when setting the penalties?
The answers were added into the complicated equation, constantly being revised, that determined the verdict, or in the case of the JPT, the "number." This equation was the "protocol" part of the JPT. In fifteen years the algorithms of justice had become supremely refined. They were approaching, though might never reach, that lovely word "fair." As in fair play. No concept of fairness would ever satisfy everyone, but if you satisfied most of the people most of the time, you were doing a lot better than the old system ever had.
In my own case, no hypothetical questions were necessary. The Judge simply asked, "What do you think of the Sparky case?" and the average citizen already knew about it. Thus a few thousand randomly chosen citizens were made to function as an unselected panel. They had put in their "jury duty," an onerous burden under the old system. It had wasted ten minutes of their time, a waste which the great majority enjoyed. And the final verdict for or against me would contain an element of trial by my peers.