Usurper

by Richard F. Weyand

  Forsythe looked around the cafeteria again.

  “I can see why you would be afraid to lose this energy. Maybe some time when this cafeteria is empty, you could capture it in VR and put it on a channel for anyone to join in from their offices in the new building.”

  Markov stared at him for a moment.

  “That is an excellent idea. I wonder that I didn’t think of it.”

  “You’re too close to the problem.”

  When Forsythe got home that evening, Darrel Hawker was curious. His question stunned Forsythe.

  “So how did your first day go?”

  First day? It felt more like a week.

  “Busy. It’s not going to be boring, that’s for sure.”

  “So what are you going to be doing?”

  “That I can’t say. All attorney-client privileged. But it’s going to be interesting, I can tell you that much.”

  “You can’t tell me any more than that? Are you going to be happier, at least?”

  “Oh, yes. Much happier.”

  “Good. That’s what counts.”

  The Justice System

  It wasn’t until the second week of his employment at the Imperial Palace that Andrew Forsythe gave the Wednesday morning talk to the new ideas group. The first Wednesday hadn’t worked out. He had had his presentation ready, but the group wanted more time to prepare. The delay had also given him more time to refine his presentation.

  They all met in the lecture hall on channel 591 of the palace VR system. Five minutes before the start, Forsythe started to worry as the lecture hall was empty, but as the time approached people started popping into existence in the lecture hall. Forsythe was used to the effect, but not in such large numbers, as dozens of people popped in over the course of a few minutes. It was a bit disorienting.

  Of course, he was actually seated at his desk in his office, while he supposed most of the attendees were in the cafeteria a couple floors below. He imagined the cafeteria looked pretty strange, with all its inhabitants in immersive VR.

  “All right, are we ready to start?” Markov asked after he popped into existence in the well of the hall.

  Nods of assent and thumbs up rippled through the hall.

  “Today we have Andy Forsythe, a new palace hire from the Justice Department. He’s going to tell us how the law is supposed to work, and then how it’s actually working – or, more to the point, not working – now. Then we’ll have a brand new target to go after.”

  There were some cheers and applause to that.

  “All right, Andy. Go ahead.”

  First Forsythe gave an hour-long overview of the justice system as it was supposed to work. He covered the adversarial process, the role of the judge, and the role of the jury. He then set out the differences between criminal law and civil law, including the role of the prosecutor and the differing standards of proof in criminal and civil cases. Finally he laid out the actual trial process, from complaint and answer, through initial motions, discovery, final motions, and trial.

  “So that’s a broad overview of the most important points,” Forsythe said in summing up. “Do we have any questions at this point?”

  “I have a couple,” a young woman said.

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “So if I’ve got this right, a prosecutor can charge you with a crime, and then you have to respond to the charges, right? You have to go into court with an attorney and make the argument.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Now if the prosecutor is wrong, and you are found not guilty, are you reimbursed the money you spent defending yourself?”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “OK, so let’s switch to a civil case. So someone sues me, a neighbor say, and says my dog dug up his expensive landscaping. He wants me to pay for the landscaping repairs. So I have to go into court with an attorney and defend myself, right?”

  “Yes, otherwise there will be a default judgment against you.”

  “Even if I don’t own a dog.”

  “Even if you don’t own a dog. Correct.”

  “Even if I’m allergic to dogs, and owning a dog would kill me.”

  “Yes, even if you’re allergic to dogs. Of course, that would be important evidence at the trial.”

  “So I have to go into court with an attorney and defend myself against my stupid neighbor’s allegations, or I will automatically be found liable for the damage to his landscaping committed by a dog I don’t have and couldn’t own because it would kill me.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “How much is my attorney going to cost?”

  “Maybe a hundred credits an hour.”

  “So he comes in with a three-hundred-credit-an-hour attorney. Can he out-lawyer me in such a way I’m found liable for the damage to his landscaping, committed by the dog I don’t own?”

  “He could, but in that case it’s unlikely.”

  “So if the court finds that I’m not liable for the damage to his landscaping, because I don’t and can’t own a dog, does he have to pay for my attorney?”

  “No.”

  “That’s messed up.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because literally anybody with money who has it in for me can make nonsense allegations against me, and force me to show up and spend my time and a ton of money defending myself. And I assume that if he’s unsuccessful the first time, he can try something else, like suing me for damage to his house caused by the cat I don’t own. And he can just keep doing that, burning up my time and my money just to harass me.”

  “Well, you can complain to the court that all of that is an abuse of process and get an injunction against him filing additional suits without a showing and prior permission of the court.”

  “And complaining to the court in that way also takes an attorney and more of my time and money.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “See? That’s messed up.”

  A young man held up his hand and took up the questioning.

  “I’m more interested in the criminal side of this. So if a prosecutor brings charges against you, you have to defend against that as well, right? Or there will be a default judgment against you?”

  “Yes, more or less. It’s slightly different, but the same principle applies.”

  “What if a prosecutor decides to go after somebody? Allege crimes against somebody he doesn’t like. Somebody who criticized the prosecutor’s office, say.”

  “The defendant still has to defend himself.”

  “What if he did something against the law, but he didn’t know it was against the law?”

  “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”

  “How big is the book of Imperial Law?”

  “It’s thirty-six volumes of about a thousand pages each.”

  “So how can anybody ever know that? How can anybody even know if he’s obeying the law? And it changes, too, right?”

  “Yes, but nevertheless, people are required to follow the law.”

  “Thirty-six-thousand pages, written in lawyer gobbledygook that it takes a law degree to be able to read? How is this fair? How is this justice?” The young man shook his head. “Leave that aside for the moment. You also mentioned a public defender.”

  “Yes. If you can’t afford an attorney, the government will appoint one for you.”

  “And the government pays the public defender , right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “So the government, in the form of the prosecutor, charges you with a crime, which will be tried before a government judge, and you will be defended by an attorney who is also an employee of the government?”

  “It sounds awful when you put it that way, but yes.”

  “All right. So you were in the prosecutor’s office before coming to this job in the palace, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you graduated from Imperial City School of Law, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The best law sc
hool in the Empire, right?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “What was your class rank, if I could ask?”

  “I graduated eighth in my class.”

  “OK, so you’re the prosecutor on a criminal case, say. What are the odds that the public defender assigned to represent the accused graduated eighth in his class from the best law school in the Empire? Slim to none, I would guess.”

  “You may be right there.”

  “That’s not fair, either. But let’s set public defenders aside for the moment. Let’s say you have money to defend yourself. You have a life savings of, oh, I don’t know, four million credits. So you’re pretty well off. You get charged with a large crime. Murder or something. What does a criminal defense attorney for a big case like that charge?”

  “Probably two hundred credits an hour and up.”

  “And he’s going to have a team of other people as well, right?”

  “Associates and assistants. Yes.”

  “So you could spend a couple million credits defending yourself against charges like that.”

  “Yes, you could.”

  “Half your life savings, even as a rich man. And if you’re found not guilty, the prosecutors don’t have to pay your attorney’s fees?”

  “No.”

  “I have no further questions.”

  Forsythe surveyed the room, but that was it for the moment. He spent the next half-hour describing all the ways the system could be, and was, being perverted by the use of bribes, to judges and to prosecutors, to gain favorable outcomes in court. When he finished, he asked for questions again, and got none.

  To his raised eyebrow, one of his previous questioners, the young man, said, “No. Bribes we understand.”

  “I did have one question,” another young woman asked. “I heard once about something called high justice. What’s that about?”

  “The Empire officially has something called a system of high justice. All of what we’ve talked about here today is the system of low justice. The system of high justice is purely the realm of the Empress. The Empress can find someone guilty of a crime – any crime – and pass sentence without trial or defense.”

  “You’re guilty of treason, off with your head?”

  “Yes. It doesn’t happen often. You may know about the reporter who accosted the Empress Adannaya III’s daughter in the grocery once the new Empress was named. Empress Adannaya found the reporter guilty of interfering with the Empress’s family and ordered her executed.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Wow.”

  Forsythe looked around the room, looking for more questions, but that was it. Markov stood up and walked to the well of the lecture hall.

  “I’d like to thank Mr. Forsythe for his excellent presentation today,” Markov said, at which the audience clapped for a few seconds, and then, in singles and groups, disappeared from the VR venue.

  “You think it went well, Val? I don’t think I represented the justice system very well, given those questions.”

  “On the contrary, Andy. You represented it very well. Well enough that the questioners were able to see all the problems that many legal observers have pointed out over the years. I think it was a great introduction.”

  “Well, thanks. I was worried by some of those questions.”

  “So were they. We’ll just have to see what they come up with.”

  Taking Stock

  They were sitting around the fire pit in the roof gardens after dinner. Tonight it had been angel hair spaghetti with a Bolognese sauce, with garlic bread and a tossed salad on the side. A lime sherbet for dessert had been just the right touch.

  It was slightly cool tonight, but no wind across the roof this evening, so the Guard had said it was OK to have a fire. It reminded Dee of nights at home in front of the fireplace when she was little.

  “I watched the recording of Andy Forsythe’s presentation to the new ideas group,” Cindy said. “I thought he did a good job, though the audience was less than impressed with the justice system.”

  “I watched it as well,” Dee said. “Some of those questions were pretty insightful about how people could abuse the system even if the prosecutors and judges weren’t on the take.”

  “You didn’t know that?” Bobby asked.

  “Sure, I did,” Dee said. “We covered abuse of process in law school. But Andy’s questioners really spelled it out for me.”

  “So how much of that are we going to try to fix?” Cindy asked.

  “I guess we’ll see what the new ideas group comes up with, and what we can distill out of it that’s useful,” Dee said. “Maybe measures that reduce the incentives and opportunities for bribery and corruption will also work to reduce abuse of the system. They’re usually pretty clever coming up with stuff. One thing’s clear, though.”

  “What’s that?” Sean asked.

  “We need more people like Andy Forsythe,” Dee said. “We have a lot of departments to fill, and not just the Shadow Councilors. We need to build out the staff. So how are we going to find people dedicated to their profession, who hate what’s going on, and get them signed up?”

  “That’s a damn good question,” Cindy said. “How do we do that? The whole hiring issue is driving me nuts. Invitation-only hiring sounds great, until you try to scale it up.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Dee said. “I don’t know the answer. That’s why I asked.”

  “Why don’t you ask the new ideas group to figure out how to find them?” Bobby asked. “That’s what they’re for, isn’t it?”

  “Duh,” Cindy said. “Of course. I bet they could figure out a way. How did we not think to ask them?”

  “I wonder if there’s anything in Andy Forsythe’s personnel file that would give a clue,” Sean said. “I mean, reading between the lines. You know. If we can figure out some way to read that from his evaluations, then we could scan personnel files really fast for candidates.”

  “Could you ask Val Markov to have his people look at the problem and see what they come up with, Cindy?”

  “Sure. I’ll be curious to see what they think. By the way, I never got a chance to ask you. How did the meeting with Saaret go?”

  “Pretty well, actually. I think he actually wants to work with me, but he’s backed up against his own Councilors.”

  “Pomeroy, Galbraith, and Newsom,” Bobby said.

  “Newsom?” Dee asked. “I haven’t seen any issues with him.”

  “That’s why I worry about him. He’s an expert at the knife in the back. On his way up, people found themselves shuffled aside, and him promoted, and only found out later how he knifed them. When he seems well-behaved, that’s the time to worry. He’s a slippery bastard.”

  “Interesting. And he has the Imperial Police under him.”

  “The only armed force not sworn to the Empress ,” Bobby said. “That’s why the Guard keeps a close eye on them.”

  “Where is their allegiance then?” Dee asked.

  “They swear oath to the Empire, but not to the Throne. That’s slippery, too. Who’s vision of the Empire?”

  “Are you saying we should be looking into the Imperial Police as well?”

  “What I’m saying is, if you do, watch your back. Newsom’s capable of anything, as long as it’s good for Newsom.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Sean said.

  “Should we make some discreet inquiries about those guys as well?” Cindy asked.

  “Let’s wait for now,” Dee said. “Let’s get staffed up before we go poking any more anthills.”

  “Or wasp nests,” Bobby said.

  “Good idea,” Sean said.

  “Hi, Val. I have another assignment for your bunch of wild cards.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Well, we have this new guy, Andy Forsythe, right? Great guy. He’s perfect. But we found him completely by chance. We need a couple hundred more. People who are stars in t
heir field, have risen far enough to see the corruption in their department but have not entered into it themselves, and are completely disgusted by it. We can’t rely on chance. We need to figure out a way to find them.”

  “Tough problem. They’re going to be keeping a low profile.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m giving it to you. I was thinking maybe there was a way to read between the lines of the personnel records, at least to get a first cull.”

  “That might work. We have some people in my group who fit that description, too. Maybe we can generalize something if we analyze their records thoroughly. I have a question, though. Do you want to limit the search to people who are still with the government? One marker for being disgusted by the corruption could be that they’ve already left government service.”

  “Oh, that’s a good one. See, you’re already all over it. Let me know what you find.”

  “OK, Cindy. This should be fun.”

  Several weeks later, they were lounging around the pool. It was warmer tonight, and all four had swum laps after dinner. Dinner tonight had been a spicy chicken and vegetable stir-fry, with fried rice and spring rolls.

  “So what is our new ideas group coming up with lately?” Dee asked.

  “On what?” Cindy asked. “Hiring, the justice system, defense procurement? Lots going on.”

  “Start with hiring.”

  “Well, it turns out one of the best markers for candidates is that they left the government between their sixth and eighth year in civil service.”

  “That seems strange,” Bobby said.

  “It actually makes some sense,” Cindy said. “The first two promotions on hiring are automatic, at two years and four years. The next one, at six years, is ostensibly on merit, but is often affected by, shall we say, contributions to one’s superiors’ bank account balances. The people who refuse to play that game don’t get promoted and leave in disgust. So we look at people with great educations, terrific job performance reports in their first five years, but who ultimately don’t get promoted after their fourth year and leave the government.”

  “OK. That makes sense,” Bobby said.