Magistrate Changamire had made a profound observation about Luxon on the day he received his A–. Such men were guaranteed to find great success, but they would never be successful in achieving greatness. They could never muster an inspired sense of purpose to raise their individual genius to the glory of any collective. This type of prodigy would always court tragedy.
Magistrate Changamire had shared his theory with one of his classmates. She was rather attractive so it hurt when she accused him of jealously. With time, he was vindicated. Luxon had amounted to nothing more than a legal mercenary living as a hermit at the top of Karigamombe Centre. Everyone now called him “Mr. Hurudza”, the man who rented his mind to the highest bidder, or lent it for free to the most interesting assignment. In all cases, the causes were infamous.
According to rumours, Mr. Hurudza never left his office. The place had a bathroom, toilet, kitchenette, and small gym. There was hardly any furniture except for a large desk with a computer, a telescope, one chair, and an odd-looking sculpture on the opposite wall. In an adjoining room, he had a washing machine and a modest sofa. However, Mr. Hurudza chose to sleep on the floor. Never completely unconscious. Always processing combative thoughts in his slumber. Always alone.
Only three people were welcome in his office: Mr. Gweta, Mr. Mpeto, and Luxon’s personal assistant, Ketiwe. Still, his two partners tried not to burden him with their company unless it was impossible for them to address matters over the phone.
For several years, Mr. Hurudza had allowed the cleaning staff to enter his living space once a week. He gave them exactly one hour to do their job and leave. While they worked, he locked himself up in a small room with a window overlooking the city. He only came out after the cleaners left. One day, Mr. Hurudza announced that the cleaners were no longer welcome. Since then, he had done the work himself.
Though Mr. Hurudza earned fantastic sums of money, he had not accessed his bank accounts for more than fifteen years. Each month, his assistant, Ketiwe, set aside a small part of his earnings to cover his groceries and personal supplies. The only money he had on his person was a two-dollar bill that had been printed more than seventeen years ago.
Mr. Hurudza focused his energies on finding ways to enchant, confound, or bludgeon the brains of those who represented his client’s rivals. The ranks of the bludgeoned were legion. One theory argued that his greatest joy was humbling his legal opponents. After all, he had a lot of time to invest in the effort. The man worked around the clock. Another theory asserted that his work ethic was driven by a mortal necessity. If he did not work, he would die and rot like a fish: brain first. According to this theory, Mr. Hurudza was stuck on a cerebral treadmill. He had to keep running despite his failure to find a worthy destination. Keeping up with his furious mental activity was an ends in itself. If he stopped, he would be thrown off to a place more frightening than the company of other humans. Either way, every document he prepared was designed to put everyone on notice: “You are dealing with a brain of destiny.”
Magistrate Changamire had long been conflicted about his feelings for Luxon Hurudza. As a person, he was unlikeable. But maybe it was not his fault? Some people are just born strange. Maybe the man could not help being a bastard?
For years, Magistrate Changamire had not thought about his law-school classmate. He had blocked the name from his mind. However, he could no longer live in denial. There was only one person who could have helped the Prosecutor’s Office with its ironclad capital punishment cases. Only one person could anticipate, and address, his numerous concerns about any piece of evidence. That man was Luxon Hurudza: the deadliest legal mercenary in the world.
* * *
Court of Error
Magistrate Changamire was on the second page of Justice Dinhiwe’s book when he heard a knock at the door. He looked at his watch and realized he had been reading for the past hour. He was only on page four. For someone who easily read more than a hundred pages of legal documents every day, his rate of progress was demoralizing. Only Justice Dinhiwe’s writing could make the reading process flow like dried tree sap.
“Come in,” said Magistrate Changamire. His voice was casual. Just another day at the courthouse.
“Changamire!” said Justice Murambi as he stepped into the chamber.
Justice Murambi walked in and shook hands with his fellow judge. His eyes wandered around the room with a child’s sense of awe.
“I like your office. What a great view.”
“Thank you,” replied Magistrate Changamire with an indulgent smile. He was tempted to remind the High Court judge that his office was twice as large. It was also adorned with lush wooden panels and a much better view. But there was nothing to be gained by undermining the accuracy of small talk. This visit meant so much more.
Justice Murambi was of medium build. His hair was neatly groomed. The distribution of the lines in his face was evidence of a life blessed with constant smiling. Even from behind his spectacles, his eyes glistened with a vitality that few judges could sustain. After decades of squinting at the hairline fracture separating innocence from guilt, many of his colleagues had adopted permanent expressions of neutral scepticism. Not Justice Murambi. His spirit was immune to disillusionment. He oozed intelligence even when he was commenting on the weather. Even to a recluse, he was a tolerable dinner guest.
The High Court judge wore a crisp white shirt with faint blue stripes running down its length. Sitting modestly between the flaps of his collars was a red bowtie, speckled with white polka dots. And of course, any man who wears a bowtie must also wear suspenders. Justice Murambi’s pair had red straps and silver clips. They clung to a pair of khaki trousers with parallel creases running down the front legs. Though Magistrate Changamire knew his fellow judge had a good heart, he could not help thinking that those creases had been modeled after the road to hell: straight and easy to follow. Outside the world of metaphor, the creases led down to an expensive pair of brown loafers with rubber soles.
Justice Murambi was a likeable man. The judge was so revered that he was often trusted to deliver important news that had nothing to do with the law. Despite his affable smile and personable nature, all who saw him approaching with a sense of purpose felt a jolt of apprehension. Though Magistrate Changamire was flattered by the personal visit from his respected colleague, flattery was a poor substitute for the peace of mind that was about to be compromised. This visit would change his life forever.
Justice Murambi’s eyes were still wandering around the office when they stopped on Magistrate Changamire’s desk.
“Ah! I see you are reading Chief Justice Dinhiwe’s book. You must have a lot of time on your hands. Are they not keeping you busy around here?”
“Things have been slower,” replied Magistrate Changamire.
“Do you like things slower?”
“Not really. A good mind is like a knife. It can only be sharpened by abrasion.”
“Or dulled by it if abraded at the wrong angle,” Justice Murambi replied with a laugh. “I would not worry, Changamire. Your mind is among the best of our generation. I am not convinced that more work would sharpen it any further.”
“That’s kind of you, Justice Murambi. Would you like to have lunch?”
“You read my mind. Can we eat at the cafeteria?”
Magistrate Changamire smiled. “Of course.”
The two judges entered the cafeteria and walked over to the main counter.
“I will have a corned-beef sandwich,” said Magistrate Changamire with a straight face.
Wilbert looked at both men and smiled.
“Of course. And yourself, Justice Murambi?”
“Oh, I brought my own lunch. Thank you.”
Wilbert looked disappointed.
After Magistrate Changamire paid for his sandwich, he directed his guest towards a table at the corner of the cafeteria. The lunch crowd had thinned out. Oddly, no one seemed to notice the two judges. Usually, their appearance would have elicited a
wave of polite greetings. This was strange. Justice Murambi was one of the most recognizable judges of the High Court. The popularity of his corned-beef romance also made him the natural choice to feature on television whenever the High Court was considering a controversial case. But apart from a clerk from the registry who stopped by and bid them a good afternoon, no one else paid any attention to them.
Once they were seated, Justice Murambi reached into his briefcase and took out a pink lunchbox. It had African violets printed all over it. He was about to remove the lid to access his corned-beef sandwich when he noticed Magistrate Changamire’s curious glance.
“My granddaughter gave it to me for my birthday. She buys gifts based on what she would like for herself.”
“How old is she?”
“She turned six last month. She wants to be florist when she grows up.”
“Flowers are beautiful.”
“Especially when they remain on lunch boxes.”
Justice Murambi had a sparkle in his eye.
“So, how have you been, Changamire? Overall.”
“I am doing well, thank you. And yourself?”
“Busy as always. People always talk about how there is no rest for the wicked. No one ever thinks of the poor judges who have to deal with them.”
“Well, at least you are a High Court judge. The system has limited the headache you can experience.”
“How so, Changamire?”
“As a magistrate, my trials involve managing the personalities and emotions of the participants. But you are lucky because you don’t have to sit through the trial process. By the time the cases are appealed to the High Court, the issues have been narrowed to solid legal questions. There are no contradictory witnesses, messy facts, or stacks of evidence to wade through. This means that appeals are more cerebral and dispassionate than trials. You simply apply your intellect to decide whether the lower court judges made errors that you must reverse.”
“Your last point is quite interesting, Changamire. True, I have spent the past decade focusing on whether trial judges decided their cases correctly. The experience has sharpened my abilities for identifying the legal errors made by lower courts. Over the years, my High Court colleagues and I have reversed a good number of these judgments based on ‘misapplications or misappreciations’ of the law. ‘Errors’ if you want to be blunt. But these things happen, right? You know, I recently asked one of my clerks to do some research. The results were astounding. Every experienced magistrate has been reversed by the High Court at least three times in their career.”
Magistrate Changamire said nothing. He realized that the casual part of the visit was waning fast. Justice Murambi was starting to reveal the reason behind his visit.
“We looked at the judgments of fifty magistrates from across Zimbabwe. All had served for at least fifteen years. This period provided an adequate sample of cases to draw reliable conclusions. Guess what? The group had an average reversal rate of about nine percent. The most impressive magistrate had a rate of six percent. The weakest was at 18.5 percent. Remarkable, huh?”
“I don’t know,” replied Magistrate Changamire. “I have no way of telling what a sensible reversal rate would be. I failed mathematics throughout high school. Oddly, I have always found it easier to add up the irrational motivations of humans than the logical predictability of numbers. That’s partly why I joined the legal profession.”
“No problem, Changamire. The relevance of our figures is more qualitative than numeric. An average of nine percent may seem modest. On the surface, it gives the impression that trial judges get things right more than ninety percent of the time. But this view falls apart when you put it in context. Only a small number of all court cases are appealed. A small part of that group makes it to the High Court. An even smaller number reach the Supreme Court. Therefore, it is likely that the average reversal rate would have been much higher if the High Court and Supreme Court had heard more cases. The reason is simple: More hearings would provide the opportunity to identify more errors.
“To confirm our theory, we looked at all the cases that the High Court and Supreme Court heard over the period in question. We isolated the legal principles from these judgments and applied them to a large number of cases that had not been appealed, or were rejected. Of course, this is a crude method. But even after compensating for the speculative aspect, the average rate of error went up to twenty-eight percent. To be fair, magistrates deal with heavy caseloads. They are often thrown into areas of the law that are unfamiliar or which have not been clarified by the higher courts. Therefore, an error rate of twenty-eight percent is still respectable.”
Justice Murambi paused. His face was difficult to read. Both anger and joy could have found refuge in the same expression. Magistrate Changamire decided to remain equally unreadable. He would not comment until he knew where this conversation was going.
“But you, Changamire ... We have thoroughly studied all your cases. Even after we applied a stricter standard than we used for the other forty-nine magistrates, your error rate was about three percent at most. This was after we classified four of your decisions as errors because my colleagues and I could not reach an agreement. There was only one case where we all agreed you had made an error. We believe you made it on purpose.”
Magistrate Changamire picked at a crusty egg stain that was clinging to the table.
“I think you remember it well. You must. It was probably a painful decision, but you would have found it hard to live with yourself if you had missed that rare opportunity. It was a case involving a widow who had lost all her property to her husband’s family. That was before we reformed our inheritance laws. When the widow brought her case to court, you identified a flaw in the law at the time. You could have used it to rule in favour of the widow. However, you misread it on purpose and ruled against her. A Zuva Redu reporter ‘happened’ to be in your courtroom that day. He published an article that caused national outrage. Several key civil rights groups funded the widow’s appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. Of course they did. After all, some of their most senior representatives also ‘happened’ to be in your courtroom when you delivered your judgment. The Supreme Court identified your error and reversed the decision. The public anger forced the politicians to reform the inheritance laws to provide better protection for all widows. Essentially, you used an error to make a correction.”
Magistrate Changamire was about to speak when Justice Murambi stopped him.
“I advise that you don’t comment on any of these observations. Technically, such a strategy was not entirely ... appropriate.”
Magistrate Changamire would neither confirm nor deny these allegations.
“Your strategic injustice gave birth to a greater justice. So if we remove that case from your record, we are left with the four cases in which your unplanned errors were debatable. In fact, my fellow judges and I debated them for quite some time. In the end, we compromised on an error rate of between zero and three percent. In my opinion, you made no significant mistake in any of those four cases. Therefore, in my eyes, you have no reversible decision on your record since you became a magistrate.”
Magistrate Changamire squinted.
“Under normal circumstances, I would consider that a compliment,” he said.
Justice Murambi laughed.
“It’s a complement in all circumstances, Changamire!”
“So why does this compliment appear to have a boulder strapped to its back?”
“Well ...” Justice Murambi’s voice trailed off. Nearly a minute passed before he coaxed out the words clinging to his voice box.
“Principles do not operate in factual vacuums, Changamire. You can apply a principle with perfection but arrive at a perfectly imperfect result.”
“Okay?” said Magistrate Changamire, nodding slowly. In law school, both men had been taught to avoid using different forms of the same word more than once in the same sentence. It sounded clever in one’s head, but it
confused everyone else. So why had Justice Murambi used three variations of the word “perfect” in the same breath? This was the same man who had built a reputation for speaking in clear and accessible language.
“Changamire, when we speak of the ‘justice system’, people tend to focus on the ‘justice’ part. That is, the land of general principles where moral positions are taken on abstract problems. However, few ever pay enough attention to the ‘system’ part. Both of us are part of it. So are the police, lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats, civil servants ... and other people. Together, we are supposed to be an efficient machine where all the components work perfectly. At least that’s the theory. The reality is more complicated. When general principles are applied to messy facts and pushed through this ‘system’, what comes out the other end?”
“I assume the right answer is not ‘justice’?” replied Magistrate Changamire.
“Sometimes it is. But our system is the domain of human beings. If just one component in the machinery is faulty, that error can be transmitted throughout the entire structure. The final product will be defective even if every other step of the process was not. Think of it like a phone number. A single digit can make the difference between calling your mother or the local prison.”
“I see, Justice Murambi. But what does that have to do with my reversal rate?”
“The facts of all trials are shaped as predictably as shards of broken glass. They are never identical. No principle can capture or apply to them perfectly. That is why we are called judges. Our judgment is the bridge between rigid legal principles and the imperfect system where they are applied. Judgment allows us to account for irregular shapes that do not fit the general formula ... Like you did in the inheritance case.”
The Hangman's Replacement: Sprout of Disruption (BOOK 1) Page 25
