By: Jimu of Legurid, Cirathan Prosecutor

Date: 47 AP

Context: In the ongoing attempts by the Peldak Senate to unify the Protectorate legal system, hundreds of tests were conducted to find a one-size-fits-all approach. Volunteers from all races were asked to sit in or take part in various trials around the nation.

This particular trial occurred on Tendor, between several ethnicities among one of the lower castes. A higher caste tendori served as the defense attorney, a cirathan acted as prosecutor, and the jury was composed of tendori belonging to various ethnicities local to the region. Two of the 12 jurors were pure blooded firryans, with six men and six women.

This is the after-action testimony of the cirathan prosecutor.

****

My golden hair was washed to a mirror shine, my eyes were large and clear, I walked to the courthouse in the best outfit I could scrounge up from the locals. It was winter on Tendor, so that involved thick, pure white robes with red seams, and lots of folds in the fabric. I’m about the height of the average tendori, so I only had to roll up the sleeves a little for my hands to be exposed, and the bottom of the robes hung comfortably around my ankles, rather than dragging behind me.

I wanted to make a grand entrance, let everyone know who the prosecutor would be and maybe shake hands with those jurors. I knew a smile and a joke would be all I needed to make a good impression, then the court would be puddy in my hands for the rest of the trial. Sadly, on my march to the courthouse, I was approached by one of the guards.

He had mud-brown hair, and his robes were tighter than mine, ending at his knees in spite of the cold. It was probably so he could use his spear better if necessary. “You’re the prosecutor? Sorry pal, I’ll take you to the side entrance. We can’t let any bias come into play here.”

“Ah, very well, my good man. Please, lead the way.”

I was escorted to a staircase at the back of the building that lead to the basement. The door brought me to the prosecutor’s lounge. A nice, wide room with columns lining the walls, desks everywhere, and cabinets full of boxes with files. Most of the prosecutors working on their cases were relgi, but there were a few cirathans, some monsoorai, and even a peldak. I figured the aliens were also helping with the Senate’s trials, though I pray for the poor judge who had to deal with the peldak in his courtroom.

Walking around the prosecutor lounge were a bunch of firryans, most of them women. I’m married, happily so, but it was hard to keep my eyes off them. They came in to announce when trials would take place, they helped some of the prosecutors working on their cases, and they even brought us food and drink since we weren’t allowed to leave the room.

I noticed that the more experienced tendori lawyers didn’t even pay the firryan girls a second glance. That leads me to believe it’s a matter of exposure, and they’ve grown desensitized to their beauty over time. Even the peldak was looking at them, which made me nervous for the girl’s safety, as those monsters only care about killing and assaulting people.

It was going to be a few hours until my trial started, so I made my way to all the other prosecutors and introduced myself. Some of them were reading up on their trials, taking last-minute notes, or adjusting their argument. It’s important to recognize when people would rather you shut up and leave them alone, so I was sure to never overstay my welcome. Of those I struck up a conversation with, they loved me, of course. I didn’t need to spend the time working on my trial, since I was confident in my ability to talk my way to a conviction, even if it had been a year since my last trial in Legurid.

I’m proud to report that I kept myself from conversing with a single firryan during my stay in the lounge. It’s now permanently in the archives of the Peldak Senate that I, Jimu of Legurid, was faithful to my wife, Sata of Legurid.

After a few hours, a tendori woman walked into the lounge with a clipboard. “Is Jimu of Legurid here? Your trial is starting.” I heard there’s supposed to be over a thousand ethnicities in Tendor, of which I couldn’t possibly tell you the difference. They all have varying shades of brown skin, black hair, and their eyes are at least three times smaller than mine. But I know she was of a higher caste because of a small, jewel encrusted headband she wore. Supposedly, she needed to be of a higher caste due to old Tendor laws. She technically summoned me, so if I was of a higher caste than her, it would be a breach of my honor to be summoned by someone of a lower caste.

Regardless, I quickly followed behind and she led me through the hallways of the courthouse basement. There was a lot of interesting architecture, paintings on the wall, a sort of ribcage design that went up the walls and ceilings, doors everywhere. The girl explained a few of the paintings, and I could tell her upper-caste life gave her a good schooling. She spoke confidently, with passion that seemed to exist with the intent to impress me (as a foreigner, not specifically me as a person), and her pronunciation was perfect. In turn, I asked probing questions meant to test her knowledge, and she answered beautifully.

Sadly, she eventually stopped. “Here we are, Mr. Jimu. Enter this room and change into your uniform.” A command. As befitting of her caste, she didn’t bother asking me to do it, she knew I would comply.

“I have a uniform as a prosecutor?”

“Of course!” She said in her delightful voice. “It was all explained in the manual. A single uniform, standardized for all members of court.” Based on the slight upward curl of the corners of her mouth, she knew that I didn’t read it, found that amusing, and internationally wasn’t going to explain further. “Leave your clothes inside, for you shall return to collect them once the trial is over.”

I walked inside the small cubby, and the girl closed the door behind me. She was waiting outside. The room had a chair to the left, a closet on the back wall, and a mirror to the right. The clothes they left for me were massive and bulky, grey robes with a thick hood, gloves, and boots. When I pulled the hood all the way down, there was a thinner section of fabric that I could see through. When looking at the mirror, the robes were so bulky that I couldn’t even see myself breathe. I needed to exaggerate every inhale just to notice the subtle rise and fall of my chest.

With my uniform set, the woman escorted me to the trial room.

It was rough.

The grey room was a simple box with no windows, steps, enclaves, columns, or anything. Four walls, a floor, and a ceiling with lights in the most oppressively boring white you could imagine. There was no seating area for an audience, just a desk for the prosecutor on the right, a desk for the defense attorney on the left, both facing a desk for the judge at the back wall. On the sides of the room were six seats for the jury, twelve in total, facing inwards. All furniture was made of metal, painted grey, and featured nothing but blocky, 90-degree angles. Each seat was exactly the same, the judge didn’t even sit on a higher platform, and each row of juror seats were shoulder-to-shoulder.

It was a pain to look at. So insufferably dull. Even the floor tiles were grey. If they wanted to go for a monotone aesthetic, they should have added some whites and blacks to the mix.

I waited for less than a minute before two people walked in. They wore the same bulky, unisex grey robes I did, and I didn’t even realize they were the defendant and her attorney until they sat in their assigned chairs. The jurors entered a moment later, one by one, wearing the grey robes. All twelve came through the same door, but half sat on the left set of chairs, and the remaining half sat on the right. Another robed man came in and sat by my side, and I had no idea who he was supposed to be. I later learned he was a security guard, and he was placed beside me to make the room symmetrical. Finally, the judge entered the room and went to his central chair on the back wall.

My skin was crawling. Forget about reading body language; were it not for the assigned seating, I wouldn’t have been able to tell who anyone was. For a moment, I was even worried that there was no assigned seats, and everyone just picked a random chair. But that didn’t end up being the case.

What were they all thinking? Who were they? I pride myself on being able to read the minds of aliens based on nothing but a look in their eyes, but I may as well have been blind in that courtroom.

The room was dead quiet, motionless, but then someone spoke up. “Settle down, everyone.” The man said with a dry, monotone voice. “We will now begin the trial.” I don’t have the best ears, and I couldn’t see anyone’s face, so it was only here that I realized it was the judge talking. “The defendant stands accused of three counts of assault. Defendant, how do you plead?”

“Not-guilty,” the defense attorney says, his voice just as dry as the judge’s.

“We will now begin the trial. Prosecutor, you may argue your case.”

I nodded, but looking back, I don’t think it was a big enough motion for anyone to notice. As I’ve always done in trials on Ciratha, I scooted my chair back and stood up. Standing adds to your presence, and helps project your voice.

But the judge suddenly pulled a gavel from his sleeve and banged the desk once. The thick sound echoed off the blank rooms. “You will sit, prosecutor. No standing in court.”

“Y-yes, your honor.” I sat back down. Now, that threw me off my game, but I took a deep breath. I basically did no planning on the case, and was going to rely on my charisma to get through. Now that it was time, I scrambled for what few notes I had. Luckily, nobody seemed to mind, maybe they couldn’t see my panic. “Esteemed members of the jury, we-“

The judged banged the desk again. “Prosecutor. You are here to present the facts of the case. You are not here to give a speech. You are not an orator, you are a lawyer.”

“Ah, sorry again, your honor, force of habit.”

“That is understandable. You may proceed.”

I pride myself on being quick on the update, and never making the same mistake twice. If I spoke with too much enthusiasm, I’d get in trouble again. After taking a few deep breaths to calm myself, I made sure my voice was bland and monotone.

“Jury. The Defendant, miss-“ I saw the judge pull out his gavel, and I hung my head before he even hit the desk.

“The jury will remove that word from their minds. We do not know the gender of the accused, and it is irrelevant.”

“Sorry…” I hated every second I was in that courtroom.

He hit the desk again. “Do not sound so pathetic. I will not have the jury influenced by feeling sorry for you.”

I clenched my fists (under the sleeves so the jury couldn’t see that bit of rage and annoyance), but collected myself. “The defendant is accused of assaulting three individuals in three separate incidents. The first incident is from a month ago. The second incident took place two weeks ago. The last occurred four days ago, and led to the accused’s arrest. All three incidents took place at-“ I glanced to the judge for just a moment. He didn’t seem ready to pound the gavel, so I figured it was fine. “-the alley behind the clothing store that the accused works at.”

Another bang on the judge’s table. I couldn’t help but put my head in my hands. “What type of store the defendant worked at is irrelevant to the case.” Of course I was going to mention it was a clothing store! He didn’t signal that it wasn’t okay, so I went along as if it was fine.

I started wringing my hands under the table. What would be okay to mention? The profile the police built made it a pretty open and shut case. She’s a full-blooded tendori of a lower caste, who works with a lot of firryans. She befriended those firryans, as I’m told is fairly common for lower caste tendori, and each victim was a higher caste male that witnesses reported as being too handsy with the firryan staff. So, to protect her friends, the defendant brought them into the alley behind the store and beat them into unconsciousness.

That’s all well and good, but it is a crime. This isn’t Peldor, where you can beat a man senseless for no other reason than having felt like it. Not only did she not report their abuse to the police (where they almost certainly would have been charged), but there’s an inter-caste component here. They men were of a higher caste. Plus, she’s trained in firryan martial arts, and could easily have killed the men on accident.

But how much of that was I allowed to mention?

I shook my head, not that anyone could tell, then pulled a series of papers from my briefcase.

“I have police reports from each incident, exhibit A.” I kept my eyes locked on the judge, waiting for any sign of displeasure, which was nearly impossible to see anyway. All evidence was submitted to the court, and approved, yesterday. “In the first two incidences…” The judge seemed fine. “The police gathered testimony from all the employees…” Still good. “Including the defendant…” No problems, “but each employee gave their testimony in such a way that avoided implicating anyone.” No complaints from the judge. “I will now read aloud the testimony from-“

BANG!

“The jurors will read it for themselves. Please pass around the testimonies.”

I grit my teeth, “may I stand and walk it over to them?”

BANG!

“Calm down.”

Surprisingly, being told that just made me angrier.

The first juror stood, walked towards me, then politely grabbed the transcript of the first employee’s testimony. After that, he walked back to his seat and read it silently. When he, or maybe it was a she under those robes, finished reading, he passed it to the juror next to him. That juror read silently, then on and on it went. I had no idea what they were thinking. Did it convince them? Were they skeptical? What was I working with? If I knew what they were thinking, I could have subtly adjusted my procedure to eventually bring everyone on-side to get that conviction.

But instead, it was an agonizingly slow process where everyone read the document one by one. As I waited for what felt like an eternity in a dull, featureless hellscape, I apparently started bouncing my leg. The judge yelled at me for that.

The last juror read, then handed the paper back to me.

From there, I settled into a routine.

I took out new evidence from the briefcase, gave a very brief, objective summary of what the evidence was, then the first juror came to collect it. These people were slow readers, I couldn’t even watch their eyes to see what word they were on. But the process repeated over, and over, and eventually I ran out of testimonies to pass out.

Then it was the defense attorney’s turn to refute those testimonies. Or something like that. I’ll admit, at that point, I was totally out of it. There was a guy talking under those robes, but I was denied getting a look at him. Was he intentionally lying? Was his counter-evidence legit? Was the woman actually innocent? Was the jury swayed by it?

Just thinking back on those hours of hell makes me sick. I might as well have been blindfolded. I might as well have been dead.

I ended up presenting more evidence to her guilt, and the defense attorney had his own evidence that I had to refute. Stuff like how the last ‘individual’ (we couldn’t say victim as that introduced bias that there was a crime) to be beaten behind the store also had his wallet stolen, but it was nowhere on the ‘defendants’ person, and how none of the individuals (victims) actually remembered what happened on the day of their supposed assaults due to their injuries.

At the end, the jurors wrote their verdicts on small pieces of paper, handed them to the judge, and the judge tallied them all. “The results are mixed. The jury will now return to the waiting area and discuss the trial until they reach a unanimous decision.”

With that, the jurors rose from their seats and left the courtroom. I was left sitting there with the judge, the defendant, the defense attorney, and the security guard who sat next to me to maintain symmetry. Silence, bulky robes, I couldn’t take it.

“About how long-?”

BANG!

“No casual conversations in court.”

But I couldn’t even influence the jury at that point! It was rough, I’m not going to lie. I started squirming in my seat, tapping my feet, my skin crawled and my eyes cried out for anything interesting to look at. They didn’t even have a clock for me to watch as my life wasted away!

I could have waited there for five minutes, or five hours, but it was torture regardless. When the jury finally returned, each stopped at the judge’s desk and handed him a new piece of paper, then took their seats. When the last juror sat, the judge tallied the results.

“This court finds the defendant not-guilty.”

I didn’t really care, I just wanted to go home. Not my temporary tendori home as I assisted the Peldak Senate’s test, but my real home in Legurid. Was the defendant truly innocent? Was she guilty and I just failed to get a conviction? That’s not really my problem anymore. I’m returning to Ciratha the moment I hand in this report.

I will never do a relgi trial again. If the senate’s ‘unified Protectorate legal system’ involves everyone wearing those rags, then I’ll quit as a prosecutor.