Some could be portrayed as incompetent.

"I could have had ninety percent of this declared inadmissible," Billy muttered in my ear.

"One lead bullet, forty-five-caliber, recovered from a wall in the John Valentine Theater." Statement from coroner. Statement from firearms expert. Zip on to the next item.

I stared across the table at the prosecutors. There were only three of them, opposing the nine expensive bodies on my side. All of them sat quietly, hands folded, not using their terminals. I would have to describe their expressions as smug. Who could blame them?

"That is all the physical evidence presently known to the court. We will now move on to forensic evidence."

"Here's where you lose big time," Billy said to me.

What he meant was, scientific evidence was still the area with the most opportunities for the defense lawyer's stock in trade: obfuscation.

A trial by a jury of your peers means a trial by idiots. Idiots like me, idiots like you. Remember, you can have eleven geniuses and one moron, and the moron rules.

You say you're not an idiot? Maybe not, at what you do. But what do you know about identifying fingerprints? About rifling marks on bullets? DNA profiling? Chemical testing of materials? Retinal scans? Pathology? Crime-scene investigation, psychological testing, interviewing strategies, laser-weapon frequency modulation? If you know anything about any of those things, you know a lot more than I do. And these are all technologies that have been around for centuries; what do you know about the new stuff, the really cutting-edge techniques that maybe three people on Luna know much about? Answer: nothing. So what makes you think you're qualified to sit in judgment on someone whose fate depends on your understanding? This is where we traditionally haul in the experts.

"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.