Chapter 39: Procedure
Shana was out of her seat almost before the judge's gavel hit the table. She ran up the aisle to Cam's side, where her friend was standing, still pale but composed, waiting as the bailiff sorted out his handcuffs. "We're going to fight this," she said angrily, fairly biting off the words. "There's no way anyone could look at this in any way as not being self-defense—you didn't even intend to survive, you were committing suicide and your Aunt and Uncle just happened to go with you!" tears sprang to her eyes as the bailiff—not ungently—cuffed Cam's hands behind her back, and she watched with stinging eyes and a lump in her throat as he led Cam away.
"How could you let this happen?" she demanded of Alex as the blond lawyer came up behind her. "She's been through so goddamn much…" She swallowed hard, but the tears kept coming. "It's not fair."
"No, it's not, but the judge is being extraordinarily lenient, Shana, treating this as an evidentiary hearing instead of demanding that Cam be arrested for murder. It'll be up to us to prove that she acted in self defense, or that she wasn't in her right mind when she did it."
"An insanity defense?" Shana stared at Alex.
"No, not an insanity defense. More like she was under mental duress and not thinking clearly because of the abuse and exploitation, and she made some bad decisions. I'm also going to hammer home the point that she was seventeen when this happened and I'm going to bring up her physical condition. I may have to release some of the more gruesome photos and videos they took of her."
"I'm sure we can get Doc and the medics to testify as to her medical condition. And we have the records of the psych doctor at Miramar when he was counseling her. We don't have to tell them what she was in for, after all, it's just another military base."
"If you can get those, particularly anything that has old scars, maybe even a date on those scars, that would be helpful. We have plenty of videos and pictures of what was actually done to her to create those feelings of hopelessness, desperation, fear and a need to escape, and I think I have a couple pieces of video that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was terrified for her life when she set that fire. I can also get George Huang to watch videos and give his professional opinion of her state of mind too." Alex sighed as she heaved her briefcase of the table. "Her arraignment will be in the morning, so I advise you go back to base and let Charlie know she's not going to be home tonight."
Shana's stomach clenched at the thought of that conversation.
Her stomach flip-flopped again when she got out of the car and saw Charlie and Snake eyes waiting, as they had every day that week, for Shana and Cam. "C-Cam's not coming home tonight," she swallowed, and to her embarrassment tears spilled down her cheeks as her throat closed. She had to swallow hard to force her words out. "The defense brought up that she set the fire to the cabin that killed her Aunt and Uncle and when she was asked if she had, she had to answer truthfully. So she said yes, and the judge had to order her arrested."
Snake Eyes stared at her, aghast. Charlie simply stood there, looking stunned and lost.
"The judge ordered what Alex called an 'evidentiary hearing' to look at the facts and her motives, and determine if there is sufficient evidence to warrant arresting Cam for murder. So it's not a trial—yet—and if we can convince the judge that Cam acted in self defense, or that she simply wanted it all to stop and tried to commit suicide by staying in the house, and her Aunt and Uncle just happened to die and she didn't. Alex says she has a couple pieces of video that will prove she had ample reason to be in fear for her life, but she wants me to see if we can release some of her psych records from Miramar. And her bail hearing will be tomorrow, although I think she'll end up having to stay longer because as soon as the judge hears about the three million she got as restitution from Kennedy's case, and the ten grand she got from her sale at the Amsterdam market, they'll set the bail so high she'll never be able to meet it."
"No they won't because the three million has been signed over to my parents to build their house on the site of the old cabin. They are going to take what they need to build what they want there, and then sign whatever remains back to Cam, but as of right now, that money is not hers. The only thing she has is her salary as an Army Corporal and the ten thousand from the Amsterdam market, so since bail only requires ten percent down, she'll need a thousand dollars to get out and there will be no problem getting that."
Shana blew out a relieved breath, and she stomach relaxed—slightly. "All right. Let me go see Doc and get her psych records from Miramar from him, as well as something documenting old injuries and scars."
Doc raised his eyebrows at Shana's obvious distress, but listened calmly as she poured out the story of the day in a torrent of words. It took a while before she was finished, as she had to share her indignation over the unfairness of the whole affair, but finally when she stopped for breath he said mildly, "You know the process isn't always fair, Shana, you studied law and took the bar exams yourself."
"Yes, and it's crap like this that kept me from being one!" her own vehemence surprised her, but it was true, after all. "I don't know how Alex does it. Give me something directly in front of me that I can shoot, it's a lot simpler than dancing around the subject with words in a courtroom!"
Doc smiled a little as he started rummaging around in a file drawer. "You always were more of a one for direct action. But Alex is good at what she does, and she does it for a living, so the only thing you or I can do is to give her what she needs to make sure Justice is served."
"I'd feel better about Justice being blind if the guide dogs weren't all lawyers," Shana replied tartly, and Doc threw back his head and laughed.
"That sounds like something you'd say. Glad to see you're still in there."
"What do you mean, I'm still here?" she glared at him suspiciously.
"You've been acting uncharacteristically emotional of late. Just slightly odd, for you. But given what you've been through, and the hormones and the stress of everything that's happened in the last year. I guess I can't blame you."
"Have the hormone levels in my blood eased off yet, or are they still high?"
"You know, I don't know, I haven't had a chance to do those blood tests yet."
"It's not like it's really important right now, anyway," Shana shrugged. "We have to figure out what we can say that will get Cam out of this mess."
"We have to do what we can to ensure Justice is served, not necessarily what gets Cam out of jail," Doc said warningly.
"What's that supposed to mean? I can't believe you're on their side!"
"Shana. I'm a doctor. I'm not on anyone's side. I'm supposed to stay objective, and that's what I'm doing. Cam did premeditate this, Shana, and you know it but you're letting your friendship with her color your perceptions. When she slipped out of the handcuffs it did require conscious thought for her to go to the garage, get the can of gasoline, pour it on the floor and set it on fire, and you know from practicing law that that fits the definition of premeditation."
"So you think she is guilty."
He held up a hand. "I didn't say that. Let me finish, okay? Although she did plan it—she could have just run out the front door, and you know that too—she was under a great deal of mental and physical strain. Her constant exploitation and abuse of the last three years, her physical strain, malnourishment and vitamin and mineral deficiencies which kept her mind from functioning the way it should have—I don't know if she was starving or dehydrated at the time, which factors could well have contributed to her making bad decisions—coupled with the fear inspired when she heard her Aunt and Uncle talking about selling her to someone who would kill her—"
"Anton Jelescu. She said that her Aunt and Uncle brought him up to the cabin and he electrocuted her until she passed out, held her underwater until she passed out, hung her from a tree until she passed out, and filmed the whole thing. Her Aunt and Uncle got five thousand dollars for each one of those 'death' films and Alex said he made twenty thousand dollars off each of those three from people who thought they were seeing someone die, and he talked to her Aunt and Uncle about selling her to him outright so he could do it over and over again."
Doc's face showed an expression of loathing. "But that's good, because now we can make a case of mental impairment and loss of brain cells due to oxygen deprivation and brain damage. So, in answer to your question, while I do admit that she is guilty of premeditation, she is not responsible because she was in an intolerable situation and couldn't think clearly to reach a reasonable conclusion. There are a few things about her medical condition as well, but I want to talk to her before I tell anyone about that. I don't know if she knows—I don't know if she even remembers. She has never said anything and that makes me think the event might have been so traumatic that her mind blocked it out."
"What is it?" Shana demanded, but Doc refused to say.
"I think I'll ask Hawk for some off-base time and attend the evidentiary hearing. Testimony from a medical professional could help."
"And documents from the Miramar psych, too. Alex said she's also going to talk to that FBI psychologist Dr. Huang and see if he can attend."
"Then I think between us we can prove she's not culpable."
Clayton, Shana, Charlie, Snake Eyes, and Doc were sitting in the gallery the next morning, in a closed courtroom. It was them, Alex, and John Munch, and Cam herself, sitting in the witness box looking calm and unruffled but the tight lines around the corners of her mouth and the shadows under her eyes showed she hadn't slept, and maybe it was Shana's imagination, but that dress uniform looked slightly looser on her. I'll bet she didn't eat anything yesterday. And she can't afford to skip meals, this is too much stress on her, damn it! Her heart ached…and her stomach flipped. Damn it. I have to get something for my stomach throughout this trial; I'm stressing out over this as much as she is, and I'm feeling nauseous all the time. I haven't been eating well, but fortunately it's not showing. I haven't lost any of the weight I gained over our honeymoon. Although she was spending much of her day sitting here (courtesy of Hawk, who had, just that morning, thrown up his hands and told both her and Charlie that he was taking them off active duty until the trial was over) she was trying to get at least an hour of swordwork in every evening when she got back; partly to get in shape and stay in shape and partly to work off her frustration with the whole painfully slow trial process. It's been a week since we got back from our honeymoon and already I can see the effects of stress on her. I wish there was a way we can hurry this up.
"Given what we know about the kind of abuse, exploitation, and pain that Cam Arlington endured, there is no doubt in the prosecution's eyes that this was a clear case of actions taken for which the defendant is not responsible," Alex said crisply, her voice hard. "Many of us can't comprehend the abuse she suffered, and the fact that she lived to tell us about it, that she is here today at all, is a miracle.
"The defendant has agreed to allow me to show the court two pieces of evidence that will definitely prove that Cam Arlington was terrified for her life and not in her right mind when she set the fire. Her only thought, when she doused the house with gasoline and set it on fire, was to escape; and given that she had no real idea where she was or that anyone would help her, to her fevered mind the only possible escape was death. After the court sees the two pieces of video I am about to show, we have complete confidence that you, too, will agree that she could not in any way be held culpable for what she did. Now, per the judge's instructions, I have informed the witness that I had these pieces of video and obtained consent from her to play this for the court."
Liz Donnelly held up a hand. "One moment, Madam Prosecutor. Corporal Arlington, did you see these pieces of video and did you give the prosecutor permission to play this in open court?"
Cam nodded, then spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. "Yes, Your Honor."
Liz nodded to Alex, and Alex cued a video up on the TV.
No one on the courtroom could suppress their gasp of horror at what they were seeing.
"What you are seeing," Alex's voice was soft in the horrified silence filling the courtroom, "was the inevitable result of being forced to have unprotected sex. Corporal Arlington had just turned seventeen, and according to her Aunt's journal, she forgot to give Arlington the morning-after pill and Cam got pregnant. In order to try and force a miscarriage, they stopped giving her food and adequate water, tried to starve her into a miscarriage, resulting in the extreme emaciation you see here. However, this was not enough to induce her body to rid itself of the baby voluntarily, so they took the measures you see here—restraining her so she could not escape and beating her stomach until she miscarried. I am not going to show the whole thing, but the end result was that she did indeed have a miscarriage."
Alex turned off that piece of video, then changed the disc and cued this one up. "After that incident, they decided that they didn't want any possibility of this happening again, and so they took permanent steps to ensure it wouldn't. In this next video you'll see an unidentified man—I will not call him a doctor, because doctors are supposed to heal, not hurt, their patients—performing a forced sterilization procedure on an unwilling, clearly terrified, helpless Corporal Arlington—without anesthesia."
The video showed the same room, same bed. Cam was tied tightly with handcuffs and chains to the cot, though she was skeletally thin and it was entirely clear, from the red scar lines across her stomach, that this had taken place after the forced abortion. Her eyes were sunken, her cheeks hollow, her eyes—there was no sense or awareness in them, and it was clear to all the Joes that this was exactly like the state that Shana had been in after she came back from Kennedy's island; a fugue state, in which she was somewhat aware of what was going on around her but not completely. She was whimpering in terror as she saw the doctor hold up a scalpel, but there was no reason, just instinct, in her eyes.
In shocked silence the courtroom watched as the doctor climbed onto the bed, ignored Cam's terrified screaming as he cut into her abdomen; two small incisions on either side of her lower belly, which at first mystified the watching court until they saw him reach in and pull something from her abdominal cavity from each of those locations. And it hit them all in the same moment, what those two small lumps had to be.
Shana lunged for the nearest wastebasket, which happened to be next to Alex's table, and vomited into it. Snake Eyes was beside her in moments, holding her as she heaved and shook; Charlie, in complete defiance of court protocol, ran up to the witness box, wrapped his arms around Cam and held her as she sobbed into his shoulder.
"I don't think we need to see anything else." Liz Donnelly took a deep breath. "This court finds that the prosecution has met the burden of proof for the evidentiary hearing, and finds Corporal Cameron Arlington not guilty of the murder of Young Soo Park and Eun Mi Park. This court finds that sufficient proof exists to believe the defendant had ample cause to be afraid for her life and considered herself in imminent danger from these two individuals and acted in self-defense. The defendant, Corporal Arlington, is free to go with the court's sincerest sympathies."