The Diego Diaries: Wheelin' (dd8 105)
=0=In the courtroom
MaR-lo of Star Station rose to do battle for the very sparks of her sparkless clients. It was grimly tense in the room. She put down her datapad, then glanced at her clients who looked, some of them, bewildered while those with the most to lose looked somewhere between furious and terrified. None of them had testified and of all of them, Karyll Wheelus had the most composed expression. He stared at Prime steadily.
"Lord Optimus and those who are gathered here for this trial, I am MaR-lo of Star Station and its my calling if you will to represent those who find themselves facing what may clearly and not so clearly be considered capital punishment. I do not represent any other kind of case and during our lifetime upon Cybertron I saved many a mech and femme from being put to death by the state even if they were found guilty.
"It is my experience with this kind of law that there are as many opinions about it as there are individuals. Some feel that this is a good tool in the state's kit to deal with criminals, some of which are beyond the reach of rescue in their behavior and attitudes. Some find the idea of vengeance a suitable attribute for the state to have in dealing out punishments. Others feel as strongly as I do that capital punishment is never a solution for many reasons.
"First and foremost, you cannot undo one once its delivered and many are the innocents who paid the full price for crimes they didn't commit on our home world and empire over the eons.
"Secondly, its a value judgment a society makes against its own that is senseless and illogical, one that states your acts of murder are crimes but ours aren't. If it's immoral for someone to commit a murder, even with the extenuating circumstances of passion, then how is it moral for the state to put someone to death for it?
"There are those who say that the state deals in evidence, allows for a defense and appeal before executing the sentence. Somehow, for some individuals that's deemed fair. I do not agree. Consider that someone murders someone in a fit of passion. They never committed a crime prior and most evidence states from many a study that they won't ever commit one again. Yet, stack that one moment against the apparatus of the state that uses capital punishment as a tool.
"A person does a momentary bad thing. The state takes them in, sifts through evidence, has trials, goes through appeals, then executes that person. That process is deliberate and takes time, a lot of time and effort. At some point in the process it would seem reasonable that this would allow those involved to see that their internal logic is flawed and that being a member of a state imposing a sentence does not make you less of a murderer than the criminal. In my opinion, that makes you more. You don't have the defense of a flash moment of passion. Your timeline alone puts that to lie. You are working to deliberately kill … even murder someone who killed or murdered someone. You are committing murder against someone who committed murder.
At no point in the actual murder did time play a factor. It was a flash moment and action that resulted. The murderer didn't think about it, take a second to consider the consequences nor did they discuss it with anyone ad infinitum the way the state does. There are no appeals. There's no reflection. It just happened and would probably never happen again for most murderers. The state cannot say the same. The state is deliberate, understands that it does but still plays the morality card when the very act of state murder is as immoral as it gets.
"The state has the time to defuse any emotional attachment to the problem. They have a chance to study it and understand how it happened and what the motivations of those involved might be. They critique it for their case presentation and know more about it when they do then the actual participants who acted it out. There's the possibility of a deep emotional detachment for them that wasn't present for the murderer and the murdered.
"If murder is bad in violent or impetuous moments that happen in the blink of an optic, what can you say about state murder that takes a long time to process, allows everyone to detach themselves from the strong emotions that brought it about and think about what might be a better solution than to commit to the offender what the offender did to his victim? How is it murder when someone does it in a fit of passion and justice when the state renders it through a sieve over a course of years sometimes?
"How is it murder for one and not murder for the other? How are we as citizens of the state, the participants in our society not held to be murderers ourselves when we allow this abomination to exist among us?
"I have defended literally hundreds of mechs, all of them facing capital punishment. I did so in the midst of the worst most corrupt regimes in our history. Sentinel and all the other Primes used capital punishment to control the population and I can tell you that a lot of innocents were put to death because they could. They did so because we allowed it. What was done that cannot be undone was committed because we were silent or in agreement.
"Here in this new time, this new frontier that we're building for ourselves and our posterity, we still have amongst us the rot of the old regimes. We want to make a moral society for our people and purge the cruel practices of our former lives, the System of Exception, poverty, disease, crime and corruption. Yet we keep this fossilized relic from a brutal time with us.
"These individuals are accused of many things and they killed so many people that its easy to go with our passions to condemn them to the same penalty as their alleged victims. But if we do that how different from them are we really? How can we be free of a cruel unjust murderous past if we throw out most of it but keep some that serve our sense of vengeance? We can't. We cannot be better and more uplifted, more just and humane if we keep the most disturbing relic of our downfall as part of the possibilities for our society?
"We believe in the new world. We revel in it. We want to become our better sparks and live in a society that rejects cruelty, murder, war, greed, lies and corruption. The evidence against my clients was damning. I did my best but I knew that the witness list and the evidence presented during discovery was going to be, most likely, a hill too high to climb.
"We tried. You will tell us if we failed. But we all are in accord, Lord Optimus, that if these mechs are subjugated to the process of a special circumstance sentencing, then we are still standing in the foot lands staring upward at the cloud covered peaks of the better future we all say we want. Either we are free of the worst aspects of our former lives or we are living delusional states here in the new one.
"I for one wish to never try another death penalty case ever again. Those who were lost still haunt my dreams. I would hope that in your sentencing that you understand what's truly at stake here. We are speaking of our immortal souls. If the Pantheon steps in, I would ask that you speak for these mechs to Them about the new paradigm. Either its free of the old taint of the past or we're just deluding ourselves here in this new present.
"I am asking for mercy, Lord Optimus. I am asking for you to take that one last step away from barbarism and show us clearly and without shadow that we are a new people in a new society and nothing from the past will put a spot on our sun. Thank you," she said, then sat.
It was deeply quiet in the room.
Optimus who found no fault with her comments, agreeing with them in his own personal hatred of capital punishment glanced at Prowl.
Prowl glanced at both attorneys. "Do you both rest your cases or do you wish to do more?"
"I rest my case," Coln said.
"I do as well, Commander," MaR-lo said.
Prime considered the situation, then rose. Everyone stood with him including No-A and Semi. "I will now step out to consider my initial feelings about the evidence and all the testimony and arguments given. I would ask that you remain here while I do so with Judge Semi and Judge No-a." He then walked for the corridor and entered it followed by No-a and Semi.
As he did the defendants were removed from the room. When they were gone everyone sat down silently in the tense gloom of the room.
=0=In chambers
They sat silently in a room on couches that were comfortable.
Prime sat in a chair brooding a moment. Then he glanced at the two mechs. "Gentlemen, I would appreciate your views and opinions about the proceedings so far."
Semi glanced at No-a, then Prime. "I feel the same way that MaR-lo does about capital punishment. Before I took up law, I was just another worker bee. I saw unjust things that sometimes involved the death penalty and knew some of those accused were not guilty. That they were found to be so didn't take away the fear of a mistake or a deliberate decision being made to put them to death. I fear that innocents can pay and you can't unwind the decision once its made. It happened before. I don't want it to happen again."
"Then that hinges on what a Special Circumstances sentence with a Pantheonic intervention means? Is a recall of that nature a death sentence? What do you think, Optimus? You have the most contact with Them," Semi asked.
Optimus considered the question. "I would state from my experience that there is no death involved since no one dies. This morning we saw Kudon and Sentinel. They are with the Pantheon but I do believe they are safer there than in a prison. This is a puzzlement to me. I have never considered a Pantheonic recall a death penalty." He thought a moment, then rose to stand. "I have made my decision on this case."
"You can take more time, Optimus," No-a said he and Semi stood.
"I know," Prime said. "I do believe that the sentence has asserted itself. The finer points are in the hands of others." He walked to the door and with the others following stepped into the corridor, then the courtroom.
Everyone startled, then stood as the judges came in and sat.
"You may sit," Prowl said. He glanced at Optimus, then bowed. "Have you reached a verdict?"
Prime nodded. "I have. Bring in the defendants please."
Hercy leaned into the corridor through the open door, then stepped back as the defendants entered the room. They walked to their chairs then stood.
MaR-lo spoke to them a second, then turned toward Prime with her staff to await the verdict.
Coln rose with his own as well.
Barron sat riveted with his kids, staring at Prime with a solemn expression. One of his kids was researching precedent for MaR-lo's argument even as everyone sat with tense anticipation.
:If they don't get this done I'm going to fall over: Judy Witwicky said as the humans with her nodded in agreement.
Prime was silent, then began. "We have heard a great deal of evidence about a vast array of crimes committed it is alleged by the defendants. They were given positions of trust, some of them, while others used their acquired power and wealth to subvert the system. It had catastrophic consequences for our world and everyone there.
"Judges are expected to be honest, impartial and motivated by the truth and evidence. They are a last line of defense for the public against state tyranny and the abuse of their sovereignty by others. Both Judges Serafus and Clamor failed utterly in their duty to the law, our people and civilization. They were part of the rot that toppled us and created death and chaos on a scale that beggars understanding.
"That there was no other reason than personal greed and cruelty to do so makes the outcome even that more difficult to bear. We were supposed to trust you and expect that you would be fair, honest and lawful. You were none of those things. I, Optimus Prime do find you both guilty of all the counts against you. I sentence you to a term of one million years in deep stasis with a review of lengthening or ending that term at the expiration of this penalty."
Both of them gasped, one of them shifting painfully but were gripped by the legal staff with MaR-lo.
"I sentence you, Lan and D Wheelus to a term of 250,000 years of deep stasis for your complicity in some of the financial crimes and exonerate you on the crimes against the state and treason because the evidence, though compelling, did not rise to the level of conviction in my processor. The crimes of murder I do hold you complicit in. You were the alibi for your bond and son on two different occasions. I thereby add 100,000 years of deep stasis to your sentence to be served consecutively."
Both of them glanced at each other with almost a wild expression, then sat down. They were too shocked to say anything.
"Karyll and Kamdon Wheelus, I find you guilty of all charges. Your callous disregard and unbridled criminality have earned you the highest sentence that I can impose as a Prime. I sentence you to ten million years in deep stasis for the murder and chaos of which both of you are guilty." He then rose. "This court stands in abeyance to allow the Pantheon to weigh in on the case. It is Their right and though you and I share similar convictions on this part of the trial, Lady MaR-lo, I have no power over what happens next.
"All of you will be placed on special access transponder messaging to let you know if the Pantheon decides that this case is worthy of Their intervention. You will be called when it is clear to me that They want to respond. When you are called and there is no indication when it happens that it will be a convenient time, you will have two breems to get here. If you are too late then I cannot do anything about that. Please be as prompt as you can be when the call comes, if it does." He glanced at the defendants. "Do you wish to speak?"
Karyll stared at him. "I'll save it for Prima."
Prime stared at him, then the roomful of solemn individuals. "This court is in abeyance." Then he walked into the corridor with Semi and No-a as the door closed behind them.
=0=Later that evening
He walked into the apartment after spending time at the Temple contemplating what would come next. The Matrix was quiet so Prime went home. Dinner was over but he knew that Prowl would have some waiting for him. As he entered the house, two little femmes were standing by a couch looking at a book. They turned toward him, smiled, then ran to their father.
It warmed Prime in places he didn't know he had as he gathered them up. "I missed you."
"We missed you, too. Where you been, Atar?" Solus said as Sojourner nodded.
Standing nearby in the doorway of the kitchen watching them, Prowl studied Prime for tells. He had none but his aura was heightened. The Pantheon was close by when that happened.
Prime sat on the couch, then set his daughters on the floor.
They stared at him, then grinned. "Where you been?"
Prime grinned. "I was at the seashore."
They glanced at each other, then him. "Where is that?"
"Far away," Optimus said as he reached into his subspace and brought something up. Two small beautiful shells were resting on his servo, one blue, the other a translucent light green. He stared at them, two shells that theoretically shouldn't be here, then held them out. "These are for you," he said with love in his deep voice.
=0=TBC 03-04-2021 03-09-2021
ESL
Ad infinitum (ahd-in-finn-nigh-um): forever and ever and ever, on and on without end. Usually.
WHOOPSIE! Notes tomorrow. :D:D:D