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Terry, were you a Night Court fan by any chance?

Very tense chapter, Terry. Well played. I especially like how Connie slowly drew out Jay's testimony.

When they started talking about bands and songs, I was wondering why the judge didn't stop them for irrelevance. I love how she "dropped the bomb" on Jay.

Hi,

Great part!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gah!

And ... gah!

I can't even handle that kind of cliffhanger.

Another brilliantly written chapter, Terry — and the Night Court shout-out at the beginning totally made me grin.

And what a way to rachet up the tension with Constance's cross-examination! *loves* I'm glad she's on the side of the angels here.

But then the recess? I said it before (twice!), I'll say it again: *Gah!*

Post more soon? Pretty please?

Terry, this had me gasping at your brilliant wittiness and your writing skills:

The way I read this, Ron doesn't instantly recognize Lois. He hears a sensual female voice and sees a beautiful woman, and he is overjoyed that an amazingly perfect specimen of the female sex seems to be flirting with him. The next instant he recognizes his boss, who is definitely off sexual limits for him. I love how these two paragraphs bring home Lois's beauty and sense of humour and Ron's not always reciprocated interest in beautiful women and his occasionally grudging but always warm and unshakable loyalty with his boss. And the imagery you use - Ron's expression fell as if dropping off the Atlantic Ocean's continental shelf - is absolutely, totally priceless! Terry, I'm in awe of your writing skills, your humour, your intelligence and your Renaissance Man all-round general knowledge of so many aspects of the world.

I'm not going to quote anything else, but I totally enjoyed Connie's cross-examination of the sleazy Jay. That was brilliantly done, beautifully written, and so entertaining.

However, there is something about America's approach to a person's right to kill in self-defence that keeps troubling me. It's troubling me deeply, in fact.

As I was reading this, I recalled a case from - probably - the 1980s. It took place in Florida during Halloween. A Japanese exchange student, who might quite possibly have been somewhat drunk and disorderly (and horribly dressed up, no doubt) couldn't find the way to the party he was looking for, and so he walked up to the front door of a house in the neighbourhood and rang the bell to ask for directions. The owner of the house was frightened out of his wits by the sight of the Japanese student, so he went and got his gun. And as the happy-go-lucky kid outside was getting tired of waiting for anyone to open the door, so that he turned around and started to leave, the homeowner shot him in the back and killed him. Now, the kid was demonstrably shot in the back. He was demonstrably unarmed. He had not tried to break into the house. For all of that, the courts of Florida found the homeowner innocent of any wrongdoing. He had killed in self-defence, defending himself and his property from someone who had knocked on his door, and who, therefore, just might have been a prospective murderer. The homeowner's right to panic and to regard a lone retreating kid as a deadly threat and to kill that kid because of his own panic outweighed the kid's right to his own life. You know, that exchange student could almost have been me. Not exactly, because I really drink very little, so I wouldn't have been drunk and disorderly in public. But I might have knocked on a door to ask for directions. If I did that in the United States, would the homeowner have the right to shoot me and kill me?

To me, this case meant that my belief in the American legal system and its commitment to defend the sanctity of life got a blow that it has never quite recovered from.

So you are going to have a very, very hard time convincing me that Superman didn't commit a crime when he ripped Billy Church's heart out. The only way to do it is probably to show me that Superman knew that only a show of horrifying force and cruelty would be enough to stop and break Intergang. You could try to show me that Superman knew that if he didn't kill Billy Church, but instead just grabbed him and flew him off to a police station or to the FBI headquarters or something, then that wouldn't be enough to stop either Billy Church or Intergang. That might have led to a lot of legal hassles, where Billy Church might have been set free on bail and where his lawyers could get him off on a technicality during an ensuing trial, or where they could simply make Superman look like a demented vigilante who was unlawfully interfering with the lives of upstanding citizens. In short, I can see the possibility that if Superman hadn't struck with sufficient - and deadly - force at Intergang, he might not have been able to break that organisation. Of course, I'm not going to buy the suggestion that Superman was at once almost crazy with grief because of Intergang's killing of people close to him, and at the same time he was coldly calculating that only a terrible show of brutality was going to stop this criminal organisation. Either Superman was crazy with grief, or else he knew exactly what he was doing.

But I object to this, too:

How can all the good things Superman has done over the years be irrelevant here? If it can be shown that Superman's behaviour this time was remarkably different from what it has always been before, doesn't that bolster the suggestion that the evil of Intergang was also different from anything Superman had been up against before? Doesn't that bolster the suggestion that Superman isn't likely to kill anyone else the way he killed Billy Church?

Because this is certainly also true:

No, Superman didn't kill a saint when he killed Billy Church. He didn't kill a drunk exchange student who rang the bell of the wrong house to ask for directions. He didn't kill a run-of-the-mill thief or forger or extortioner, not even a run-of-the-mill murderer. He killed Billy Church, who was a horrible threat to all of of society. That fact must not be forgotten.

And now Lois is going to be called to the witness stand. I so, so wonder what she will say. What she will be obliged or forced to say. And I so wonder how her testimony will affect the relationship between herself and Clark.

Ann

Thanks to all of you for your feedback! Yes, I watched Night Court, and Bull was probably my favorite character. And don't worry, Lois will testify soon.

I'm not trying to convince you, Ann. You're not on the jury. Besides, as I have pointed out several times, Superman is on trial for second degree murder, and only second degree murder. He can be convicted of that crime only, or he can be acquitted. There is no middle ground here. And since a court of law is not intended to make moral judgements, the jury will not be asked to make one. The moral judgements occur when laws are enacted (don't murder, don't rob, don't jaywalk, etc.), not when someone is on trial for breaking one or more laws.

You say you are troubled by America's justice system and how certain laws are applied. I submit to you that since you don't live here, you should be a bit more careful in your critisism. In the specific case you mention, the Japanese exchange student, I sincerely doubt that your presentation of the facts is compeletely accurate. I have no familiarity with the case, but since it took place more than 20 years ago, I submit that your own recollection is spotty, at best, and because of that you did not present all the pertinent facts. Such attacks using half-remembered anectodal evidence are beneath an intelligent person such as yourself, Ann, and I'm a little surprised that you even brought this up.

As to Reisman's assertion that the jury should disregard Superman's previous acts, that's because each case is supposed to be judged on the facts surrounding the case, not the facts which have no bearing on the case. If a known drug dealer is tried for a murder which he did not commmit, should that dealer be convicted simply because he's a bad guy? Not according to our laws, no. He should be tried for the crimes he has committed, but he should not be punished for something he didn't commit simply because it's easier to convict him of that crime.

I am not an attorney, nor do I play one on TV. But I do have some familiarity with the justice system from the jury side of things. I know generally what lawyers can and cannot get away with in court. Connie's questioning of Jay's sound tech experience was allowed because the prosecution didn't object to it. Unless one attorney is acting like a complete fool and the attorney for the other side is asleep, a judge won't intervene during cross-examination. On top of that, the attorney questioning the witness called by the other side has a fair amount of latitude in questioning the witness, as long as the questions pertain to the case, which Connie's did.

Again, thanks for all the feedback. There's more legal and personal stuff to come, so stay tuned.

The case about the Japanese exchange student got quite a lot of coverage in Time and Newsweek, which I subscribed to at the time. I followed the case from the time when the actual shooting was reported up to the time when the homeowner was acquitted. I had been absolutely certain that the homeowner would be found guilty of some sort of crime, and I was horrified at his acquittal. The jury ruled that it had been acceptable for the defendant to shoot the exchange student in self defence. The fact that the student had been shot in the back, that he was unarmed and that he had not tried to break in was not considered sufficient evidence that the homeowner had overreacted. I'm sure there are facts I don't know about the case. For example, I'm assuming that the student was probably drunk and horribly dressed up, which, however, Time and Newsweek did not mention, to my recollection. It could well be, too, that the homeowner had posted a "No Trespassing" sign somewhere, and it is also quite possible that he had previously been pestered and hounded by young hoodlums. Maybe the exchange student was knocking quite loudly on his door and making some drunken and seemingly threatening sounds. To me, however, none of that can justify shooting and killing a person who is leaving your property without having damaged it. Perhaps the homeowner was suffering from temporary insanity? But if so, wouldn't that have been officially stated as the reason for his acquittal?

At about the same time that the case of the exchange student was reported, I saw a TV program about domestic violence in America. I'm extremely well aware that domestic violence occurs everywhere, so I'm not trying to turn that into a specifically American problem. This program concentrated on describing the case of a man who had killed his wife and who had a history of violence. He had previously killed a man. But the court had decided that the husband's killing of the other man had been self defence, and therefore nothing had been done to reprimand the husband or to curb his violent tendencies.

America is such a big and populous country, with 300 million inhabitants and 50 - or is it 52? - states. I, too, realize that you can't judge such a big and diverse country by a few individual incidences. Nevertheless, I'm glad that I live in a country where the violent taking of another person's life, unless it happens in a few select cases in the line of duty, or in some extremely clear-cut cases of self defence, is always regarded as a crime.

Ann