The Good Slave (5 page)

Chapter Six

The Verdict

Most people were discussing dinner plans, some not so softly, by the time the door to the judge’s chambers finally opened.
 
The din died down immediately as the portly old jurist briskly entered the courtroom clutching a black leather binder at his side.

“All rise!” the bailiff commanded.
 
Joints had rusted over after hours of sedentariness and the bailiff’s order was greeted with irritated moans and groans.

At nearly the exact same moment the door to the jury room also opened and the thirteen jurors stepped out looking as grim as usual.
 
Each man silently walked to his assigned seat and stood there, staring straight ahead, as expressionless as an wind-up automaton with the tension of its inner springs completely spent.

“Hear ye!
 
Hear ye!” cried the bailiff.
 
“The Christian People versus Stephen Messinjure is now back in session!
 
The Honorable Horatio P. O’Malley presiding!”

The judge seemed anxious to be done with the proceedings as he flipped open his binder and curtly announced, “You may be seated.”

Phoebus’ stomach knotted up.

The judge took a moment to quickly look over some papers before turning to the jury.
 
“Mr. Foreman,” he said, “have you agreed upon a verdict?”

A man sitting in the front row stood up.
 
He was tall and gaunt.
 
His skin looked nearly as gray as his suit.
 
Phoebus could see he was clutching a folded piece of paper.

“Yes, your Honor,” he replied in a flat, nasally voice.
 
The courtroom was rapt.
 
“We have.”

“Bailiff,” the judge muttered, motioning toward the gray man.
 
The bailiff walked over to the jury box where Mr. Foreman handed him his folded paper, which the bailiff took to the judge.
 
The judge unfolded it, read it, and handed it back to the bailiff who took it back to the jury foreman.

“Mr. Foreman,” the judge asked, his thin-lipped expression remaining impassive, “how say you?”

Master Josef gripped Phoebus’ hand.

“We, the jur--” Something seemed caught in the gray man’s throat.
 
He cleared it and continued very loudly.
 
“We, the jury, find the defendant, Stephen Messinjure, guilty as charged.”

Instant pandemonium.
 
(In all honestly, this seemed a little showy considering the predictability of the outcome to most but naive little slaves.)

“Order!” the judge yelled.

Phoebus felt like he was going to puke. His heartbroken master let out a low moan.

After the noise settled down the judge turned to the jury and said, “My opinion is that your verdict is correct and just.
 
I must say that as an individual I cannot be happy because this is a sad day for America.
 
The thought that a citizen of our country would debase himself to the destruction of his fellow Americans by the most foul and unnatural means known to man is so shocking that I can't find words to describe his loathsome offense.”

You seem to be doing a pretty good job to me
, thought the little slave.

“This young man—if, indeed, we can still think of
any
sodomite as a “man”—was given a full, fair and open trial.
 
It was proven beyond any reasonable doubt, by reason of your verdict, that he is guilty of having committed heinous acts of homosexual perversion time and again.
 
Your verdict is a warning that we can and will fight sin with vehement resolution.
 
You have sent a message to others who may think they can get away with undermining our sacred Christian democracy that no matter where they are, who they are or how powerfully connected the may
think
they are, we will hunt them down and destroy them for the greater glory of God.

“I thank you for your dedication to this sacred duty.
 
You are dismissed.”
 
The judge then pounded his gavel.
 
“Sentencing will be in fifteen minutes.
 
Court is in recess until that time.”
 
He pounded his gavel a second time and quickly exited the room.

Everyone knew what the sentence would be.
 
The Church-State had long ago declared that homosexuality was an inexplicable in-born infirmity of the mind that could never be cured, a diabolical curse that could never be lifted.
 
All attempts at rehabilitation had failed and were eventually discontinued.
 
Post-incarceration sexual surveillance had proven many times over that even homosexuals who had married following their release from prison always sought sexual relations with an individual of their own gender.
 
“Fags will be fags,” one Supreme Court justice famously said when upholding the death penalty for sodomy and all associated homosexual sexual behavior, including open-mouthed kissing.
 
(A peck on the lips might be okay, but never not a prick.)
 
It was Josef Messinjure himself who had once proclaimed, “The only fair and merciful sentence for the suffering homosexual is death. Death frees the sinner of his sin while sparing the Church-State the financial and moral burdens of caring for irredeemable degenerates for whom there is absolutely no hope of repentant rehabilitation.”

There would be no appeal, either.
 
After the Holy Revolution they were outlawed for all but Party members and their families.
 
Master Josef had been disgraced and defrocked by his fellow clerics and subsequently The Party had given him the boot, so no appeal for his seditious son.
 
(The POG kicked out most party members either while they were on trial or immediately after their conviction, so in reality appeals were nearly non-existent.)
 
Besides, the Church-State would want to make an example of Stephen Messinjure, the perverted progeny of a heretical traitor.
 
There would be no quick, painless beheading or peaceful drifting off into a drug-induced oblivion for Stephen Messinjure.
 
Even a firing squad would be too quick and clean.
 
The Party alone appointed all judges and granted them complete discretion in sentencing.
 
Publicly The Party rationalized that this policy as an assurance of strict adherence to the letter of the law.
 
Subversively, however—of course, naturally, without a doubt—it also guaranteed leniency and retaliation when the POG desired it.

“Stephen Messinjure, the depravity of your crimes is almost unfathomable,” the judge read in monotone from a prepared statement.
 
“The testimony of human suffering that you inflicted upon others was, at times, agonizing to hear and painful to watch.
 
Your heinousness, in my estimation, is made all the more heinous because it was all about sex—inhumane things one human being did to other human beings, seemingly without remorse and without regret.
 
The conduct which the jury found proven at trial beyond a reasonable doubt in and of itself merits the most severe penalty.

“In my humble estimation, you received the fair and full trial that every defendant in this country is entitled to.
 
Therefore, I am compelled to impose a just, fair, and adequate sentence.
 
The most serious crimes deserve the most serious punishments.
 
If there is to be any deterrent effect, it must be for me to mete out a sentence that recognizes the gravity of your crimes; any less would not show sufficient respect for the law or the rule of law.
 
After an orderly proceeding in which both parties were very well represented by counsel, a jury did the hard work that jurors do and rendered a fair and just verdict that reflected careful review of the evidence and application of the law.

“Mr. Messinjure, at this point I would ask you to please rise.”

Master Josef’s lawyer stood, but Stephen was overcome with grief and didn’t rise as the judge had ordered.
 
He just hung his head low and sobbed.
 
The judged motioned to the bailiff who marched over to the defendant, put a hand under his arm, and roughly jerked him to his feet.
 
Stephen almost fell but the bailiff had a firm grip.

“Mr. Messinjure,” the judge continued, “having considered and weighed all of the sentencing factors under Church-State Code 1984(a), it is the judgment of this Court that you are hereby committed to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons to be executed by means of lapidation until you are dead.”

The courtroom exploded, and this time the excitement was genuine.
 
Just a few decades earlier nearly everyone in America would have had to look lapidation up in the dictionary if asked the meaning of the word.
 
Since biblical law was now
the
law, however, everybody knew it meant—stoning.

Master Josef wailed out loud and the little slave thought he was going to be sick.
 
For weeks the media had been clamoring for a stoning in the case of a guilty sentence.
 
For weeks pundits had been debating the possibility of a stoning, though no one ever dared argue against the punishment.
 
A VILE PUNISHMENT FOR A VILE CRIME! one headline had read that morning.
 
Protestors outside the courthouse frequently held up signs and wore T-shirts proclaiming EVERY HOMO MUST GET STONED!
 
To the judge the punishment the public wanted could not have been more obvious, and as the POG leadership always mandated at their judicial conferences:
Ye give the faithful what they want, stupid!