Code Red

"It's your fault." It's not often to tell a client that, but sometimes it's the truth. 12 person jury, and they convicted him. It was his own fault, really. I call it The Giver's Dilemma. Like the prisoner's, only not alike at all. Essentially, you give gifts. And then you must give better gifts. And better gifts after that. And the gifts given in childhood count the highest, in this regard. We can remember when we got for our eighth birthday and not last year. To whit: if you give shitty gifts, the shit hits the fan.

In his case, 15 years without chance of parole.

I told the jury, "You can't put Santa in a no-fly list! He's the spirit of Christmas! Sure, he has sherry at every single home, but he's never been charged with a DUI yet." It failed. Horribly, miserably, failed. The prosecution got into the obesity epidemic, and my client as a poor role model, and then got into the whereabouts of Mrs. Claus, and the nature of Santa's 'elves'.

I tried to point out the magical aspects, to help salvage my client's dignity, but it never worked. I said: "And then the presents appear!" made more sense than the prosecution's arguments about relativity and a-entropic space/time fields. To which he said: "Oh, yes, and 'a stork brings them' makes more sense to children than nonsense about sexual reproduction."

Did the prosecutor made the naughty often? Don't even go there. It's an invasion of privacy and rights that made the Bush-Cheny administration look like poster boys for libertarianism. Then we had PETA weigh in on flying reindeer, church leaders on how my client had turned the Christmas season from a holiday about someone not born in December in a manger who may not have existed into crass commercialism that netted companies small fortunes and boosted the economy. It was the only part I won.

I tried to appeal to the fact that my client was a mythological entity, but I had no more luck than Creationists on their best days. I appealed to his Sainthood in the end, desperate for anything to sway jurors muttering about scab labour and shoddy toys and the prosecutor -- he just smiled. The scroogiest, grinchiest smile in lawsville, and said: "Your client is a bearded pseudo-saint with an affinity for the color red who makes it his mission to redistribute wealth to the youth that follow his orthodox code of behavior, while at the same time de-emphasizing religion? There is no Santa. He's just a fat, magical Trotsky!"

They laughed all the way though my attempts at a rebuttal. The jury convicted in in less than five minutes for a DUI, terrorism, flying without proper licences, animal abuse, scab labour, using illegal tactics to break up unions. Christ. I can't even recall all of it.

And when it was over, the Prosecutor laughed and left, a halo around his head, and said: "Yes! People wil celebrate Christmas in my name again! Mine, not a pathetic third century saint!" Never did get his name., but damn he argued a good case.