The Harlot and Delilah

In a shocking decision, the Unites States Second District Appeals Court for New York City, led by Justice Heather Droscill overturned the conviction of Henry Tilton. For those of you that have been living in a cave, Henry Tilton was convicted by a Federal jury of rape, kidnaping, child molestation and murder. Mister Tilton kidnaped eight-year-old Valery Plainfield from her home in the Bronx and took her to New Jersey, where he then raped and finally killed her. Mister Tilton was convicted when the FBI learned from his emails and chat room conversations that he committed the crime. He was bragging about it to other pedophiles in those chat rooms and emails. He was arrested and those same emails and chat room conversations were the basis of the prosecution’s case again Mister Tilton. The jury was out for less than fifteen minutes before handing down a verdict of guilty. The judge sentenced him to death, but now the use of the emails and chat room conversations has been overturned by the United States Second District Appeals Court citing his right to privacy. With more on this developing story is Kimberly Clark. Kimberly......"

Roger Plainfield had heard enough. It sickened him, sickened him to no end. His little girl was dead, and now that bastard was free. It was her fault, that fucking lesbian liberal. She voted to throw out the evidence, overturning the verdict, and then she wrote the court’s opinion. She was too fucking liberal for her own good. Worse, the rumor was Thomas was considering her to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court. A fucking liberal dyke!!!!!!!!!!!

It a good thing I’m not in New York, you fucking dyke, Plainfield thought. You can be fucking glad I joined the Reverend Lee’s First Pentecostal Church of Jesus Christ here in DC, or I’d fucking kill you, you fucking liberal dyke.

It was all Plainfield could do to hold back his anger. He had to go see the Reverend Billy Bob Lee. He would know what to do, he would help him, and maybe there was something that could be done about this whole thing yet.

Justice Droscill...... Justice Droscill, they shouted at her as she left the Federal Courthouse. She had hoped the reporters wouldn’t be there, but she knew it was unrealistic. She stopped and faced them.

Justice Droscill, how can you let a pedophile and murderer back on the streets? a reporter shouted at her.

I had no choice, she said. Do you think we liked doing that? Do you think we don’t care about the family of Valery Plainfield, or that we want Henry Tilton back on the streets? We don’t, but our job is to see that the law of the land has been carried out and the constitution has not been violated. Yes, I believe that Mister Tilton is guilty, and that what he did was wrong and he should be punished, but what the FBI did was also wrong, and two wrongs don’t make a right.

But Justice Droscill, isn’t justice served by not throwing out the evidence, especially if, as you say, you also believe he’s guilty? Two wrongs may not make a right, but isn’t letting Henry Tilton out of jail rewarding the greater wrong? the reporter followed up.

Heather was ready for this. This went to one of her core beliefs. She wouldn’t back down on this. First off, which is the greater wrong? She looked right at the reporter. When he didn’t answer, she continued.

"We, the people of this country have an expectation of privacy. It is fundamental, it’s the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, and it was reaffirmed by the United States Supreme Court in Katz v the United States. It says that the American government can’t contravene an individual’s right to privacy. It also states that an individual’s expectation of privacy is one that society recognizes as reasonable. That is the heart of the matter, what do we as a society expect to be private.

"Mister Tilton talked about his crimes in a private chat room. He entered that chat room to speak privately with another individual that he knew and trusted. As such, he expected that conversation to be private. He also sent emails to individuals that he knew and trusted, again, expecting them to be private.

It was not those individuals that came to the FBI and made them public, the FBI read those chats and the emails he sent. They did not obtain a warrant because they knew they did not have the necessary grounds for a warrant, so they used the Patriot Act to declare Mister Tilton a possible terrorist and read his chat room conversations and emails. He was not a terrorist, was never arrested or tried for terrorism, and he had an expectation to privacy.

Heather paused and looked at the assembled members of the press. Here is the problem, she continued. "Technology gives us the ability to circumvent the law. We would not allow the government to open our regular mail and read it for no reason, nor would we stand for them listening in on our phone conversations. We have an expectation of privacy for our mail and our phone calls, shouldn’t that same expectation of privacy extend to our emails and private chat room conversations?

"It would have been different if Mister Tilton had said these things in a public chat room that dozens of other individuals are using. In that domain, we have no expectation of privacy, just like this conversation has no expectation of privacy. However, Mister Tilton left the public chat room and entered a private chat room. Again, if I invited you back to my chambers and discussed this off the record, and another reporter had his ear to the door, that would be wrong. That is what the FBI did, they had their ear to the door and listened in on a private conversation, and read private letters. It makes no difference if it is email, or snail mail, a letter to an individual needs to be considered private.

The ramifications of this case are, if the courts allow the testimony of private conversations to be admitted because the government has the ability to listen to any conversation they want, then none of our conversations are safe and private. What is to prevent the government from using a parabolic microphone to listen to what a husband says to his wife in bed and use that against him, getting around the martial privilege? What’s to prevent a private detective from using that same parabolic microphone to listen in to your private conversations with your spouse in your home? Technology will make privacy a thing of the past. Do we have a right to allow technology to overturn the Fourth Amendment?

So, you let a pedophile and a murderer go free? another reporter shouted.

"I believe as do many others that it is better to let ten guilty men go free than it is to incarcerate one innocent man. Also, remember, the Constitution says you are innocent until proven guilty, therefore Mister Tilton was considered innocent when the FBI listened to his private conversations.

The real injustice here is that the FBI did not do its job. They felt that Mister Tilton was guilty, but instead of obtaining the evidence that they needed that would allow a judge to issue a search warrant for Mister Tilton’s computer, they circumvented the law with the Patriot Act. Had the FBI done their job to begin with, we would not be having this conversation. Now if you will excuse me I need to be going.

Justice Droscill, can’t it be said that the framers of the Constitution didn’t envision emails or chat rooms, and therefore it is not covered by the Fourth Amendment, a reporter shouted out.

Yes, that could be an argument, but the Supreme Court has rejected that rule. If you use that argument then it could invalidate the Second Amendment. When the Second Amendment was written, a musket fired one shot then you had to stop, put in a ball, black powder and tamp it tight into the barrel of the gun. Today we have weapons that can fire over four hundred bullets in the time it too the framers of the Constitution to fire one. If we use your logic, we strike down the Second Amendment. I am not striking down the Second Amendment and neither is the Supreme Court because technology has made automatic weapons, the internet and private chat rooms possible. I’m sure the NRA doesn’t want the Second Amendment struck down, they should be on my side with this, you can’t argue both sides of the fence. Now I really need to leave. That’s all the questions I’m taking.

As Justice Heather Droscill said that, she took a step down toward the street. A reporter in front of her dropped her note pad, so Heather bent over to pick it up for her. As that same instant, a gunman, with a high-powered rifle squeezed the trigger, firing a bullet at the exact spot Heather Droscill’s head should have been. The shot missed and ricocheted against the step.

Several women screamed. Heather’s bodyguard, Anthony Varga, a lone Treasury Agent that got stuck with the assignment of guarding the judge, threw her to the ground and dove on top of her. The gunman quickly fled the scene as all the reporters began to flea in panic. If not for the dropped notebook, liberal Federal appeals court judge and confirmed lesbian Heather Droscill would be dead from a gunshot to her head.

Chapter Two

Sirens began to wail. Varga didn’t move, he stayed on top of Heather. He wanted to make sure she was safe. If he got off her, and the assassin was still around, he could still kill her. In less than five minutes, ten police cars were on the scene. Only then did Varga get off her. Surrounded by the New York City Police Department, they led her back into the Federal Court House.

Five minutes after that, additional Secret Service as well as FBI Agents arrived on the scene. Clint Stegerman, the Senior Supervising Agent for the FBI in New York arrived, as did Lewis Fullerton, the Supervising Treasury and Secret Service Agent. After a brief discussion, Fullerton agreed to let the FBI handle the case. This was, after all, just an appeals court judge.

Stegerman walked into Heather’s office. He checked her out. She was right around forty, blond, and pretty, with blue eyes and a very nice figure. Heather had on heels, but only about three-inch heels. She wasn’t very tall so the heels made her close to average for a woman. She was wearing a conservative business suit. Heather Droscill had no problem showing off her figure, but not at work. Here she was a no nonsense federal appeals judge that wanted to be evaluated on the basis of her court decisions, not the size of her breasts or an hourglass figure.

Stegerman himself was slightly older than Heather. He wore a Brooks Brothers suit, white shirt and blue tie. He would have towered over Heather, even in her heels, if she hadn’t been sitting down. He had a full head of dark hair, brown eyes and a ruggedly handsome face. He could handle her sexual orientation. Hell, he enjoyed the occasional lesbian porn, not that he was into porn, but he imagined seeing Heather on one of those sites. It was her politics he hated, having a problem with her liberal attitudes.

Judge Droscill, I’m glad to see you’re alright. Now before we start, how would you like me to handle this investigation? I’m sure you don’t want some liberal appeals court judge throwing out our evidence because we did something wrong.

Heather was still shaking. It had been too close. However, she wasn’t too upset to let that remark pass. Agent Stegerman, I’m not the one that dropped the ball on this case. Do you think I enjoy putting pedophiles and murderers back on the streets to rape and kill another eight-year-old girl? What if your agents hadn’t Mirandized him? Would we be having this conversation if Mister Tilton wasn’t read his rights and confessed without the protection of his Fifth Amendment rights? Don’t give me that holier than though attitude. My job is to make sure that the laws of the land are adhered to and that an individual’s rights have not been violated. What your agents did was to violate his Fourth Amendment rights to privacy and his Fifth Amendment rights to self-incrimination. It would have been different if you could have gotten a warrant for his computer, or turned the people he chatted privately with and wrote emails to, but you didn’t. You, you and your people left me and the others with no choice. Because your people fucked up, we had to put a child molester and a murderer back on the streets, and someone took a shot at me. So, don’t give me that holier than though shit.

It was the only way we could get any evidence on Tilton, Stegerman admitted.

Yeah, and I’m the one that looks like the asshole because you couldn’t do your job. And I’m the one that was almost killed because of it as well. She had stopped shaking. Now she was just angry. Did everyone think she liked putting people like Tilton back on the streets? It was a simple choice, a no brainer, in Heather’s mind, if you take away a criminal’s rights, then all you have to do to take away an innocent person’s rights is to arrest them and label them a criminal. She’d rather let all the child molesters and murderers out of jail, than turn this country into a police state!

Alright, Your Honor, Stegerman began not wanting to get into this argument with her. They saw the case from different sides and they were never going to agree. All Stegerman knew was, they took a pedophile and murderer off the streets, and three liberal appeals judges put him back on the streets over a minor technicality. Do you have any idea who might want you dead? He knew it was a stupid question, but he had to ask it.

She just glared at him like he was the village idiot asking why the sun always rose in the right side of the sky every morning when he came out of his house. I think if you ask Agent Varga here, he’ll gladly give you the bags of hate mail I get. Also, I’ll give you permission to read my emails in the folder that says, ‘I hate dykes.’ Maybe you can narrow down the suspect list to half of the eastern United States, or at least the red states.

He just stared at her. I hate dykes?!?!

Yes, Agent Stegerman, I have a sense of humor. Since most of those email begin by calling me a fucking dyke, I thought ‘I hate dykes,’ would be a rather appropriate file name.

Yes, I imagine so. How many emails are in that file?

I go through it and delete any email that’s more than six months old. I figure if they haven’t done anything in six months, they were just ranting. I’d say there’s five hundred to a thousand emails.

Again, he stared. Five hundred to a thousand. I can’t assign agents to question all those people. He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t like her politics, but you don’t change governments and political attitudes with a bullet!

No, I didn’t think you could. Still, I’m guessing it might have been someone I pissed off by this decision. What these people forget is, I was one of three judges that heard the appeal. We all voted the same way.

Yes, Your Honor, but you wrote the statement, and you’re the head judge of the Second District Appeals Court. You are the one seen as being responsible for this ruling.

Heather sighed. She knew all this. It wasn’t true. She didn’t ask to be on this case. She didn’t assign herself to it, it was just the luck of the draw, just like that reporter dropping her notebook at that instant was luck. She didn’t reply.

When Heather said nothing, Stegerman continued. Did anyone know you would be announcing the decision today?

No, she said, but the jail was informed of our decision before it was announced. I imagine that Mister Tilton was out on the streets before the decision was made public.

I see…... Stegerman’s phone rang. He looked at the number. It was a field agent. The agent had to know where he was, so this had to be important. Excuse me, Your Honor, this may be important. He opened his cell phone. Stegerman.

He listened, asked a few questions and closed the phone. Tilton’s dead. Shot twice, once between his legs, and once in the head.

Heather shook her head. I’m not sorry for him. Just between you and me, he got what he deserved, but that doesn’t make it right to kill him. No one has the right to play judge, jury and executioner. He was entitled to a new trial.

Which we all know would never happen. I agree, I’m not going to grieve over this, but I also agree that killing him is wrong. However, I’m not going to assign any agents to his case, I have more pressing cases. NYPD can if they want to, but I doubt that they will either. I guess Tilton didn’t duck at the right moment.

You think it was the same person that tried to kill me?

Probably. I’m going to see what we have on the person that tried to kill you.

As Stegerman started to leave, Heather stood and grabbed his arm. Agent Stegerman, I know you don’t like my politics and maybe not my sexual orientation, but thank you for doing your job.

Judge Droscill, I’m a professional, whether or not I like or agree with what you do and stand for is not important. Just like you may not have liked putting a pedophile and murderer back on the streets, you did it because you perceive it as your job. I don’t agree, but I can admire your ability to follow your beliefs. I’m the same way, I’m not going to let my opinion of you stop me from doing my job.

I understand, Agent Stegerman, but still, thank you.

Your welcome, Judge. Now I’m going to see what my other agents have learned. I’ll get back to you and Agent Varga with that information. Then he walked out of the Federal Court Building to see what his people had found.

Chapter Three

Stegerman’s agents had spread out looking for where the shooter had been. They did a triangulation based on the bullet mark in the steps where Heather Droscill had been standing. They came up with a building, and men were sent to the roof. They found a few fresh scratch marks that might have been made from a rifle mount, but no rifle, or shell casing. Nothing was found on any roof, and there was no sign of a gunman in any building. The scratch marks on the one building were it. They combed that roof, and everything in the building for fingerprints and DNA, as well as boot prints, but nothing was found. It would appear that the guy was a professional. Stegerman reported that to Heather, Varga and Fullerton.

Stegerman also said he would assign people to the case, to find the shooter, but he said realistically it didn’t look promising. He sent agents to look into the death of Tilton in case it was the same person. If it was, he figured it would be a dead end. He told Heather and the Secret Service that they would keep them informed. There was nothing else the FBI could do.

Heather sighed and thanked him. Then she took out her cell phone. Agent Varga, she said when it was just the two of them again. Would you excuse me, I need to make a phone call, and it’s private.

Of course, judge, he said and left her alone in her chambers.

She looked at her watch. It was four in the afternoon, quitting time for many people. She went into her directory and found the number. She pressed dial. When the woman on the other end answered, Heather said, this is Judge Heather Droscill. I need to talk to the President if he isn’t busy. If he is, I need him to call me back when he is available.

I’ll see if he’s busy, the woman said.

John Thomas, the President of the United States was in the Oval Office. He had a four o’clock appointment, but he wasn’t sure who it was. His phone rang, it was his secretary, Mary Dalton. Yes Mary? the President answered.

Mister President, Judge Droscill is on the line. She says she needs to talk to you if you aren’t busy. If you are busy, she’d like you to call her when you can. It sounds important.

Okay, whose my next appointment? As his personal secretary, Mary Dalton was given a copy of the President’s schedule each day from Debbie, his appointments secretary.

Senator Colter from Utah, Mary told the President.

Jim Colter was a pain in the ass. He was the Senior Senator from Utah and a Republican. He was one of the leaders of the Republican Party and a possible Presidential candidate in just over three years. He was probably there to extract some concessions on a Bill. Tell the Senator that I have to take this phone call. I’ll try and catch up.

Of course, Mister President. Then Mary told Heather she was putting her through.

Judge Droscill, what can I do for you? Thomas asked.

Cut the formal crap, John, it’s just you and me.

He sighed. He didn’t really know if he liked Heather Droscill, especially since she started to date Thomas’s ex-wife, Joan. They weren’t living together, but Joan was spending more time in New York and less time in Pittsburgh. However, he did like her politics. Alright Heather, what’s so important?

Someone tried to kill me, John. If a reporter hadn’t dropped her notebook and I leaned down to pick it up, you’d be looking for a new Supreme Court nominee.

Are you okay?

No, I’m not, okay, John, I’m fucking shaken up. Someone tried to kill me, and almost succeeded.

This may seem like a stupid question, but any reason why?

I don’t know, probably Tilton. We had to let him go. We had no choice, John. The man’s scum, and he should have his dick cut off and fed to him, but he has an expectation of privacy, we all do, so we had to let him go.

Yes Heather, you’re preaching to the choir, remember. That’s one of the reasons I’m going to announce your nomination to the Supreme Court in a week. So, you think someone is blaming you?

Yes, oh, and Tilton’s dead. Two shots, one in each head according to Agent Stegerman. Well, I’m not losing any sleep. It may be the same gunman that tried to kill me. Look John, if the FBI had done their job, I wouldn’t have had to let the scumbag go.

Yes Heather, expectation of privacy, I know.

Sorry.

So why are you calling me? Thomas looked at his watch. I have a meeting with Senator Colter now.

Speaking of scumbags.

He’s a Senator, Heather, Thomas reminded her.

Yes, and I’m about to become a Supreme Court Justice. My appointment is for life, so then I can call Colter a scumbag and he can’t do anything about it. Besides, he’s not going to vote for me. He’ll try to block my nomination.

Yes, I know. So why are you calling?

I want Linda Kertchbaum, she said.

There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally, Thomas said. What do you mean, you want Linda Kertchbaum.

Get your mind out of the gutter, John, I don’t want her in that way. Well I do, but that’s not why I’m calling. I want her to be on my protection detail.

She’s a firefighter, Thomas reminded her.

Yeah right, and we’re both lawyers. You show me someone that can shoot better than her, and think on their feet faster and I’ll take them.

And that’s the only reason? Thomas asked.

Yes John, that’s the only reason. Tell me, do you want her?

No Heather, I’m happily married.

Yes, and I’m happy with the woman you were married to, but that wasn’t my question, was it. I’d like to have her, would you?

No Heather. First off, I’m happily married. I’m not going to ruin my marriage for a roll in the hay with any woman. Secondly, as you failed to mention, she shoots off men’s dicks that rape her, not that I would rape her. I like mine. Finally, have you seen her husband? Peter could rip me in half. He’s crazy about her and she’s crazy about him.

Yeah, yeah, but if you were single and so was she, would you want her?

Of course. Hell, I’d even consider you if you weren’t a dyke. I’d consider Joan if she wasn’t a dyke.

You must be alone, you wouldn’t call me or Joan a dyke if anyone was there.

Yes, I’m alone right now.

Well anyway, I want Kertchbaum, and no, I’m not taking about sex.

Thomas thought a moment or two. Alright, I’ll see if I can get her and her team there.

"I don’t