Chapter 2600: Whistling Down (Fifty-Eight)

Chapter 2574: The Fall (Fifty-Eight)

Gotham’s autumn is naturally brighter than other seasons. On days when dark clouds cover everyone’s head, you can still see a touch of blue on the skyline in the early morning and evening, which is too bright for this city. It interweaves with the faint morning light, turning leaves and puddles into unclear colors.

When the dark clouds disperse, in the early morning of late autumn, the damp and cold air condenses into a mist, and the red taillights of the morning rush hour cars are looming in the mist, like a broken string of beads.

The tall city in the distance changes between iron gray and dark brown. The neon lights on the streets that have just quieted down after a night of revelry are lonely in the mist where tiny water droplets are shining in the sun.

The Gotham Court was born with the city. It is an older building than the Gotham Cathedral and the Gotham Theater. It has not been forgotten in the long history of urban development. It has been renovated and rebuilt twice in the 19th and 20th centuries respectively.

Like the courts in most cities in New Jersey, the Gotham Court has a white exterior wall, solemn Roman columns and gray-green roofs in front of the gate, and three round arches in front of the porch for daily passage.

It was the working hours of the court, and many judges, judicial assistants and legal advisers in suits and leather shoes were carrying briefcases in the square in front of the door.

The morning light had just risen to the roof of the building next to it, making everything here bright and warm.

If you walk further inside, you can see the historical heritage of this brand-new building. The interior decoration is not modern style, but brown-red wooden hard decoration, combined with dark natural marble slabs, which is quite British.

At this time, the reception hall was filled with a strong aroma of coffee. A tall man in a suit was holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a briefcase in the other hand. He walked in and nodded to his colleagues in a friendly manner.

He walked through the crowd and walked up the stairs quickly. A lady just walked out from the corner and almost bumped into his arms.

"Oh my God! Judge Dent, why did you come so early today?" The curly-haired lady pushed her glasses in surprise.

"Because a special indictment will be delivered this morning from the Gotham Police Department, I have to go there early to take a look."

"You have only been transferred to the criminal prosecution department for three months, and you have already started to handle major cases?" The curly-haired lady was surprised, "Do you need me to press the do not disturb button for you?"

"Of course, thank you, I have to go there quickly."

Turning around the corridor, the sun shone on the man, and the nameplate on his chest clearly read "Harvey Dent".

As soon as he walked into the office, he saw a gray-haired old man sighing at the file.

"What's wrong? Teacher, what case is worth your..."

"This James Gordon is getting less and less reliable!" The old man took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes and said, "The only useful information in the indictment of murder and intentional injury he sent here is the title!"

Harvey immediately leaned over and flipped through the documents, then frowned and said, "Where is the copy of the arrest warrant?"

The old man glanced at Harvey and said, "They didn't arrest him at all."

Harvey was stunned and said, "How can they get to the point of accusation without arrest? The normal order shouldn't be arrest, search, interrogation, and then it means How can he come to court if he is not arrested? Who should we sentence? "

Harvey had an expression of "Am I crazy or is this world crazy?" The old man shook his head and curled his lips and said, "You still don't know much. Gordon said he will appear in court."

"Ah? ? ? ? ? "

Harvey opened and closed his mouth again and again, as if he could not accept this fact at all. He said, "This is a criminal lawsuit. They didn't even catch anyone, and then told us that the suspect would appear in court at that time. Do they think this is a divorce lawsuit?"

"Why don't you take a look at this first." The old man handed a document to Harvey.

As soon as Harvey picked up the document, his heart skipped a beat, because there was a photo printed in the upper right corner of the document, and the photo was of Schiller Rodriguez.

At least now Harvey is somewhat sure that the suspect will appear in court.

Continuing to read on, Harvey breathed a sigh of relief. This is a typical item prepared before the accusation consultation meeting. It turns out that it is not going directly to court.

Then he looked at the indictment in the old man's hand, which listed many charges, including intentional injury, murder, disability, and even terrorist attacks.

Harvey felt a headache. He took the document and sat on the sofa and said, "So what did Professor Rodriguez do?"

"To be honest, I don't know."

Harvey looked at his teacher in disbelief, but his teacher showed a look of recollection and said, "James called me last night. To be honest, I suspect he was drunk. He kept telling me about the Mexican Day of the Dead and the corpses squirming. I guess it might be a crime scene he saw during the day today."

"Crime scene? But isn't he a policeman? He is afraid of crime scenes?"

The old man shook his head and said, "I know James. When he first came to Gotham, he was an extremely brave young man. Ordinary corpses would not scare him like this, so I suspect it might be a notorious serial killer."

"But what does this have to do with Schiller?"

"I'm also thinking about this question. James probably meant that it was not a corpse, but a living person."

"ah???"

The old man also sat behind the table, rummaged through his drawers, pulled out a few photos and handed them to Harvey. When Harvey saw them, his features wrinkled up, and he took the paper further away with disgust. .

The photo showed a man being peeled out of a layer of skin, and Harvey felt like he shouldn't have had breakfast.

𝖘𝖙𝖔55.𝖈𝖔𝖒

He covered his mouth and turned his face to the side. He quickly drank a few sips of coffee to suppress the desire to vomit. He waved his hand to the old man and said, "Sorry, I have to go to the bathroom."

Harvey came back soon. He didn't even bother to button up his suit and slumped into the chair.

"That's it." The old man spread his hands and said, "The man hanging in the police station is actually not dead, but the skin on his body must come from a dead person. After comparison by the forensic doctor and the Gotham Physical Evidence Department, It was discovered that it came from a 32-year-old Mexican man named Brata Elsanti.”

"What about the people in this skin?"

"He's the trouble. He's Officer Clay Aldo of the Gotham Police Department."

"Did he report the case?"

"In fact, there is no need to report the crime. This body, I mean a living person wrapped in the skin, is hung in the lobby of the Gotham Police Department."

"Where's the surveillance?"

"There was a power outage and nothing was photographed."

"Witnesses?"

"Officer Clay said that Professor Schiller attacked him and sewn him into the skin."

"Where did he attack him?"

"This is another trouble, in fact, at the Rodriguez estate."

"ah???"

Harvey was stunned for a moment, and then said: "You mean that Officer Clay broke into Rodriguez Manor, and then was attacked by Professor Rodriguez and sewn into human skin, then why did he break into Go in?"

The old man shook his head.

"I also asked James this question, but James said he didn't know. He said that Officer Clay told him before leaving that he would find evidence that Schiller was a serial murderer."

"Did he find it?"

"Of course not, otherwise Schiller would have been arrested."

"The problem has come back to its original point." Harvey rubbed his aching brow.

"Also, there is this." The old man took out another document from the drawer. It was another charge sheet. This time there was a copy of the arrest warrant.

"Intrusion into private houses, dereliction of duty, false accusation..."

Harvey read out the above charge items, shook his head and said, "I have to say, this is much stronger than the previous charge. Just these photos of the destruction at the scene are enough for the prosecutor to give this guy a hard record." It’s a stroke of luck.”

"So they are accusing each other now?" Harvey looked at the two indictments and asked: "Clay accused Schiller of murder, and Schiller accused Clay of breaking into private homes and dereliction of duty..."

"Wait a minute." Harvey suddenly said: "How can Clay accuse Schiller of murder? Isn't he still alive?"

"This is the most complicated part of this case." The old man frowned deeply and sighed: "Clay said that Schiller sewed him into human skin and hung him in the lobby of the police station, but he He’s not dead, it’s the Mexican named Brata.”

"Did Clay see Schiller kill Brata?"

"No, no one can prove that Schiller killed Brata, there is no human or physical evidence."

"Then why does he have Brata's skin?"

"He said he picked it up on the road."

Harvey opened his mouth to refute, but his professionalism stopped him a second before he opened his mouth. He was a judge and needed to tell the facts and evidence, and he could not just let the wind take its course.

Indeed, from a common sense point of view, it is ridiculous to pick up a piece of human skin on the road, but the judgment logic in the United States is "we assume that someone has committed a crime and find evidence for him that he has not committed a crime."

So if there is no other evidence to disprove the idea of ​​Schiller picking up human skins on the road, then it does.

If other places can use the "serious violation of common sense" in the law to argue, but in Gotham, picking up human skin on the road is not completely against common sense, and it is possible.

"If Schiller could not be proven to have committed murder, the only possible charge would be intentional injury, but Rodriguez claimed that he acted in self-defense because the police officer broke into a house without permission," the old man said.

Harvey felt his head hurt.

He tried hard to analyze the current situation. If Clay broke into the house first and Schiller injured others later, then according to the "no concession law" followed by most states in the United States, that is, if he is attacked in his own territory, he should Never give in, defend where you are, and have no obligation to escape from the house. See, Schiller has the right to defend.

New Jersey is not a strong castle law state, but it also needs to judge the size of the right of defense based on some circumstances. Schiller's situation is very likely to be judged as unlimited right of defense.

First, the intruder had a gun.

For this alone, as long as Clay could still walk out of Schiller's house alive, almost every prosecutor would not convict Schiller.

Second, the intruders were police officers.

Unless Clay can prove that he broke in for official duties, such as investigating and collecting evidence, he can prove that this is violent law enforcement, otherwise it will be breaking into a private house and dereliction of duty.

In other words, unless Clay actually found evidence in the house, the process was not law enforcement, but an unprovoked intrusion. Without the concept of law enforcement, Clay's intrusion and aggressiveness would be judged to be infinite.

In the end, Clay did a lot of physical damage, especially breaking doors.

This would easily be considered a serious violent invasion, and the threat to the homeowner was imminent, which could have caused the homeowner to resort to violent self-defense out of fear.

A well-trained policeman with a gun broke into someone's house in the middle of the night, broke down several doors in a row, and was only slightly injured by the homeowner. Harvey felt that the prosecutor presiding over the prosecution consultation was likely to be thinking, "How dare you sue him for this?"