| Give Me Proof |
| Summary: | The Defense and the Prosecution for the upcoming court martial of Admiral Abbot meet for the first time. |
| Date: | 30 October 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | None |
| Players: |
  |
| The Judiciary Room |
|---|
| This is the official Courtroom for the Cerberus. JAG and Officers meet here when there are disciplinary measures to be accounted for within the crewmembers. A semi-circular panel sits at the head of the room. To the right side is the witness stand and to the left is where the court reporter sits along with any security in the room itself. Prosecutors and Defense attorneys have their tables and behind those, there six lines of benches for others to watch the proceedings. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #246 |
Lance Corporal Lance Kincaid. Former reporter. Military police. Marine. Attorney. Well, not quite an attorney. More an advocate. He's crashed in the chair set up for defense counsel here, behind counsel table. He stands when Remick arrives. "Captain." He clicks the pen he's had in his hand closed and places it to the side. He offers his hand. "Danny Kincaid. Nice to meet you."
“Ah,” Remick says, giving Kincaid a mock suspicious look as she enters and tosses her paperwork onto the prosecution desk, “The enemy.” She quickly tempers that with a faint smile, one that does not quite reach the rest of her face, and shakes the offered hand with a tight grip not very common to lawyers, “Megan Remick.”
"It's very nice to meet you, Captain Remick." Sort of. Kincaid releases the grip and gestures towards a seat. He drops back into his. "I hear the Colonel is almost done picking the Members. Then we can get this show on the road."
“If we don’t go bust,” Remick points out, taking a seat at the prosecution bench across from Kincaid and leaning back comfortably in her seat, “ But we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.”
"Go bust?" Kincaid clicks his pen open, looking over at the prosecuting attorney across from him. "What do you mean by that?" He's still not clear on all of the military lingo.
Remick furrows her brow a little at him, “If we end up disqualifying too many members of the panel – get it down below five, it busts. Means we gotta wait for Colonel Pewter to pick another five. Essentially, we keep doing it until both sides can agree we’ve got a fair and impartial court martial. But really, we don’t go disqualifying panel members half-cocked. Only got so many people to choose from on the ship, after all.”
"Oh. Yeah. Right." Kincaid makes some notes on his pad. "Of course. But we're going to need an unbiased panel. You know a lot of people have very strong feelings about our brigged Admiral." He glances over at the JAG.
“I don’t think we’ve got anyone who doesn’t have an opinion on it,” Remick admits, shrugging her shoulders, “But what we want are moderates. People who could still decide either way. We’re bound to end up with a few zealots but we keep it balanced, they’ll still make the right decision.”
"Mmm. Whatever decision that is going to be, right?" Kincaid scribbles a little bit on his pad. "I take it that it'll be a short trial. All you really have is the tape. And what have I got, hmm?" He quirks a tiny smile.
“What have you got indeed,” Remick muses, turning her own pen around in her fingers and staring at it idly, “This probably isn’t going to be a game of evidence so much as it’ll be a game of can we afford to take the risk? Maybe he’s not a Cylon, but are we willing to put all our eggs in that basket?”
Kincaid arches his brow. "Putting our eggs in that basket? So we're going to kill him because we 'don't want to take chances'?" He was vaguely cordial to his point, but now he's getting annoyed. "You kidding me?"
“It’s not my job to decide that,” Remick answers, narrowing her eyes in a very Marine sergeant fashion – makes sense, since she was one for a while, “I’m telling you how I think this is going to go. I’ve been in courts martial before. Ideals fall by the wayside to make room for military practicality.”
"Oh, come on, Captain. He's one of the last people in the human race, and we're going to just off him because we're scared of what he might be?" Kincaid tucks his pen inside of his Marine uniform pocket. "Maybe he's ready to be a martyr. It doesn't help if we treat him like one, though."
“If he is what people think he is,” Remick points out, “He’s not part of the human race. He’s part of the Cylon race. And you need to climb down from Mount Moral High Ground and look at this from a military point of view. If he turns out not to be who he says he is, are you going to feel quite so good for having defended him when you’re staring down the barrel of a Basestar?”
"I don't know. I've stared down some Centurions before. Just a matter of scale, right?" Kincaid is a Marine. Sort of. He's done some Marine type things. In his spare time. "But if he is what he says he is, you okay with snuffing out one of the last lives in the human race on a bunch of fear?"
“You need to watch yourself, there,” Remick answers, features immediately growing stony and sharp, “I’m not going to do anything but argue a case that I’m duty-bound to argue. You can sit there and think I’m some genocidal fear monger, but I’m doing my job here.”
"Fine. Do your job. But don't think you're just making the safe bet, here, Captain." Kincaid stands up. "Do it because you actually think he's guilty. That's all I'm asking for."
"You can turn this into a war," Remick says flatly, staring off into the distance, "But whatever he is, there's only one of him. If you divide this crew, we're weaker and we're an easier target." Suddenly, she turns and stands up - closing the distance between them swiftly until she's staring him straight in the eye and pointing at him, "Find me some evidence. Prove he's human. As much as you might disagree, I do -not- want the death of another human being on my conscious."
Kincaid keeps himself eye-to-eye with Remick. "I have another idea. How about you go ahead and prove that he /is/ a Cylon. I may not be a lawyer, but I seem to recall that we rejected the whole 'guilty until proven innocent' notion." He takes a step away from Remick, turning to go. "See you in court, Captain."
Remick watches the council for the defence depart, waiting until he’s out of the room before turning around and viciously kicking her chair. It flies across the room noisily, clattering along the floor before coming to a crashing stop against the wall. That done, she moves to the folder of papers on the bench and pulls from it a blank visitation request form for the brig … and begins to fill it out.