Billy Ray: A Chimp Accused -- Part 2

Billy Ray: A Chimp Accused
As told by Rory Shock

Part 2

Things began badly with Hon. Allen Wrench, shortly after we announced our appearances for the Court.
JUDGE WRENCH: Court calls the case captioned In re: Billy Ray, A Person of the Species, Pan troglodytes.
RORY SHOCK: May it please the court, Rory shock for the accused, Billy Ray.
DICK DORK: For State, Dick Dork [he pronounces it “Dirk”], and I object to the animal in question being called the “accused” and I strenuously object to the case caption calling this animal a “person.” He is not a human being.
JUDGE WRENCH: I tend to agree, Mr. Dork. Mr. Shock, what do you say? If we consider your monkey to have the rights of a person, what’ll be next?
RORY: I’m not sure what you mean, Judge, about “what’ll be next?” And it seems to me that “person” in the legal realm doesn’t necessarily mean what we call a human. Corporations are “persons” under the law. I think Billy Ray is a whole lot more of a person than say Union Carbide or Dow Chemical or Ford Motor --- [interrupted by Wrench]
JUDGE: Let me tell you then. Next you’ll be asking me to declare dogs and cats people. You could probably find yourself even more people that’d support that one than this monkey that killed a respected citizen. Killed a PERSON. Next it’ll be cows. Then lab rats. I know you know something about that now, don’t you, Mr. Shock? Open the floodgates to all sorts of frivolous litigation, that’s what you’re asking me to do here. I’m not gonna step onto a slippery slope here.
RORY THINKS TO HIMSELF: What is it with judges and bureaucrats and floodgates. I wonder how many of them have even seen a damn floodgate. How many could describe what one looks like? Usually, in their minds it’s prisoners, or people on welfare, or people accused of crime that are building up behind the dam, hoping to come throuth the ‘floodgates”. The downtrodden as excess water. But floods do a lot of property damage. You can’t even get insurance against floods most of the time. They never seem to fear floods of prosecutions for petty drug offenses. That’s because the human water that flows as a result of such prosecutions is channeled into reservoirs and backwaters known as prisons where it gathers never to be seen again by Judges such as Wrench.
RORY: Judge, I have two things to say that come to mind right away: The case before you today only involves a chimpanzee. You need, indeed MUST, only concern yourself with this specific case. There are many reasons why the case of a chimp is more compelling than say the case of a mouse. Genetic similarity for one thing. Secondly, I am not familiar with any case that establishes a rule of law that says if the court fears opening the floodgates then doing what is otherwise right should not be done. Nor is there any statute to that effect. Nor any case law that I know of. Floodgates, slippery slopes, level playing fields, these cliches are all distractors. None of them is a rule of law
JUDGE: That is an arrogant stance Mr. Shock. Are you trying to dictate the Court’s vocabulary?

[There was a pause and a look to the side by Wrench as he perhaps remembered arguments I’d had in front of the Judge in the Courtroom next door about my vocabulary in a human death penalty case. The memory must have been richocheting around his brain, fragmenting when it struck the tangled bundles and dense plaques of Alzheimer’s nobody yet knew he had within his neurons.]

RORY: No, your honor, I’m just doing my best to make the court recognize what the law is.
JUDGE: Now, that IS arrogant. You come into my courtroom trying to tell me what the law is and I read your papers, you don’t have a single case to cite to me where a chimpanzee has been determined to be roughly the equivalent to a person let alone to be entitled to a jury, as you demand. And how would you get a jury of peers?
RORY: In many ways it’s a case of first impression. As a result, no case on point. But cases of first impression need to be heard too. Regarding your question about a jury of peers, Judge, we all know that that term is largely myth anyway. For example, a so-called retarded person does not get a jury of retarded persons -- and incidentally, Billy Ray is higher functioning that many retarded humans in many ways. A schizophrenic does not get a jury of schizophrenics. A billionaire does not get a jury of billionaires [or ever get tried I think to myself].
JUDGE: That’s more than enough. Now, I will hear arguments why this violent killer monkey should not be put down like a mad dog before sunset this very day.
RORY: Your Honor, I respectfully request that you refer to my client Billy Ray by her name, as “Mr. Shock’s client,” as “the accused,” as “the petitioner,” or if she must be referred to by some generic species-related reference, as an “ape,” or even better yet, as what she is in human terms: a chimpanzee. She is an ape, just as a bonobo is an ape, a human is an ape, an Orangutan is an ape, a Gorilla is an ape, and you and I are apes. A chimpanzee is no more a monkey than is Mr. Dork or myself.
[rory confesses that he knew the comparisons between apes, monkeys and the humans present in the courtroom would chap his honor’s big white wrinkled pentecostal ass bigtime. But I figured he couldn’t really come down on me because I’d thrown myself in. Anyway rory’s plan was to piss him off so badly that he’d “get recused” as they say].
JUDGE: Let’s get on with this Mr. Shock.
RORY: I am requesting a stay of proceedings of 60 days in order to investigate the factual background, your Honor. I need to investigate the character and background of Billy Ray, in essence. The relationship between Billy Ray and Mr. Stokes. Her behavioral history. The events leading up to the death. Whether there is a case for self-defense. Whether there are mitigating circumstances. There is no more reason to presume Billy Ray guilty in this case than to presume the defendant down the hall guilty in the misdemeanor trespass case being tried there. I need the time to contact and retain experts on the key issue of whether Billy Ray is a person. A person is entitled to a jury trial. To the presumption of innocence. To make those who wish to kill her bear the burden of proof. To present evidence. To testify. Mr. Dork does want to killy Billy Ray.
DORK: I object. I don’t want to kill Billy Ray. I want the zoo to euthanize the animal. Your Honor, this is completely absurd. This is madness. Mr. Shock is in this courtroom talking about a chimp testifying and having a jury trial.
RORY: Look, your Honor, I’m just asking for a chance to fully present what needs to be presented. For a moment, and I’m not conceding Billy Ray’s rights to be treated as a person in making this argument, for a moment, think of her as someone’s dog before the statute on dog bites was passed. Every dog got one bite. No liability on the part of the dog’s owner. No mandatory death for the dog. Well, back to a point made by his Honor earlier. There’s no law here, no statute on chimps. As a result, a chimp should be entitled to “one bite.” One violent action should not result in mandatory death. But even more importantly, look at the dog bite statute itself. It makes an exception if the dog was being teased, tormented or abused when it bit. I have reason to believe that Billy Ray was indeed abused.
DORK: I object your Honor, I can’t imagine how he can make that claim. That chimp was well-fed. It always looked happy in the commercials, always a smile on its face. It lived at home with Mr. Stokes. And we’re not talkin’ about a bite. We’re talking about a brutal murder. [rory thinkz: so many humans suck at reading faces. “Civilized” humans have to study books on body language. ]

RORY: Mr. Dork now appears to be conceding that Billy Ray is indeed a person. He just referred to the accusation against her as “murder.” Only a person can murder another person. At least in this century. And your Honor, here’s a perfect example of why we need time and some expert evidence. Mr. Dork says Billy Ray looked happy. He is incorrect. He does not know what a happy chimp looks like. He is interpreting grimaces of stress, of submission, of fear even, as happy smiles. If she were looking scared during the commercials, perhaps she had reason to be scared. If nothing else, I ask the court to give us time and the power to investigate what she had to be scared of. I submit that in all likelihood, Mr. Stokes was brutalizing Billy Ray. Judge, let me add, that there is nothing to lose by delaying. The zoo has no problem with keeping Billy Ray there. Attendance is up with the publicity around her case. Donors are standing in line to pay any costs of her incarceration. Mr. Stokes is already dead. She has no motivation to kill anyone else. Nobody at the zoo is going to treat her in an abusive way. Therefore no reason to kill again. She is a prisoner, a capitve. Secure as any death row inmate in any prison anywhere.
DORK: I object! Mr. Stokes is dead. There is no reason to cast unfounded aspersions on a dead citizen. Mr. Stokes was a respected man. A Rotarian. An active member of his church. A man with no record of violence or misconduct.
[rory sez: turns out the church thing didn’t carry weight with Judge Wrench, seeing as how Stokes was Catholic and non-Catholic fundy jesus freakers think the Catholics are frickin’ idol worshippers] Well, your Honor, we want to contact experts of our own if we aren’t going to be allowed to put this animal down right away. I concede that the zoo has said it has no problem keeping the monkey. This is almost a theological question more than a legal question before the court. [right on rory thinks ... play that ecclesiastical court card mofo ... that’ll make the judge wanna keep this case.] But in the meantime, I acknowledge that there is little burden to the State in maintaining this beast as a captive for a little bit longer. [rory figured it might work out this way. Dork wanted to appear strongly in favor of execution to please his bible-thumpin’-anti-animal-rights-voters-without knowing-jack-shit-about-what-they-mean-voting-base while getting more pubilicity than ever. It was a frickin’ election year for Dork. This alone might buy us time rory thought to himself.]
Judge, for one thing we are thinking of contacting Mr. DeWaal, mentioned by Mr. Shock in his filings with the court. Let me read you a little quote from Mr. Shock’s DeWaal:
‘"The animal rights movement's outrageous parallel with the abolition of slavery - apart from being insulting - is morally flawed," de Waal wrote in the New York Times in 1999. "Slaves can and should become full members of society, animals cannot and will not." Six years on, he says, he has nothing to add to that.’
Judge, having a trial, a right to have one’s life protected by judicial system is only something that belongs to full members of society. To people. If they had a right to judicial protection, don’t you think they would have developed their own courts, your Honor? They don’t have courts, they don’t have churches, they don’t have mass media, they don’t apply cosmetics, or read the Bible. Judge, they are not people. That being said, the prosecution has no objection to a continuance of this case and will sign off on an order for a continuance if Mr. Shock will prepare one for the Court’s approval [Dork said as he looked about the courtroom and saw the front row filled with reporters. Fuckin’ A rory thinkz, maybe the Judge will be gettin’ off on the publicity as well.]
JUDGE: I am inclined to think that a continuance is in order then. Although the Court has serious doubts about what if anything Mr. Shock can present that will suggest that this murdering monkey should not be put down like mad dog. Mr. Dork’s points being well taken. I mean, I have not seen any monkeys sitting in my church lately. Isn’t belief in God, the ability to take the oath, or the affirmation, at least in the case of atheists, whom this country being a free democratic god-founded nation, is merciful toward, a prerequisite to having rights in Court? Adjourned.
[rory thinks: ‘yeah, right judge, that’s why you ruled against pulling the plug on that brain dead guy a couple years back, ‘cause he had no rights in court. Dude didn’t know an oath from the catheter in his dong of which he was fortunately completely unaware. I don’t think his frickin’ “IQ” was anywhere near Billy Ray’s you stupid fucker.’ Then rory heads out and has a memory flash. Memory flashes are frickin’ incredible. A whole scene, images, dialogue, the point of the scene itsself, all bursting across the cranial sky in an instant like the Phoenix and Birds. To see what phoenix and birds looks like in the real sky go to:

nova fireworks gallery

Rory’s memory flash was from another courtroom on another day. It was prompted by the fleeting and silly thought: “What separates humans from ‘the animals’ is that humans shave their balls." Sorry ladies, I know plenty of you do plenty of shaving, indeed pioneered the non-facial shaving thing in North America, but it was the shaving the balls thought that popped into Rory’s male head, okay? Okay, and it should be modified further to “some” humans, but it was the beginning of a memory flash so the qualification was completely unnecessary.

The case which was the source of the memory flash involved a guy, Danny Dean Priest, who was accused of a heinous rape and murder, or as Mr. Dork liked to pronounce it “heeni-us.” One piece of evidence the government thought they had against Priest was that he had shaved his balls. Their theory was that he had shorn the sac to avoid leaving telltale hairs that could convict him. Course, the head, the belly, the pits, and the rest of the body, drop plenty of hairs all the time, so why, short of imbecility, which is always a distinct possibility any time a crime is committed, why would someone just shave their balls to avoid leaving evidence? Anyhoo, shortly after the dude’s arrest, detectives had photographed his balls and run their fingers over them, presumably doing a digital stubble evaluation of some sort. And a snippet of trial transcript from the Danny Dean Priest case flashed back through my head;
PROSECUTOR: Now, Agent Locknut, Mr. Shock asked you about palpitating [sic]the scrotum of the defendant. [Still cracks me up that he kept saying “palpitating,” when palpating was the word. Palpitating is what his frickin’ heart was doin’.] You recall that?
AGENT LOCKNUT: Yes, I do.
PROSECUTOR: And again, as you said, you tried to do this in the least intrusive manner. Could you, uh, sort of demonstrate for the Court , uh, em, uh, um, how you palpitated that particular part of the anatomy?
AGENT LOCKNUT: Well, it was like this. [He motioned like one gently stroking a cat’s gullet. Red blood rapidly crept over his collar, up his neck and across his bald pate. He brought to mind a huge rectal thermometer held in a candle flame]. I did it to see how clean shaven the area was. I thought if he was real clean shaven then he might have shaved recently before the incident.
PROSECUTOR: And what would the significance of that have been?
AGENT LOCKNUT: Well, if he shaved before, then he was probably shaving himself so that he would not leave evidence. (I would have objected to this as “speculation” had it been before a jury or a different judge, most likely.)
DANNY DEAN PRIEST: He pulls my sleeve, passes wind most foul, and “whispers” in a horse voice even the judge can hear. “Aren’t you gonna object? I been shavin’ my balls for years, ever since I got outta the service. Got nothin’ to do with no evidence. Just simple pleasure. I swear to God, Mr. Shock. That ain’t right what he said. Son of a bitch. That ain’t true. Ain’t he supposed to be under the oath?”
RORY TO DANNY DEAN: “Yeah, but his guy has got “perjury” inside a heart with an arrow through it tattooed across his ass. I believe you. Plenty of people like to shave their balls. Guess he never tried it. Ball shaving was something about which I hadn’t really thought much at that time, despite my matter-fact-seeming-to-know-all-about-it demeanor meant to reassure Danny Dean.”

That seemed to satisfy him. He managed a knowing smile before apparently disassociating for awhile. At least I surmise that he disassociated, because he was staring up at the corner of the courtroom while shaking his head slightly and picking his nose. I was pretty sure it was not an etiquette thing. More a disassociation thing. And I had learned long before that day that while the client may not have a “legal point” about which he becomes upset, little discrepancies can bother the fuck out of him. It must be disturbing to have the so-called roceedings turn into a shoddy work of fiction created by law enforcement agents and prosecutors when you know the truth. Oh, and by the way, this guy had confessed to the crime. Yet he later told me that he might want to take the stand just to set the record straight about why he had shaved his balls! This and other things let me to believe that the dude might be less than “competent,” but legal competency is often determined by correspondence school prison shrinks from Malaysia who harbor odd beliefs about things such as writing sponataneously appearing on walls, perhaps written by netherworld spirits, which some of us might consider graffiti.

All of this blappity! through Rory’s mind as he walked out of the courtroom. And as I walked out, that was the first time I saw Sage, as I now call him. Earnest Sagegrouse.