Chapter 2563

Cat Getan's autumn was originally clearer than other seasons. On those days when dark clouds covered everyone's heads, one could still see a touch of blue on the horizon at dawn and dusk that was too brilliant for this city, interwoven with the faint morning light, illuminating leaves and puddles into indistinct colors.

After the dark clouds dispersed, in the damp and cold morning of late autumn, the moist air condensed into indistinct mist. The red taillights of cars during the morning rush hour appeared and disappeared in the mist, like a broken string of beads.

The tall city in the distance shifted between iron gray and dark brown. The neon lights on the streets, which had just quieted down after a night of revelry, flickered lonely in the mist illuminated by the sunlight, revealing tiny water droplets.

The Cat Getan Courthouse was born with this city. It was an older building than the Cat Getan Cathedral and the Cat Getan Theater, and it had not been forgotten in the long history of the city's development, having undergone two renovations and reconstructions in the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively.

Like the vast majority of courthouses in cities in the U. S. state of New Jersey, the Cat Getan Courthouse had clean white exterior walls, solemn and dignified Roman columns in front of the main entrance, a gray-green roof, and three circular arches in front of the porch for daily passage.

At this time, it was the courthouse's working hours. Many judges, judicial assistants, and legal advisors in suits and leather shoes were coming and going in the square in front of the entrance, carrying briefcases.

The morning light had just risen to the roof of the adjacent building, casting everything here in a bright, warm color.

If you walked further inside, you could see the historical heritage of this brand-new building. The interior decoration was not in a modern style, but rather brown-red wooden hard furnishings, combined with dark natural marble slab decorations, quite reminiscent of British style.

At this time, the reception hall was filled with the rich aroma of coffee. A tall man in a suit was holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a briefcase in the other, nodding friendly to his colleagues while walking inside.

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

"My God! Judge Dent, why are you here so early today?" The curly-haired lady pushed her glasses with some surprise.

"Because a special indictment will be delivered this morning, from the Cat Getan Police Department, and I need to go over early to take a look."

"You've only been transferred to the Criminal Prosecution Department for three months, and you've already started handling major cases?" The curly-haired lady looked very surprised. "Do you need me to help you press the 'Do Not Disturb' button?"

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

Turning through the corridor, the sunlight shone on the man's body. The name tag on his chest clearly read "Harvey Dent."

As soon as he walked into the office, he saw an old man with graying hair sighing at a file.

"What's wrong? Teacher, what case is worth you being so..."

"This James Gordon is becoming more and more unreliable!" The old man took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and said, "This indictment regarding murder and intentional injury that he sent here only has useful information in the title!"

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

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

Harvey was stunned and said, "If there's no arrest, how could it reach the indictment stage? Shouldn't the normal sequence be arrest, search, interrogation, and then indictment? If they didn't arrest him, how can he appear in court??? Who are we sentencing???"

Harvey had an expression of "Am I crazy or is this world crazy?" The old man shook his head, curled his lips, and said, "You still have too little experience. Gordon said he would appear in court."

"Ah?????"

Harvey's mouth opened and closed, seemingly completely unable to accept this fact. He said, "This is a criminal lawsuit! They didn't even catch the person, and then they told us the suspect would appear in court at that time. Do they think this is a divorce case?"

"You'd better 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 a photo was printed on the upper right corner of the document, and the photo was of Schiller Rodriguez.

At least now Harvey had some certainty about the suspect appearing in court.

Continuing to look down, Harvey breathed a sigh of relief. This was a typical preparation item for an indictment negotiation meeting. So it wasn't going directly to court.

Then he looked at the indictment the old man had in his hand earlier, which listed many proposed charges, including intentional injury, murder, maiming, and even terrorist attacks.

Harvey felt a bit of a headache. He took the document, walked to the sofa, sat down, and said, "So what did this Professor Rodriguez do?"

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

Harvey looked at his teacher in disbelief, while his teacher revealed a reminiscent look 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, corpses wriggling, and so on. I suspect that might have been some crime scene he saw during the day."

"Crime scene? But isn't he a police officer? He's actually afraid of a crime scene?"

The old man shook his head and said, "I know James. When he first came to Cat Getan, he was an exceptionally bold young man. Ordinary corpses wouldn't scare him like this, so I suspect it might have been done by a notorious serial killer."

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

"I'm also thinking about this question. James's general meaning is that it wasn't actually a corpse, but a living person."

"Ah???"

The old man also sat behind the desk, rummaged through his drawer, and took out a few photos to hand to Harvey. As soon as Harvey saw them, his features crumpled, and he pushed the paper away with some disgust.

The photo showed the process of a man being peeled out of a layer of skin. Harvey felt he shouldn't have eaten breakfast.

He covered his mouth, turned his face to the side, hurriedly drank a few sips of coffee to suppress the urge to vomit, waved his hand at the old man, and said, "Excuse me, I'm going to the restroom."

Soon Harvey returned, not even bothering to button his suit, and slumped into his chair.

"That's it." The old man spread his hands and said, "This person hanging in the police station isn't actually dead, but the skin on his body must have come from someone who is already dead. After comparison by the forensic doctor and the Cat Getan Evidence Department, it was found to come from a 32-year-old Mexican-American man named Brata Elsanti."

"Then what about the person inside this layer of skin?"

"He is exactly the trouble. He is a police officer from the Cat Getan Police Department, Clay Aldo."

"Did he report the case?"

"Actually, there was no need to report the case. This corpse—I mean, the living person wrapped in the skin—was hung in the lobby of the Cat Getan Police Department."

"What about the surveillance?"

"The power went out, and nothing was captured."

"Eyewitnesses?"

"That Officer Clay said it was this Professor Schiller who attacked him and stitched him into this human skin."

"Where did he attack him?"

"This is another trouble. In fact, it was at the Rodriguez Manor."

"Ah???"

Harvey froze for a moment, then said, "You mean this Officer Clay broke into the Rodriguez Manor and was then attacked by Professor Rodriguez and stitched into human skin? Then why did he break in?"

The old man shook his head.

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

"Did he find it?"

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

"The problem has circled back to the starting point." Harvey rubbed his throbbing temples.

"There's also this." The old man took another document out of the drawer. That was another indictment, and this one finally had a copy of an arrest warrant.

"Trespassing, dereliction of duty, framing..."

Harvey read out the charges above, shook his head, and said, "I have to say, this is much more powerful than the previous indictment. Just these photos of the scene being destroyed are enough for the prosecutor to give this guy a serious mark."

"So they are accusing each other now?" Harvey looked at the two indictments and asked, "Clay accuses Schiller of murder, Schiller accuses Clay of trespassing and dereliction of duty..."

"Wait a minute." Harvey suddenly said, "How can Clay accuse Schiller of murder if he's still alive?"

"This is the most complex part of this case." The old man frowned deeply, sighed, and said, "Clay said Schiller stitched him into human skin and hung him in the lobby of the police station, but he didn't die. The one who died was that Mexican man named Brata."

"Did Clay see Schiller kill Brata?"

"No, no one can prove Schiller killed Brata. There is neither human evidence nor physical evidence."

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

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

Harvey opened his mouth to refute, but his professional training stopped him a second before he spoke. He was a judge and needed to speak based on facts and evidence, not listen to rumors.

Indeed, from a common-sense perspective, picking up a human skin on the road is truly absurd, but the logic of American judgments is "We assume someone committed a crime and look for evidence that they didn't."

So if there is no other evidence to prove that Schiller picking up human skin on the road is invalid, then it is valid.

If it were elsewhere, one could use "seriously violating common sense" in the law to argue, but in Cat Getan, picking up human skin on the road really doesn't completely violate common sense; it is possible.

"If it cannot be proven that Schiller committed murder, then the only possible charge is intentional injury, but Rodriguez claims it was self-defense because this police officer trespassed." The old man said.

Harvey felt his head aching.

He tried to analyze the current situation. If Clay trespassed first and Schiller injured him later, then according to the "Stand Your Ground" law followed by the vast majority of U. S. states—that is, one should never retreat after being attacked in one's own territory, should defend on the spot, and has no obligation to flee the house—Schiller possesses the right to self-defense.

New Jersey is not a "Strong Castle Doctrine" state, but it also needs to be judged based on some circumstances to determine the extent of the right to self-defense. Schiller's situation is highly likely to be judged as having unlimited right to self-defense.

First, the intruder had a gun.

Just this point alone, as long as Clay could still walk out of Schiller's house alive, almost no prosecutor would judge Schiller guilty.

Second, the intruder was a police officer.

Unless Clay could prove that he broke in on official business, such as investigation and evidence collection, to prove it was violent law enforcement, otherwise it was trespassing and dereliction of duty.

That is to say, unless Clay really found evidence in the house, this process does not belong to law enforcement but to unauthorized intrusion. Without the concept of law enforcement, Clay's invasiveness and aggressiveness will be judged as infinitely great.

Finally, Clay carried out a large amount of substantial destruction, especially breaking down doors.

This will easily be determined as his intrusion having a serious violent nature, with the threat to the homeowner being imminent, completely allowing the homeowner the possibility of violent self-defense due to panic.

A well-trained police officer with a gun broke into someone's house in the middle of the night and continuously destroyed several doors, only causing minor injuries to the homeowner. Harvey felt that the prosecutor presiding over the indictment negotiation meeting was likely thinking, "You have the nerve to sue him for this?"