A brave new justice
A postmodern fable of the perpetuation of the hierarchical mentality of judges.
Okay, here is the faithful account of what actually happened and what I sustained during that strange disciplinary process.
“At 10 AM I turned on the computer and then connected to the Court's website to take my client's virtual 3D hearing. A few minutes before the time I checked the connection quality, then I put on the headset with a microphone. When the program opened the link, I put on gloves and 3D glasses, logged in to my avatar, and pressed the "court anteroom" menu icon and then my client's case number icon.
In the anteroom I found my client and talked to him. The defendant's attorney and his client were there, so the trouble started. First, there was a flickering on the screen. After the glitch, I felt someone touch me. It was the avatar of the other party's lawyer. He smiled and offered me 1 dollar to close the case. Before I answered, he disappeared and reappeared at his client's side.
I was deeply annoyed and went to him for the answer. But before he could do that, the judge entered the anteroom and immediately it set turned into the courtroom. In the upper corner of the screen the warning that the 3D virtual hearing was being recorded and the inappropriate language inhibitor had been triggered by the judge. This feature was developed and added to the system to avoid the unpleasant situations that would normally occur when hearings started to be held over the internet.
New glitch and the courtroom setting was transformed again. The clone of the defendant attorney's avatar reappeared as master of ceremonies in a dining room decorated in Renaissance fashion. Properly dressed servants circled the hall, but their movements were erratic. Realizing what had happened, the judge froze the scene and called the Court's IT specialist.
By the time the IT guy's avatar appeared in the room, the lawyer's clone managed to break free from the freeze (I don't know if he was actually frozen in the system or just acting). The scenario changed again: my avatar and the avatars of the judge, the defendant's lawyer and the parties constituted now the audience of the famous scene from the movie Matrix 3.
The intruder's avatar approached the IT guy's avatar and stuck his hand in it. The IT guy apparently already knew the routine: he drew a Jedi sword and cut off the intruding avatar's arm. He then dismembered it and removed the pieces from the scene with a Ghostbusters spectre vacuum cleaner.
The Court's IT specialist restored the original courtroom scene and the judge resumed work apologizing for the incident. It wasn't the first time the Court IT guy had had to deal with that “damn hacker”.
It was then that I warned the judge that the inappropriate language inhibitor was off. She said no. I told her she said “damn hacker” and that I heard her say “damn hacker”. She smiled and said “the hearing will proceed despite this issue, then the IT guy at the Court will be notified.” This obviously did not interest my opponent's client, as he began to offend the judge morally.
Using her legal and virtual prerogatives, the judge froze the offending attorney's avatar in the 3D setting of the hearing. It was then that the intruding hacker's ghost avatar came out of the frozen image's head. The scenario began to be changed again. The judge said she would drop the link by interrupting the hearing. The parties would be notified of the new date and time, which would occur only after the IT guy had managed to fully clean the Court's system of the subroutine created by the hacker that controlled the virtual proceedings of the 3D hearing. It was at this point, just before the link went down, that I said SHIT.
I confirm I said SHIT. But I obviously wouldn't have said that if the hearing had been held in a traditional way. In a face-to-face hearing, this type of reaction would not occur, as there would be no space for a hacker to act. In addition, it must be remembered that the files attached to this disciplinary proceeding case prove that the word SHIT was registered because the hacker had damaged the inappropriate language inhibitor in the Court's system.
By saying SHIT before the end of a hearing that didn't actually take place, I wasn't offending the judge. I just expressed my frustration at what happened during the 3D virtual hearing that was successfully hacked. Instead of going after the lawyer who said SHIT, the Court should have taken action against the judge who said “damn hacker”. That didn't happen. The failure of the Court's IT guy also seems evident to me. Will he be punished? Obviously not. What did the Bar Association do against the hacker who usurped the lawyers' prerogatives during that hearing? Nothing?
Due to all that has been said, I require the closure without punishment of this SHIT absurd disciplinary case.”
The Bar Association close the case, but had the last sentence of my defense deleted. SHIT.