The days of being a spiritual mentor in Meiman.

Chapter 2574: Xiao Xiao Down (Fifty-eight)

Gotham's autumn is naturally brighter than other seasons. Even on those 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 is intertwined with the faint morning light, turning the leaves and puddles into blurred colors.

When the dark clouds dispersed, the damp and cold air in the early morning of late autumn condensed into a dense mist. The red taillights of the cars during the morning rush hour were faintly visible in the mist, like a broken string of beads.

The tall city in the distance changed between iron gray and dark brown. The neon lights on the streets that had just quieted down after a night of revelry flickered lonely in the mist that was illuminated by the sun, creating tiny sparkling droplets.

Gotham Courthouse was born with the city. It is an older building than Gotham Cathedral and Gotham Theater. It has not been forgotten in the long history of urban development and 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, solemn Roman columns in front of the gate, a gray-green roof, and three round arches in front of the porch for daily passage.

It was the court's working hours, and many judges, judicial assistants and legal advisers in suits were coming and going in the square in front of the court, carrying briefcases.

The morning light had just risen to the roof of the building next door, casting everything here in bright warm colors.

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

At this time, the reception hall was filled with a 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. He walked in and nodded in a friendly manner to his colleagues.

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

"Oh my God! Judge Dent, why are you here 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 over there 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 was surprised. "Do you want me to press the do not disturb button for you?"

"Of course, thank you. I have to get going soon."

Turning down the corridor, the sunlight shone on the man, and on the nameplate on his chest was clearly written "Harvey Dent".

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

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

"This James Gordon is becoming 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 asked, "Where's the copy of the arrest warrant?"

The old man glanced at Harvey and said, "They didn't make any arrests at all."

Harvey was stunned and asked, "How can he be charged without an arrest? Shouldn't the normal sequence be arrest, search, interrogation, and then charges? How can he come to court without an arrest??? Who are we sentencing?"

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

"what?????"

Harvey opened and closed his mouth, as if he couldn't accept this fact at all. He said, "This is a criminal case. They haven't even caught anyone yet, and they told us that the suspect will appear in court. Do they think this is a divorce case?"

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

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. The photo was of Shiler Rodriguez.

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

Harvey breathed a sigh of relief as he continued reading. This was a typical preparation item before the accusation consultation meeting. It turned out that the case was not going directly to court.

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

Harvey felt a little headache. He walked to the sofa with the documents and 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, but his teacher showed a look of reminiscence and said, "James called me last night. To be honest, I think he was drunk. He kept telling me something about the Mexican Day of the Dead and corpses moving. I guess it might be a crime scene he saw today."

"Crime scene? But isn't he a policeman? How could he be afraid of a crime scene?"

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

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

"I've been thinking about this as well. James probably meant that it wasn't a corpse, but a living person."

"what???"

The old man also sat behind the table and rummaged through his drawer, pulling out a few photos and handing them to Harvey. When Harvey saw them, his facial features frowned and he held the paper away with some disgust.

The photo showed a man being peeled off from his skin, and Harvey felt that he should not have eaten breakfast.

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

Harvey came back soon, without even bothering to button his suit, and slumped into a chair.

"That's it." The old man spread his hands and said, "The man hanging in the police station is not actually dead, but the skin on his body must have come from a dead person. After the forensic doctor and the Gotham Forensic Department compared it, they found that it came from a 32-year-old Mexican man named Burata El Santi."

"What about the person inside this skin?"

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

"He reported the case?"

"Actually, there's no need to report it. This body, I mean the living person wrapped in skin, is hanging in the lobby of the Gotham Police Department."

"Where's the surveillance?"

"The power went out, so I didn't get to film anything."

"Eyewitnesses?"

"That officer Clay said that this Professor Schiller attacked him and sewed him into this human skin."

"Where did he attack him?"

"It's another nuisance, actually, at the Rodriguez estate."

"what???"

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

The old man shook his head.

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

"Did he find it?"

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

"The problem is back to square one." Harvey rubbed his aching brow.

"And here's another one." The old man took out another document from the drawer. It was another indictment, and this time there was a copy of the arrest warrant.

"Breaking into private homes, dereliction of duty, false accusations..."

Harvey read out the charges, shook his head and said, "I have to say, this is much stronger than the previous charge. Just these photos of the damaged scene are enough for the prosecutor to give this guy a serious rap."

"So they are accusing each other now?" Harvey asked, looking at the two indictments. "Clay accused Schiller of murder, and Schiller accused Clay of trespassing 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, sighed and said, "Clay said that Schiller sewed him into human skin and hung him in the lobby of the police station, but he didn't die. It was the Mexican named Burata who died."

"Did Clay see Schiller kill Bratta?"

"No, no one can prove that Schiller killed Brata. There is no evidence."

"Then why does he have the skin of Burata?"

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

Harvey opened his mouth to refute, but his professionalism stopped him a second before he could open his mouth. He was a judge and he needed to stick to facts and evidence, not just believe everything he heard.

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

So if there is no other evidence to disprove the fact that Schiller was picking up human skins on the street, then this is true.

In other places, people can still use the "serious violation of common sense" in the law to refute it, but in Gotham, picking up human skin on the street is not completely against common sense and it is possible to be established.

"If Schiller couldn't be proven to have killed anyone, the only possible charge would be intentional injury, but Rodriguez argued that he was acting in self-defense because the officer broke into a private home," the old man said.

Harvey felt a headache.

He tried hard to analyze the current situation. If Clay broke into a private house first and Schiller injured people later, then according to the "Stand Your Ground Law" followed by most states in the United States, which states that one should never retreat after being attacked in one's own territory and should defend oneself on the spot and have no obligation to escape from the house, Schiller has the right to defend himself.

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

First, the intruder had a gun.

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

Second, the intruders were police officers.

Unless Clay can prove that he broke in on duty, such as investigating and collecting evidence, he can prove that this was violent law enforcement. Otherwise, it would be trespassing and dereliction of duty.

In other words, unless Clay really found evidence in the house, this process would not be considered law enforcement, but rather unwarranted intrusion. Without the concept of law enforcement, Clay's aggression and offensiveness would be judged to be infinite.

In the end, Clay did a lot of substantial damage, especially breaking the door.

This would easily be considered as an invasion of a serious violent nature, with an imminent threat to the homeowner, which could cause the homeowner to resort to violent self-defense out of panic.

A well-trained police officer with a gun broke into someone's house in the middle of the night, broke down several doors, and only suffered minor injuries to the homeowner. Harvey felt that the prosecutor presiding over the charging consultation was likely thinking, "How dare you sue him for this?"