People v. Meriaux by C. David Ray

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a fictional excerpt from a fictional law school textbook, describing the conviction of a man for murdering alien life during humanity’s accidental first contact with them. We hope readers find it as an interesting and unexplored style for telling stories.
Citations, etc., within the story that refer to this law school textbook (“On the Galactic Common Law”) are fictional, are part of the narrative, and do not describe any actual published work. It is the author’s hope that publication of several stories like this will, eventually, lead to the publication of such a book.

People v. Meriaux by C. David Ray

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People v. Meriaux, 217 Intl. Sup. Ct. 505 (2288)

Excerpted from Farid, On the Galactic Common Law, vol. 2 – International Law

Farid, writing for the majority,
Graf, Horance, Brockton, van Mecklen, concurring
Durriffe, concurring in part, dissenting in part (joining in concurrence)
Ruslan, concurring in part, dissenting in part (joining in dissent)
Yan, Chourand dissenting.

PROCEDURAL HISTORY

          The Defendant, Raif Meriaux, was convicted at drumhead for the crime of murder. His appeal comes to us through the International Criminal Court, which received the Defendant’s extradition and additionally charged him with a litany of violations of the Geneva Conventions. The Defendant, a domiciliary of Luxembourg, faces several further extradition requests from Luxembourg, from each of the nations that funded his expedition, and, allegedly, from the

indigenous creatures of 23 Libra(b). These creatures have allegedly communicated their own requests through the vivid hallucinations and nightmares of Meriaux’s crew.

          The Defendant has not clearly answered whether or not he has received the same requests. 

          This is a case of first impression on virtually all of its main issues. We granted certiorari in order to resolve the many novel legal questions raised throughout this shocking and unsettling appeal.

BACKGROUND

          This case, one of first impression for this or any Court, stems from events that have already caused significant political, cultural, and scientific disruptions across the Earth. This Court is conscious of the potentially serious ramifications of its ruling for the future of human space exploration. We will therefore fully restate the factual record before us, which is not materially disputed by any party to this action, including the Defendant, so that our reasoning in this matter may be understood fully in light of the events now being discussed throughout media, academia, churches, and surely every living room on the planet. 

          In 2285, the ESA Gay-Lussac was commissioned by a consortium of philanthropic and scientific non-profits to investigate spectrographic anomalies observed in the ionosphere of 23 Libra(b). 23 Libra(b) is an exoplanet orbiting 23 Libra, approximately 85ly from the Earth. While a lack of accompanying radio signals or other indicators of technological development had made 23 Libra a low-priority candidate for such missions, auditors of data gathered by the Joan Emile Interstellar Observatory became convinced that certain complex energy patterns visible on spectrographic analyses of 23 Libra(b)’s upper atmosphere could be explained by the respiratory processes of then-hypothetical exotic forms of life. 

          Because this mission was considered to have a low chance of success, and so as to justify its admittedly modest cost, Gay-Lussac’s commissioners described it to their funding sources as a standard planetary survey. Information about the 23 Libra(b) spectrographic anomalies was not disclosed to most of the mission’s principal investors. As such, the Gay-Lussac did not receive, nor did its commissioners solicit, the more extravagant funding allocations that had become typical of other missions specifically launched on missions with a higher probability of encountering extraterrestrial life. 

          For comparison, the USS Schumer, an American-owned vessel which was commissioned to investigate (ultimately-benign) repeating radio-like signals from HD 20781 and deployed less than a month before the Gay-Lussac, was equipped with a crew of nearly 80 military officers, a raft of biologists, diplomatic specialists, linguists, communications specialists, and a lawyer with decades of experience in matters of international law. Its multiple redundant Functional Alcubierre Drives (“FADs”) ensured that it would be able to travel home for resupply and crew rotations at will. That vessel, which took three years to construct and which currently leases at over €20,000,000 per month (not counting payrolls), was also equipped with a sophisticated long-range sensor array, multiple 720-degree spectrometers, and a two-way ancible communication system permitting communication with Earth nearly in real-time. 

          By contrast, the Gay-Lussac is nearly a century old. It was originally built to move cargo between space elevators on Mars and Earth. Its single FAD was installed specifically for this mission, and was purchased (used) from a decomissioned retrofit of the same class. Its crew of five, inclusive of the captain, were tasked with exploring 23 Libra(b) with hand sensors, a single spectrometer aboard ship, and topographical RADAR. There were no scientific specialists with the crew. Having only a sublight radio transmitter, the Gay-Lussac had no chance of communicating with Earth without returning home. The Gay Lussac leases for €65,000/month. Its commissioners leased it for two months, and gave its crew strict orders not to return until its mission was one hundred percent complete – so as to save on a refueling charge. 

          The Defendant is an experienced captain and an accomplished pilot. He had been decorated multiple times throughout his military service to the European Union, and has published several papers on novel suborbital maneuvers in high-energy exoplanetary atmospheres. However, his military career ended ignominiously following a domestic violence charge unrelated to this present action. After this and a number of alcohol-related arrests over the years following, Captain Meriaux found himself taking short-term contracts to make ends meet.

          According to the record before us, the Defendant was not briefed on any details of his mission other than his destination and expected travel time before accepting. By all accounts, the Defendant took the Libra 23(b) mission expecting a routine planetary survey of the sort that have sustained him for several years.

          The Defendant had been scheduled to spend the first week of the Gay-Lussac‘s mission studying Libra 23(b) from orbit, followed by five days of planet-side survey. Shortly after arrival, however, the crew came to believe that their topographic RADAR was malfunctioning because of its seemingly impossible outputs. The surface of Libra 23(b) appeared from orbit to be nearly perfectly smooth. Testimony before the ICC describes it as “apparently machined,” “featureless,” “an ideal shape,” etc. (citations omitted).

          The Defendant and the crew discussed the matter and concluded that abandoning the mission to report what was believed to be a mere malfunction would breach their contract with their commissioners and therefore would forfeit much of their pay. They decided to collect as much information as they could with hand sensors and to explain the matter of the defective topographical scanner upon their return.

          The following day, one crew member, Alfonso Lorenz, remained aboard ship to monitor communications and sensors while the others, including the Defendant, all descended to the surface via shuttle. Crewman Lorenz, per the Gay-Lussac‘s contract, recorded all communications between the crew on the surface below, which were made by radio transmissions between their environmental suits. 

          The integrity, veracity, and completeness of these recordings has not been contested by any party to this action. 

          The Defendant and the other three crewmen spent several hours searching for a safe landing zone for their shuttle. Even though the surface of the planet appeared smooth from orbit, unusual weather conditions delayed landing by several hours. Subsequent review of the data the Defendant collected during this initial flyover showed that the complex energy patterns detected from Earth were short, intermittent bursts of extremely dense patches of cloud cover. These clouds were also hot relative to the atmosphere around them, though not electrically-charged. While mostly appearing at random across the planet, these clouds also seemed to form directly beneath Defendant’s shuttle anytime an attempt was made to descend within about one kilometer of the surface. 

          The shuttle’s crew ultimately determined that it was safe to pass through these clouds. A spectrographic reading from the Gay-Lussac indicated that the clouds were made mostly of water, carbon dioxide, and some more exotic molecules resembling sugar. Even though they were warmer than the surrounding air, the clouds’ temperatures did not exceed the boiling point of water and posed no danger to the shuttle. The shuttle’s engine exhaust dissipated a cloud formation on their way to the surface. 

          This Court emphasizes its understanding that the Gay-Lussac’screw lacked both the training and the equipment that would have been necessary to appreciate the significance of this information.

          The surface of the planet appeared smooth and featureless from orbit. Records from the shuttle’s onboard telemetry systems confirm that the crew made no special or focused investigation of the chemical makeup of the planet’s surface, though they did verify that Lirae 23(b)’s atmosphere was breathable and temperate. The crew also took RADAR readings indicating that while the planet appeared visually featureless, it did have subtle topography – shallow valleys and rolling hills whose different altitudes necessitated an active search for a stable landing zone. 

          It was while the shuttle was making low-altitude flyovers of possible landing spots than Crewman Lorenz remotely activated the audio recording system onboard the shuttle. These vivid and disturbing recordings were made without the knowledge of the Defendant or anyone aboard the shuttle.

          Crewman Lorenz had not been specifically ordered to make these recordings. Crew aboard missions of this sort do not normally make such recordings because the data is often redundant with the onboard flight computer and other automatic telemetry, and is generally considered a wasteful use of finite local data storage.

          Nevertheless, Crewman Lorenz took this and several other atypical steps to preserve the record in the face of the growing disturbances aboard the shuttle. 

          The unusual behavior of the three crewmen aboard the shuttle during this low flyover is a subject of considerable debate in the popular and scientific press. By the audio recordings, it appears that significant tensions had arisen aboard the shuttle before Crewman Lorenz decided it was time to begin documenting the crew’s interactions. The inclusion of these recordings into the record was not objected to by any party. 

          Each of the crew agree that Crewman Yolanda Baez was the first to begin exhibiting unusual behavior. While monitoring the sensor console, she reportedly became suddenly and intensely anxious. The other crew later testified that she had become “fidgety.” Her testimony before the ICC characterizes her own behavior as “defensive.” The Defendant used words like “insubordinate” during his debriefing and in his testimony, stating that Crewman Baez had somehow come to believe that the mission should be aborted immediately for reasons she was unable to clearly articulate. Their disagreement ultimately escalated into a shouting match, and it is around this time that Crewman Lorenz remotely activated the shuttle’s onboard audio recordings. 

          We excerpt Crewman Baez’s ICC testimony in relevant part:

          Prosecution: Could you please describe this uneasiness that you felt.

          Defense counsel: Objection, the prosecution cannot characterize the witness’s testimony for her.

          The Court: Sustained.

          Prosecution: Could you please describe what you felt at this time [immediately prior to the activation of the shuttle’s recording devices].

          Witness: Many years ago, I was in Armstrong Base [on Luna] with my children when there was a micrometeorite strike near our section. My children were in the  next room. The O2 sensor went off. The frenzy to get my children into their little suits… I felt like I was on fire, fire all over my body, and I could only put it out by protecting my children. I don’t think I took a breath until their suits were on and double-checked. That was two minutes of white-out terror. That’s how I felt in the shuttle at that moment. Desperately afraid… it was an adrenaline overdose. 

          In turn, each of the onboard crew, other than the Defendant, fell into similar intermittent spells of sudden, acute anxiety and irritability. The audio recordings captured arguments, unnecessary profanity, and sudden inexplicable screams resembling the sounds of night terrors though the crew was awake. 

          The Defendant does not appear to have been affected by these symptoms. Neither the Defendant’s nor the ICC’s expert witnesses have been able to explain this.

          The Defendant was eventually able to locate a proper landing site without the assistance of the crew, all three of whom had become virtually non-verbal, communicating only with occasional “yelps” and “screams,” by the time a landing zone was located.

          The testimony of the crew and that of the Defendant begins to diverge at this point. Crewman Baez’s version of the story clearly stretches the imagination. She reports that the interface of the shuttle’s sensor systems had begun to spell out several dire messages in plain text. Where the Defendant described the sensor display as showing a normal telemetry readout of the planet’s surface, Crewman Baez has testified that her screen displayed the words “DEATH,” “LEAVE,” “PAIN,” “PARENT,” and “CHILD,” in that sequence and capitalization, over and over again. Crewmen Chell and Gavin, the other two crew aboard the shuttle, cannot verify Crewman Baez’s specific testimony, but they corroborate seeing similar messages displayed on their own instrument panels and even in their spacesuit HUDs.

          As soon as the shuttle touched down on the surface, sinking almost a meter into the powdery white substance covering Libra 23(b)’s surface, the three crew aboard the shuttle promptly lost what sanity remained. While the audio recordings capture only the sound of their vocalizations, the Defendant has added that their behavior resembled that of children throwing tantrums – rolling around on the floor, banging their fists on computer consoles, and pleading with the captain to abort the mission. 

          Both the recordings and the testimony of Crewmen Baez, Chell, and Gavin contain unambiguous statements like: “you’re killing them!” “We’re killing them!”

          Chell, Gavin, and Baez each described their respective mental states at the point of the shuttle’s contact with the surface as “catatonic” and “blacked out,” even though they both stipulate to the authenticity of the audio recordings capturing their horrified screams in perfect detail. 

          The shuttle’s audio recording did not extend to the Defendant’s handheld equipment, though it did capture the sound of the Defendant lowering the debarkation ramp and removing a hand scanner from the armory panel. The Defendant has refused to answer any questions about what he did or experienced in the one hundred eighty-three seconds during which he was outside the shuttle. While he admits that a hand scanner remained behind on Libra 23(b), he objects to characterizations like “left behind,” “discarded,” or “abandoned,” preferring to say that the hand scanner was “taken.” The Defendant has not elaborated further. Telemetry and onboard recordings confirm that the Defendant promptly returned to the shuttle and departed for the Gay-Lussac, again without the assistance of the crew. 

          In support of the unusual extradition request we have received from the purported inhabitants of Libra 23(b), the ICC prosecution offered as evidence testimony from the crew as to what occurred next. Some of this evidence is corroborated by onboard recording systems and is not in dispute. Much of it, apart from certain information provided by the computers in the medical bay, is not relevant. What remains, however, includes the words of the Defendant’s crew who, in turn, claim to be relaying messages delivered to them telepathically….

          [Reporter’s note: the Court affirmed the consolidation of these extradition requests into this action, but rejected the extradition requests on separate procedural grounds and found original jurisdiction in the International Criminal Court.] 

          ….By the time the shuttle returned to Gay-Lussac, all of the crew seemed to have returned to normal. The Defendant nevertheless ordered Crewman Lorenz to restrain the other three and perform medical exams – at gunpoint. They complied, and Crewman Lorenz was able to confirm that while Crewmen Baez, Chell, and Gavin had returned essentially to their psychological baselines, they retained trace amounts of the exotic sugary molecules that cover the surface of Libra 23(b) in their blood. Alarmingly, he further confirmed that these molecules are sufficiently fine to pass through the blood-brain barrier. But, Crewman Lorenz was also able to confirm both that these molecules were not being exhaled or otherwise exuded by his crew-mates’ bodies, nor were they multiplying within them, and so he released their restraints.

          At this point, Crewmen Baez, Chell, and Gavin were able to disarm the Defendant, restrain him, and promptly convict him by drumhead trial of the charge of murder. Crewman Lorenz did not participate in this trial. Crewman Lorenz neither assisted in disarming the Defendant, nor attempted to free him before, during, or after the drumhead trial. The other three conducted the drumhead by testifying to each other in support of their conviction of the Defendant, and Crewman Lorenz intervened only to prevent the others from executing their captain by discarding him out the airlock before returning to Earth.

DECISION AND OPINION

Farid, writing for the majority,
Graf, Horance, Brockton, van Mecklen, concurring

          The complete record of the trial at drumhead was included in the record now before this Court. The Defendant’s captors each testified to each other that the Defendant had murdered the children of Libra 23(b), who, in their early gestational phases, are light enough to float throughout Libra 23(b)’s atmosphere, which in turn caused the sort of anomalies that the Gay-Lussac was originally commissioned to investigate. These organisms cover the substantial entirety of the planet’s surface, and have evolved to rapidly infiltrate the minds of visitors to their world to warn them against approaching the surface of the planet, for fear of destroying its children, as the Gay-Lussac’s shuttle did by dissipating these “clouds” with its engine exhaust.

          The troubling implications of the fact that the galaxy is, or has been, so teeming with spacefaring life that Libra 23(b)’s natives have evolved a biological capacity to rapidly identify and infiltrate brain-like structures are not lost on this Court. They are, however, not at issue here.

          What is at issue is the central premise of the drumhead trial and the ICC’s later conviction of the Defendant: that the Defendant committed murder, either negligently by dissipating clouds over Libra 23(b), or deliberately by landing the shuttlecraft despite the vociferous objections of his crew. The International Criminal Court added several additional charges, including crimes against “humanity.” It attempted to quantify the “number” of murders the Defendant allegedly committed through complex mathematical extrapolations from the heat of the shuttle, the size and density of the “clouds,” and the apparent density of the surface “dust” covering Libra 23(b) beneath the shuttle’s landing struts and disembarkation ramp….

          [Reporter’s note: the majority rejected the International Criminal Court’s further charges on procedural grounds, finding that only the charge at drumhead had been properly received by the ICC Trial Court. The majority further noted that the mathematical calculations used by the ICC Trial Court were speculative at best.]

          ….The Defendant has further asked this Court to dismiss the charges without resort to the factual record by simply rejecting the validity of conviction by trial at drumhead. We reject this request. While Earth may have been able to largely dispose of maritime criminal law during its industrial phases, the era of FAD travel has fully resurrected maritime law, whose beating heart and soul is the relative alienation of souls at sea from the civility of life on land. We therefore hold that observant application of traditional maritime common law in outer space is legally valid….

          [Reporters note: the Court further suggests that such application of maritime law would lead to the dismissal of the Defendant’s various civil suits against his crew on theories of assault and battery related to their physical restraint of him. This ultimately came to pass.]

          ….The Defendant has further asked this Court to reject any use of testimony which alleges to be speech “for,” “by,” or “on behalf of” the indigenous population of Libra 23(b). They cite to the ancient legal principle that “spectral evidence” – the evidence of dreams, visions, and prophecies – is inadmissible. This Court does not hold that spectral evidence is admissible in cases arising from contact with extraterrestrials. This Court does, however, hold that testimony does not constitute spectral evidence merely because it is supplied by extraterrestrials. The undisputed record clearly shows that the inhabitants of Libra 23(b) were, in fact, communicating the pleas and warnings of alien life. That such life does not have vocal chords or other tools for the compression and rarefaction of air for the purpose of creating sound is irrelevant. Affecting a witness’s brain directly in order to cause hallucinations differs from spectral evidence in the core material respect that it actually happened, and the testimony of all three affected crewmen was consistent across witnesses….

          [Reporter’s note: the Court went on to confirm that the reliability of such testimony remains in the hands of trial courts, and noted that the ICC Trial Court in fact did find such testimony to be reliable.]

          What can be known is that three witnesses supplying direct testimony, who were not themselves victims of any crime by the Defendant, nor were they interested parties in the sense of being related to, or otherwise involved with, the putative victim(s) of the Defendant, convicted him of murder. To date, murder has been reserved for humans, with all other forms of the destruction of life described variously as animal abuse or other, lesser crimes. The Defendant has asked us to reject the charge on those grounds.

          This Court reiterates that it is conscious of the discussions happening at all levels of government, culture, and society around the eligibility of alien life for inclusion within the moral sphere of human dignity. This Court has been deluged with amici on all sides of this question authored by philosophers, theologians, lawyers, scientists, and crackpots. Fortunately, this Court does not need to reach a rule of general applicability in order to satisfy its obligations as to the current case.

          In the early days of maritime law, a similar question arose as to whether or not the indigenous peoples of the Americas, or the islands of the Pacific, or other non-European regions were “human.” It was variously alleged that such creatures were inferior, subhuman, or even entirely devoid of souls. We now know that the question was entirely misguided, and most of its answers until the modern era were atrociously, in short, ill-considered.

          What is clear is that the inhabitants of Libra 23(b) do not wish to be murdered, and they communicated that desire as clearly as they were able to the Defendant. It was simply not reasonable for the Defendant to attribute the behavior and pleas of his crew to a sudden, collective madness, or to otherwise treat them as entirely apropos-of-nothing. It is just as obvious that, once the universally-agreed quarantine of Libra 23(b) is lifted and followup missions are sent, they absolutely must be constrained by best efforts not to murder the indigenous life.

          Had the inhabitants of Libra 23(b) communicated less clearly, or if they had not communicated at all or gone entirely unheard, it is unlikely that the Defendant would now face any charges at any level, from drumhead to this Supreme International Court. But, they did. The Defendant ignored these requests from life that is clearly sufficiently intelligent to plead for its life.

          We therefore affirm the conviction of the Defendant for murder.

          This Court has further been asked, by what purports to be a representative of Libra 23(b) speaking through witness Crewman Baez, to extradite the Defendant back to Libra 23(b) for justice of their own. The testimony of this “witness” as to the Defendant’s conduct during his one hundred eighty-three seconds on the surface of Libra 23(b) is included in the record, but we cannot consider this request one way or the other without clarity as to whether or not the “Libran” making this request is a “parent” of any of the “children” killed by the descent of the shuttle, and to what extent this interacts with the reliability of said testimony. We therefore remand the matter to the International Court for the Adjudication of Human Rights to evaluate this testimony as a matter of extradition law….

[Durriffe, concurring in part, dissenting in part:

          While I enthusiastically join in the majority’s conviction of the Defendant for murder, it is ludicrous that my esteemed colleagues would accept the testimony of a Libran as to the murder of a Libran, but would reject it as to whether or not the Librans should be able to punish a murderer for murder. One does not have to be a fanatical xenophile to make the basic inference that, if it is wrong for a human to murder an alien, it is appropriate for an alien to punish a human for murdering an alien. Were I to travel to Japan and murder a Japanese person, I would be guilty of an additional and monstrous moral failure if I were to argue that the Japanese people were unworthy of punishing me for the crime. I therefore dissent from the majority’s rejection of the extradition request, while concurring with the conviction.]

[Ruslan, concurring in part, dissenting in part:

          I concur with the decision not to feed the Defendant, a decorated veteran and a human being, to the dust littering the surface of an alien world. This case rests entirely upon the testimony of persons whose brains had been damaged by the inhalation of sugary dust. That such dust is alive at all is an as-yet unresolved question for biologists, yet the majority treats it as already decisively resolved in the affirmative. It is not appropriate for this Court to short-circuit the role of such experts by concluding that not only is such dust alive, but that it is worthy of evaluation from the perspective of hundreds of years of human legal tradition.

          We know nothing about these “Librans” nor that there truly even are such creatures. Until followup expeditions to the planet are conducted, under controlled and rigorous scientific standards, I think it obvious that all or virtually all of the evidence against the Defendant is spectral evidence at best. I therefore dissent from the conviction, dissent from this effort to backdoor spectral evidence into the common law, concur with the decision not to grant “extradition” to a desolate alien world, dissent from the decision to remand the extradition request to a court of even less scientific competency than this Court, and dissent from the decision to convict.]

[Yan, Chourand dissenting:

          The majority could not bring itself to identify Captain Raif Meriaux by his capitalized rank. This is their tell: they do not like the Defendant. To them, he is the villain of a science fiction story, rather than the Captain of an insubordinate crew, a veteran and a man who carried out the duties he agreed to perform according the contract he (and his crew) freely accepted.

          The majority has forgotten how to overlook the supremely distorting effects of hindsight. Space travel has always been a fraught enterprise. The majority does not have the experience to realize that people do, in fact, sometimes simply lose their minds sometimes in outer space. Space travel is dangerous, long, lonely, and, by and large, it is extremely boring. The creation of a general rule that captains are bound to obey whatever nonsense is emitted by uncool heads among their crew risks permanently arresting humanity’s climb up the Kardashev scale by confining us to Earth and cislunar space until the perfectly psychologically stable crew can be manufactured in some future laboratory.

          The minority strongly emphasizes that the outcome of Captain Raif Meriaux’s conduct is not, and has never been, at issue here. The Defendant is not charged with negligent homicide or other, lesser forms of homicide attributable to accident, misadventure, or misconduct. He is charged with murder on the basis of his ignoring the shrieks of less-experienced enlisted crew as if he had run a stoplight and mowed down a gaggle of schoolchildren with his car. There is no evidence in the record that he was ever aware that his crew had been infiltrated by these purported “Librans” until after their return to their vessel and subsequent medical examination.

          We dissent because we believe that humanity cannot sacrifice its legal or moral principles out of a misguided sense of urgency for amicable relations with whatever beings we encounter among the stars. Functional Alcubierre Drive is a relatively new technology; if alien life is as abundant as has been suggested by the apparent evolutionary history of Libran surface-motes, we will find ourselves reflexively casting ship captains into the clutches of extraterrestrials at the drop of a hat.

          Suppose we encounter an alien race which worships oxygen, and regards its conversion into carbon dioxide as a mortal sin. Will we condemn a captain to prison or worse for breathing in the presence of such creatures? The majority suggests that the answer is “maybe,” if the underlying testimony is sufficiently spooky. We in the dissent vociferously assert that the answer is “no,” not at the expense of human dignity, human legal principles, and human solidarity.

          We in the minority stand with and for humanity. The arrogant majority stands for the supremacy of imagined alien law over real terrestrial law. For the future of the species, we therefore, respectfully, must dissent.]

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Copyright C. David Ray 2024