Chapter 837 The Judge Killed the Prosecutor

Jubal put his hands on his hips and nodded seriously, "OK, we need this Jimmy Barnett file, and we also need to talk to the entire court security team."

Officer Duncan Davis subconsciously glanced at his superior and pointed at himself awkwardly, "Uh, there is no team, just me. I am the only one on duty here at night."

Jubal stared at him for a long while, and it took him a while to react, "What about the surveillance? The court must have surveillance, right?"

Sheriff Simone Long touched his nose awkwardly and took the initiative to answer for his subordinates, "There is no such thing in the office area, but there are entrances and exits in the second-floor court corridor and the underground garage. The monitoring room is on the first underground floor. I can take you there."

"Then Alice and Jiejie go with the sheriff. We will be there shortly."

Jubal looked at the somewhat bewildered assistant sheriff and asked, "The court has an ID card punching system, right?"

"Oh, of course, you can check it from the computer system in my duty room." Officer Duncan Davis carefully walked around the body on the ground, stood at the door and pointed behind him.

"Aubrey, come with me. After you have investigated the scene, we will meet in the monitoring room downstairs."

After arranging everything, Jubal nodded slightly to Jack, turned and left the crime scene.

The remaining investigation work at the crime scene was not complicated. Hannah took the evidence bag from the car they drove, and Clay helped Jack untie the deceased's tie and kept it separately as the murder weapon. There might be epithelial cells left by the murderer on it.

Fingerprints on door handles and the like require the forensic team to use special tools to extract them. Although the FBI has received special training, they are not professional at this and usually do not bring evidence boxes with them when they go out.

So all that was left was to take pictures, which didn't take much time. After calling a police officer to stay at the door to protect the scene, Jack took Hannah and Clay directly to the monitoring room on the basement floor of the court.

Fortunately, the court's surveillance is no longer an antique tape recorder, and the pixels are very good. However, there are very few surveillance probes, with only one installed in each direction of the vehicle entrance and exit.

At this time, Jubal also arrived, followed by Officer Duncan Davis.

"The last person to leave last night was public defender Joanna Orr at 12:30 a.m., but the clock-in records showed that she left once at 5:30 p.m. that day and returned 20 minutes later, staying until late at night."

Jubal gave the name of a suspect.

"It can't be Joanna? That doesn't make sense." Officer Duncan Davis argued nervously.

"Is Attorney Joanna Orr six feet tall and over 180 pounds?" Jack asked with a grin.

Officer Duncan Davis shook his head like a rattle. "Of course not. Joanna is a very pretty lady."

"Then it's not her, but it's possible that someone used her pass." Jack looked behind the two of them as he spoke.

Jubal knew what he was looking at and casually explained, "Aubrey and an officer were on their way to Joanna Orr's residence, which is next to the nearby Walmart."

"She left at 12:30 in the evening, right? What car did Joanna drive?" asked Alice, who was sitting in front of the computer.

"Uh, a 2014 red Mazda." Officer Duncan Davis blurted out, then looked at everyone with some guilt.

He was most likely another man who was secretly in love with someone, or to be more polite, an admirer. Alice, who was very experienced in this regard, shook her head imperceptibly and turned the computer screen towards him.

"Then can you tell me who the owner of this black SUV is?"

"A black SUV?" The eyes of all the FBI officers lit up. The murderer who appeared at the first crime scene and shot three assistant prosecutors with a submachine gun in the parking lot outside the billiard bar was driving a black SUV.

"Is this a Tahoe? Sorry, there are too many people driving this kind of car in the court." Officer Duncan Davis, still feeling a little guilty, hesitated.

"TAHOE" is the short-axle version of the Suburban. Both are SUV brands under Chevrolet. Compared with the slightly large body of the Suburban, the former is more flexible and more popular among individual users.

"Of course, after all, the red Mazda is more eye-catching." Alice kindly found a way out for the admirer and zoomed in on the surveillance footage. The license plate "TAHOE" of the black Dorange was immediately clearly visible.

"The license plate numbers of court staff should all be registered, right?"

"Of course, of course."

With the help of Officer Duncan Davis, Alice found the registration system and quickly found the name corresponding to the license plate. "Howard Rourke? Who is this?"

"Judge Rourke! How is this possible? He is a judge in the criminal court, and his court is on the second floor." Sheriff Simone Long's eyes widened and his right hand kept scratching his bald head, as if the CPU hidden inside could not bear the burden.

"Contact the judge immediately, now, immediately." Although Jubal's tone was a bit harsh, the sheriff did not care about it. He quickly walked aside, took out his mobile phone and started dialing.

At this time, Jubal's own phone rang. Seeing that it was Aubrey calling, he turned on the speakerphone and said, "It's me."

“Jubal, I have contacted attorney Joanna Orr, and according to her, she did not return to the courthouse last night, and she left the courthouse yesterday afternoon and has not returned.

But she was hit by someone in the parking lot, and then the pass disappeared. According to her recollection, the person who hit her was

Jubal answered before he could finish. "Howard Rourke, right? We found his car through surveillance."

Then he sighed and looked at the people around him who were equally shocked. "The fugitive we are trying to arrest is a judge. This is a bit unusual."

-

It is more than unusual; it is no exaggeration to say that it is a hot potato. Just how powerful the judges in this country are can be illustrated by a random piece of data.

Even though Jack and his team often have to convene a jury for the cases they handle and hold a trial to convict the criminals, that is mainly because they handle criminal cases, and most of them are serious cases that are prone to disputes.

In fact, 97% of all convictions in federal courts and 94% in state courts are the result of plea bargaining. In other words, there is no need to convene a jury; the lawyers for both sides and the judge just meet and discuss the matter.

The most famous or typical case is the famous "children for money case" that occurred in Pennsylvania. In order to obtain compensation from private prison operators, two judges in Luzerne County sent more than 5 teenagers under the age of 4000 to prison in the name of "zero tolerance" within five years.

After the crimes were exposed, because there were too many victims, these teenagers who were convicted of petty theft or simply for defying the principal or playing pranks did not receive a retrial. Instead, they served their full sentences of 3-5 years in prison.

Although the two judges sentenced the defendants to 28 and 17.5 years in prison respectively and imposed huge fines totaling $2.06 million, almost all the victims did not receive a penny of compensation afterwards.

Because these are personal fines, not state compensation. A fine is just a number. How could two judges possibly take out 200 million in assets?

Afterwards, the two judges involved in the case were quickly released from prison through plea bargains in other cases, leaving behind a mess that no one could clean up.

Of course, the above is just to illustrate the enviable judicial system of the United States. After all, on the other side of the ocean, there are countless judges and lawyers drooling over this advanced system, just like those doctors in the medical system who complain all day long that they don’t earn as much as their American counterparts.

Fortunately, there is solid evidence that the judge killed a prosecutor, which was a dog-eat-dog fight within the system. Otherwise, the FBI would really want to just walk away and go back to New York.

"We are dealing with a madman who is trying to create more corpses. The sooner we deal with him, the better." After making several phone calls in a row, Jubal's face lightened up a little and he finally breathed a sigh of relief.

"Are you sure?" Jack winked at him mischievously. "I don't want us to be unable to apply for a regular search warrant in the future."

Who knows what the judges in the system are thinking? What if the other party insists on resisting when they go back to arrest him, and they accidentally kill him, causing the judges to feel grief over the loss of their loved ones?