Chapter 837 The judge killed the prosecutor

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

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

Jubal stared at him for a long time, 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 subordinate, "There is no office area, but there are entrances and exits in the second-floor court corridor and the underground garage. The monitoring room is on the underground floor. I can take you there."

"Then Alice and Jiejie go with the sheriff, we will be there later."

Jubal continued to look at the somewhat bewildered sheriff's assistant, "The court has an ID punch-in system, right?"

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

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

After arranging everything, Jubal nodded slightly to Jack and turned to leave 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 to untie the deceased's tie and keep it separately as a murder weapon. There may be epithelial cells left by the murderer on it.

The fingerprints on the door handles need to be extracted by the forensic team using special tools. Although the FBI has also received special training, they are not professional in this after all, and they usually don't bring evidence boxes when they go out.

So the rest is to take pictures, which didn't take much time to do. A police officer was called to stay at the door to protect the scene. Jack took Hannah and Clay directly to the monitoring room on the first floor of the court.

Fortunately, the court's surveillance is finally not an antique-level tape recorder, and the pixels are also very good, but the number of surveillance probes is pitiful, and only one is 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 p.m., but the clock-in record showed that she left once at 5:30 p.m. that day, and came back 20 minutes later, and stayed until late at night."

Jubal gave a suspect's name.

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

"Is attorney Joanna Orr six feet tall and weighs more than 180 pounds?" Jack asked with a smile.

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

"Then it's not her, but someone may have used her pass." Jack looked behind the two of them while speaking.

Jubal knew what he was looking at and explained casually, "Aubrey and a police officer are on their way to Joanna Orr's residence. She lives next to the nearby Walmart supermarket."

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

"Uh, a 2014 red Mazda." Officer Duncan Davis blurted out, and then looked at everyone with a guilty conscience.

It was probably another dog who was in a state of secret love, or to be more polite, an admirer. Alice, who was very experienced in this, shook her head slightly and turned the computer screen towards him.

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

"Black SUV?" The eyes of the FBI people lit up. The murderer who appeared at the first crime scene and shot three prosecutor assistants with a submachine gun in the parking lot outside the billiard bar was driving a black SUV at the time.

"Is this a Dolanger 'TAHOE'? Sorry, there are too many people driving this kind of car in the court." Officer Duncan Davis, who was still a little guilty, hesitated.

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

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

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

"Of course, of course."

With the prompting 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 were wide open, and his right hand kept scratching his bald head, as if the CPU hidden inside was overwhelmed.

"Contact the judge immediately, now, right away." Although Jubal's tone was a bit harsh, the sheriff didn't care about it. He quickly walked aside and took out his mobile phone to dial.

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

"Jubal, I have found lawyer Joanna Orr. According to her, she did not return to the court last night. She left the court yesterday afternoon and never returned.

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

Jubal gave the answer before he finished, "Howard Rourke, right? We found his car through surveillance."

Then he sighed and looked at the people around him who were also shocked. "Now the fugitive we are going to arrest is a judge, which is a bit unusual."

--

It is more than unusual. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a hot potato. How powerful is the judge in this country? Just grab a piece of data to illustrate the problem.

Don't think that Jack and his team often convene juries for cases and need to hold trials to convict criminals. That is mainly because they are dealing with criminal cases, and they are all serious cases that are easy to argue among criminal cases.

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

The most famous or typical one is the famous "children for money case" that once happened in Pennsylvania. In order to obtain compensation from private prison operators, two judges in Luzerne County sent more than 4,000 teenagers under the age of 14 to prison in the name of "zero tolerance" within 5 years.

After the incident was exposed, because there were too many victims, these teenagers who were convicted of petty theft or simply defying the principal or playing pranks did not receive a retrial, but stayed in prison for 3-5 years.

Although the two judges were sentenced to 28 and 17.5 years in prison respectively and a total of $206 million in fines, almost all victims did not get a penny of compensation afterwards.

Because these are fines for individuals, not state compensation. Fines are just numbers. How could two judges possibly pay out 200 million yuan in assets?

Afterwards, the two judges involved in the case were soon released from prison through plea bargains in other cases, leaving behind a mess.

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 who are salivating over this advanced system, just like those doctors in the medical system who complain all day that they don’t earn as much as their American counterparts.

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

"We are dealing with a lunatic who is trying to create more corpses. The sooner we solve it, the better." After making several phone calls in a row, Jubal's face was slightly relieved.

"Are you sure?" Jack winked at him mischievously, "I don't want us to not be able 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 be grief-stricken?