[REVIEW] End of Month Reviews #45 - September 2007 [spoilers]

[Tom Russell]

On Dec 7, 4:48 pm, Martin Phipps <martinphip... at yahoo.com> wrote:

> There's no confusion on my part.  The fact is that Martin was sent to
> jail on a misdemeaner possession charge and he wasn't even guilty.

No; he was _remanded_ to custody in jail.  He was not _sentenced_ to
jail.  "Reasonable doubt" and guilt have *nothing* to do with whether
the judge would set bail or remand him to custody, and do not enter
into the proceedings in any way, shape, or form.  This decision is
largely determined by weighing the seriousness of the crime (in this
case, the Supervillain charge) and the flight risk posed by the
defendent.

I don't mean to accuse you of being confused, but when you continue to
claim that Martin went to trial despite all evidence to the contrary,
it's a natural assumption.

> The Assistant DA knew that Martin knew that he was working for Snapp.
> That made Martin dangerous.  Putting him in jail isn't enough,
> especially if he was scheduled to go to trial and tell everybody about
> the ADA's links to Snapp.

The ADA also knew that Martin had no way to prove it, and probably
figured that someone as powerless and as unpopular (re: park massacre)
as Martin Rock would probably end up being killed in prison.

>  Martin deserved to go into protective
> custody, not prison.

He's not a witness, but a defendent awaiting trial.

>  They didn't have to know that he was the Green
> Knight.  That is the part that, quite frankly, did not make one bit of
> sense no matter how you try to spin it.
>
> > Also, another reason why Martin wouldn't reveal the undercover plan is
> > that he would have to prove it.
>
> Nonsense.  Martin was the one being charged with a crime.  The onus
> was on the ADA to prove that he was guilty.  Again, a misdemeaner
> possession charge should not have been cause to put Martin away into
> prison.

Again, he wasn't "put away" and THERE WAS NO TRIAL OR CONVICTION.
Please see above.
>
> > The only proof he has is the chip in
> > his neck-- and the chip is the only thing that would keep him alive
> > should Snapp send someone to kill him.
>
> Again, nonsense.  There are thousands of ways to kill people, none of
> which involve vibra jackets and all of them would be less likely to be
> traced back to Snapp.

I'll give you that one, though the jackets _were_ Snapp's modus
operandi and most reliable method.  At the same time-- and this is
where keeping things from Martin's point of view is a bit of a
liability on my part-- maybe having Martin remanded to custody in
Earbox was a way to expose him to those htousands of ways.

> > And since Martin had no
> > evidence on the ADA even if he did prove the undercover assignment--
> > not a single scrap against Fisk, even afterwards-- risking his life
> > to, in the end, accomplish nothing seems highly illogical. :-)
>
> Indeed.  He risked his life by going to prison.  That didn't make one
> bit of sense.

I think the point of the story, if stories have points, was that
Martin was counting on himself to keep himself alive, which is more or
less what he did.  (That is the "badass" part of things.)

And, whether he says anything incriminitating or not, without any
evidence it's likely that he's still going to be remanded to custody.
You make it sound as if he had a choice.

>  You could say that people don't always behave logically
> but here we have a case where Martin's survival instincts should have
> been screaming at him to tell the judge something, anything that would
> keep him from going to prison, especially when the ADA and who knows
> who else is working for Snapp and can have him killed at any time and
> make it look like an accident.

Well, he _did_ try to talk the judge into letting him be released on
bail-- a bail that, more likely than not, Pam Bierce as a bailbondsman
would have been able to pay.

>  Say nothing and they get away with it
> and there's no suspicion on anybody in theystem.  Speak out and
> there's less chance of the ADA arranging to have him killed for fear
> of he himself being considered a suspect.

I disagree.

If Martin _did_ claim the ADA was crooked without any proof, he would
probably have been remanded to custody anyway. And now the ADA _would_
have a compelling reason to try and have him killed and probably would
with one hundred percent certainty.  I don't think the ADA would have
much to be afraid of in that case: after all, there is no evidence
against him and Martin Rock is a man known to have many enemies.

In the other case-- the one in the story-- there's certainly a chance
the ADA and Snapp could have him killed, but since he's no real danger
to them, there's also a chance that they won't bother.  And if there
was a hundred percent chance on the one hand that they'd try to kill
me, and slightly less than that that they wouldn't, I'd personally go
with the latter.

Another factor is the invasion in # 11.  Since # 10 takes place over
only two or three weeks, it's not like any accusations Martin _could_
make while in custody would accomplish anything.  (Remember that both
Snapp and Fisk were figuring on the Apelantians being victorious.)

==Tom