miss maggie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bossymarmalade) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thejusticelounge2012-02-29 05:50 pm
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2012-02-29 05:50 pm
Entry tags:
lawyers, guns, and money
Over the years of being a superhero, Ollie’d come to the unshakeable personal conviction that you could almost tell more about somebody in a mask and cape by finding out what they did on their 9-to-5. Barry Allen’s totally square pedantry made more sense if you knew forensic scientist; Kimiyo Hoshi’s standoffishness fitted her astronomy brain; John Stewart’s finicky precision was of course because he was an architect.
So Kate Spencer, defence attorney to the metahuman (and sometimes metacriminal) community? That brought up a whole whackload of implications and possibilities.
Like some of the other people up here in the Watchtower, Kate seemed to have set up her quarters to serve as an impromptu office as well, with a little nameplate outside the door. Ollie buzzed in, marshalling his thoughts.
Just because it was Monday in JLAville didn’t mean that old habits didn’t die hard—try as she could, Kate couldn’t bring herself to sleep late. She was up at 7:15 and unable to fall back asleep, like she’d have to get herself clean and dressed, then Ramsey to school and herself to work. It was frustrating, especially the latent sense of panic that she was forgetting to do something absolutely critical.
This was why she didn’t take vacations. She’d settled at the desk in the outer room of her suite by 8, made a whole pot of coffee, and plowed through all of her email.
When the door buzzed, she hit the button to let in her visitor, then looked up from the legal journals she’d been combing, trying to find relevant precedent. List of things to do while she was here: get in touch with Jennifer Walters about starting their own journal…this field was only going to get bigger.
“Morning, Ollie,” she said, and gave him a slight smile. “What can I do for you?”
She was obviously already in work mode, which was great; he didn’t want to barge in on her personal time. Ollie sat down in the visitor chair and crossed his legs, jiggling his foot for a minute before leaning forward.
“What kind of ramifications that I haven’t thought about,” he started, “would there be if we instituted a rehabilitation program for reformed villains — the kind who’ve made demonstrable motions towards do-gooding — and superheroes who went bad but are now good again? And housed it here, in the Watchtower?”
Kate lifted one eyebrow very, very slowly at the notion of it, but kept her personal comments to a minimum. For now, anyway. She didn’t know Ollie well enough, and she liked him well enough, so she’d avoid spouting her mouth off.
“I don’t have to tell you there’s no precedent, so skipping that. From a practical standpoint, having it here is both a good and bad plan—for a start, your jurisdiction is mostly self-governing, though you’re subject to certain US federal law. While that means you can do as you want, and there aren’t building codes or necessary legal restrictions on who you can have and why.
“However, you try and do rehab up here without negotiating with the people on the ground, and you’re bound to burn some bridges. Some people they are not going to want to let out of prison, and wouldn’t buy your reason as acceptable parole. Frankly, depending on the case and the possibility of people—seriously brilliant criminal minds—playing you, I can’t really blame them. They have no oversight, very little legal recourse, and even if they trust you 100%, you could still be damaging that trust. In the unlikely but possible event that all hell breaks loose and it’s not containable by the JLA, the government and federal agencies may make trouble for you thereafter.
“Even if everything goes to plan, you could run the risk of losing the relative carte blanche that you have at present. The legal system is trigger happy right now; they’re all too glad to find an excuse to prosecute metahumans.” Kate cleared her throat and lifted a brow. “And if we’re being fully honest here, Ollie, the due process violations alone would require a dedicated circuit court for rehearing mistrials.”
Hell, Gotham itself would need one.
She poured him a cup of coffee without asking and set a creamer and a couple of sugars with the spoon next to the saucer, not knowing how he’d take his drink or if he even wanted it. Kate wasn’t here to fetch and carry, but that didn’t mean sit and sip her own in front of him without offering.
“In other words, no, there’s not anything legally stopping you, but the legal politics are what’s more important than that. A few people at a time, fully vetted, and negotiated with whatever agency or organization is currently holding them.”
Ollie took the coffee gratefully, stirring in all the creamer and sugar and gulping it down while he reviewed what Kate had said. He was right to come ask her about this, that much was certain — the lady knew what the fuck she was talking about. When you prided yourself on being an Idea Man, you learned fast to suss out the people who would help your ideas actually take fruition in a way that wouldn’t come back to bite you on the ass.
“Okay, so,” he put the coffee mug down, “so if we’re not trying to get the Joker or Lex Luthor or Parallax up here, we’ve got a better chance. Frankly, that’s fine by me — I envisioned this as being an option for more of the penny-ante kind of villain, minus the super. Your Clock Kings, your Rainbow Raiders, that kind of nutbar, the sort that just take up space in respectable metahuman supermaxes but can’t be put into general population cell blocks.
“As for the trigger-happy litigation … well, that’s a matter of how we spin it, right? There’s been one of the critiques about the mask-and-cape gig that’s always stung me, ‘cause they’ve got a point; what good is it for us to swoop in and zap the bad guys into submission if the local constabulary is left with the cleanup at the end of the day? Our law enforcement on every level’s strained as it is dealing with run-of-the mill human vice, much less extranormal crime.”
Kate’s eyebrows hadn’t moved much from when they’d started this conversation, but she *did* look intrigued. Or at least, morbidly curious, which was just as good as far as Ollie was concerned. He continued his thought, picking up steam: “So what could be a better solution than us taking on the responsibility for rehabilitating these villains we’d be putting down in the first place? Saves the taxpayer from having to shell out for long legal procedures or cells in the local prison, and satisfies their NIMBY paranoia. And we get to take on the job of turning baddies into goodies, instead of watching them be incarcerated and then having to do the same dance all over again three months down the road.”
Ollie sat back, locking his fingers behind his head and grinning. His family refused to have these kinds of conversations with him anymore, and trying to talk about this stuff with JLU types normally ended up in shouting matches.
Kate drank her own coffee and considered this for a long, long moment. “You could spin it that way,” she said finally, and settled her chin in her hand, elbow balanced on the edge of the desk. “And you’d probably convince most of the public. Smile at them a little like that and you’ll convince a little more, though you’re never going to make everybody happy. I guess my main query then is going to be how the hell you plan to actually rehab these people. You’re going to need something that holds water within the legal system so that it’s easy for them to sign off your project, and frankly, if you want this to actually work, you’d want that anyway. You’ll need staff and space and security measures, which I know The Powers That Be around here will be happy to fund, but you can’t just have drum circles and finger painting.”
She hadn’t ever exactly realized how damn savvy Ollie Queen could be, and clearly persuasive. He’d have done pretty well in politics if he’d went there. It was probably for the best that this was how things had turned out.
“Well, that rules Roy and Kyle out of helping with rehab, then.” Ollie laughed and then shook his head, sobering up and rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I see where you’re coming from. And to be honest I don’t know a whole helluva lot about how this sort of thing works with non-metas, much less on this level. Which on one hand gives us some wiggle room because, as you mentioned, there’s no precedent … and on the other hand, means there’s a lot of on-the-ground details to hash out in addition to the legal hocus-pocus.”
He sighed and must have been staring wistfully at the empty coffee mug, because Kate wordlessly refilled both of their cups and doled out some more sugar and creamer. He took the mug and sipped, this time, watching Kate as she picked up her ballpoint pen from where she’d rested it on her yellow legal pad, clicked it closed, and put it back down. She was fully committed to this conversation, that clicked ballpoint said, and Ollie certainly appreciated it; he enjoyed interacting with perceptive people, and Kate was clearly one of the breed. Plus she didn’t hold back her opinions, which he liked even more.
“Okay,” he said, “how would a mentorship program work? Pairing us up one-on-one would be a good way to match skill levels, and it would mean that the folks in rehab would be out there working alongside us. And under our watchful eyes, not to put too fine a point on it. That should be the bulk of the endeavour, because it’s out there on the front lines where heroes get made, especially when you’re counting on each other to stay alive; it’s the times you’re facing down flaming danger from outer space or waiting out a long boring-ass stakeout together when you start to re-think your beliefs and ethics. For the good, hopefully. And arts and crafts can come later.” He rearranged himself in the chair, switching to the other ankle on the opposite knee. “Whaddyou think? I’m probably gonna be bugging you day and night about this project if we go ahead with it, so best-case scenario is having you on-board from the get-go!”
Clearly the coffee was a good idea. Kate decided she could make more friends among the JL cohort by plying them with hot drinks, maybe even cafe con leche if she could get the right supply.
“So you’re planning a buddy system,” she said, after Ollie had laid out his concept. “That’s sensible, and I can see why it would work—as you said, people figure themselves out in the roughest and dullest times, and figure out how to work as a team.” Never mind that she was sort of shitty at teamwork herself. “Though the good guy mentor needs to be upskilled in managing the situation, and needs to be prepared for things to not work out…for things to explosively not work out. Building trust will be difficult in that situation, so your ideal candidates are people who are patient, are willing to plan for the worst without being negative, and are self-confident without being cocky. You also need…”
Kate grinned with a wide display of teeth. “Lots and lots of waivers to be signed. And paperwork.” If she couldn’t scare him off with that, they’d be okay.
Ollie laughed, flinging his arms open expansively. “Lady,” he declared, “when you’re descended from a long line of robber barons like I am, you get used to wielding a pen at even the most innocuous of social functions. For a while when I took over the family company I think I was writing cheques and signing off on paperwork in my sleep.” He sat forward in his chair, electric excitement zinging through him. Adrenalin bursts when you were taking down a cotillion of armed goons were great; vast plans for social change were even better.
“As for the rest of the rank-and-file up here, they’ll get used to it. A hand cramp and the fine print’ll be the least of their worries.” He sprang to his feet and thrust a hand out across her desk: “Especially if you’re the one delivering those waivers, Kate, because damned if you couldn’t sell a fanny pack to a kangaroo. And that’s a compliment.”
Kate was pretty sure she had Ollie pegged…one of the rich liberal breed of white guy that California did really well, except they usually didn’t have quite as much near-manic enthusiasm.
They were, admittedly, handy to have on your side, better than when people were telling you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps (like some of Peter’s relatives—she was sure she’d been an unwilling example for many of their neocon arguments to that effect, and it made her cringe). As long as Ollie kept checking his privilege, and didn’t try to interfere with her doing her work, they’d be okay.
She grinned at him, wryly, amused and maybe a touch flirtatious. “I don’t get along with everybody, I promise you that. Wait…a fanny pack to a kangaroo? That’s a new one. Is that a Star City saying?”
“Ollie Queen original, far as I know. But it gets the point across, doesn’t it?” He grinned back at her, letting it stretch for a beat longer than plain ol’ friendly camaraderie. Why not, he reasoned with himself, she’s a helluva attractive woman. And he liked all kinds.
“Well, I won’t take up anymore of your time for today, but I really appreciate the help on this, Kate,” he told her, “and you gotta let me take you out to dinner sometime to demonstrate it. My gratitude. Y’know.”
So Kate Spencer, defence attorney to the metahuman (and sometimes metacriminal) community? That brought up a whole whackload of implications and possibilities.
Like some of the other people up here in the Watchtower, Kate seemed to have set up her quarters to serve as an impromptu office as well, with a little nameplate outside the door. Ollie buzzed in, marshalling his thoughts.
Just because it was Monday in JLAville didn’t mean that old habits didn’t die hard—try as she could, Kate couldn’t bring herself to sleep late. She was up at 7:15 and unable to fall back asleep, like she’d have to get herself clean and dressed, then Ramsey to school and herself to work. It was frustrating, especially the latent sense of panic that she was forgetting to do something absolutely critical.
This was why she didn’t take vacations. She’d settled at the desk in the outer room of her suite by 8, made a whole pot of coffee, and plowed through all of her email.
When the door buzzed, she hit the button to let in her visitor, then looked up from the legal journals she’d been combing, trying to find relevant precedent. List of things to do while she was here: get in touch with Jennifer Walters about starting their own journal…this field was only going to get bigger.
“Morning, Ollie,” she said, and gave him a slight smile. “What can I do for you?”
She was obviously already in work mode, which was great; he didn’t want to barge in on her personal time. Ollie sat down in the visitor chair and crossed his legs, jiggling his foot for a minute before leaning forward.
“What kind of ramifications that I haven’t thought about,” he started, “would there be if we instituted a rehabilitation program for reformed villains — the kind who’ve made demonstrable motions towards do-gooding — and superheroes who went bad but are now good again? And housed it here, in the Watchtower?”
Kate lifted one eyebrow very, very slowly at the notion of it, but kept her personal comments to a minimum. For now, anyway. She didn’t know Ollie well enough, and she liked him well enough, so she’d avoid spouting her mouth off.
“I don’t have to tell you there’s no precedent, so skipping that. From a practical standpoint, having it here is both a good and bad plan—for a start, your jurisdiction is mostly self-governing, though you’re subject to certain US federal law. While that means you can do as you want, and there aren’t building codes or necessary legal restrictions on who you can have and why.
“However, you try and do rehab up here without negotiating with the people on the ground, and you’re bound to burn some bridges. Some people they are not going to want to let out of prison, and wouldn’t buy your reason as acceptable parole. Frankly, depending on the case and the possibility of people—seriously brilliant criminal minds—playing you, I can’t really blame them. They have no oversight, very little legal recourse, and even if they trust you 100%, you could still be damaging that trust. In the unlikely but possible event that all hell breaks loose and it’s not containable by the JLA, the government and federal agencies may make trouble for you thereafter.
“Even if everything goes to plan, you could run the risk of losing the relative carte blanche that you have at present. The legal system is trigger happy right now; they’re all too glad to find an excuse to prosecute metahumans.” Kate cleared her throat and lifted a brow. “And if we’re being fully honest here, Ollie, the due process violations alone would require a dedicated circuit court for rehearing mistrials.”
Hell, Gotham itself would need one.
She poured him a cup of coffee without asking and set a creamer and a couple of sugars with the spoon next to the saucer, not knowing how he’d take his drink or if he even wanted it. Kate wasn’t here to fetch and carry, but that didn’t mean sit and sip her own in front of him without offering.
“In other words, no, there’s not anything legally stopping you, but the legal politics are what’s more important than that. A few people at a time, fully vetted, and negotiated with whatever agency or organization is currently holding them.”
Ollie took the coffee gratefully, stirring in all the creamer and sugar and gulping it down while he reviewed what Kate had said. He was right to come ask her about this, that much was certain — the lady knew what the fuck she was talking about. When you prided yourself on being an Idea Man, you learned fast to suss out the people who would help your ideas actually take fruition in a way that wouldn’t come back to bite you on the ass.
“Okay, so,” he put the coffee mug down, “so if we’re not trying to get the Joker or Lex Luthor or Parallax up here, we’ve got a better chance. Frankly, that’s fine by me — I envisioned this as being an option for more of the penny-ante kind of villain, minus the super. Your Clock Kings, your Rainbow Raiders, that kind of nutbar, the sort that just take up space in respectable metahuman supermaxes but can’t be put into general population cell blocks.
“As for the trigger-happy litigation … well, that’s a matter of how we spin it, right? There’s been one of the critiques about the mask-and-cape gig that’s always stung me, ‘cause they’ve got a point; what good is it for us to swoop in and zap the bad guys into submission if the local constabulary is left with the cleanup at the end of the day? Our law enforcement on every level’s strained as it is dealing with run-of-the mill human vice, much less extranormal crime.”
Kate’s eyebrows hadn’t moved much from when they’d started this conversation, but she *did* look intrigued. Or at least, morbidly curious, which was just as good as far as Ollie was concerned. He continued his thought, picking up steam: “So what could be a better solution than us taking on the responsibility for rehabilitating these villains we’d be putting down in the first place? Saves the taxpayer from having to shell out for long legal procedures or cells in the local prison, and satisfies their NIMBY paranoia. And we get to take on the job of turning baddies into goodies, instead of watching them be incarcerated and then having to do the same dance all over again three months down the road.”
Ollie sat back, locking his fingers behind his head and grinning. His family refused to have these kinds of conversations with him anymore, and trying to talk about this stuff with JLU types normally ended up in shouting matches.
Kate drank her own coffee and considered this for a long, long moment. “You could spin it that way,” she said finally, and settled her chin in her hand, elbow balanced on the edge of the desk. “And you’d probably convince most of the public. Smile at them a little like that and you’ll convince a little more, though you’re never going to make everybody happy. I guess my main query then is going to be how the hell you plan to actually rehab these people. You’re going to need something that holds water within the legal system so that it’s easy for them to sign off your project, and frankly, if you want this to actually work, you’d want that anyway. You’ll need staff and space and security measures, which I know The Powers That Be around here will be happy to fund, but you can’t just have drum circles and finger painting.”
She hadn’t ever exactly realized how damn savvy Ollie Queen could be, and clearly persuasive. He’d have done pretty well in politics if he’d went there. It was probably for the best that this was how things had turned out.
“Well, that rules Roy and Kyle out of helping with rehab, then.” Ollie laughed and then shook his head, sobering up and rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I see where you’re coming from. And to be honest I don’t know a whole helluva lot about how this sort of thing works with non-metas, much less on this level. Which on one hand gives us some wiggle room because, as you mentioned, there’s no precedent … and on the other hand, means there’s a lot of on-the-ground details to hash out in addition to the legal hocus-pocus.”
He sighed and must have been staring wistfully at the empty coffee mug, because Kate wordlessly refilled both of their cups and doled out some more sugar and creamer. He took the mug and sipped, this time, watching Kate as she picked up her ballpoint pen from where she’d rested it on her yellow legal pad, clicked it closed, and put it back down. She was fully committed to this conversation, that clicked ballpoint said, and Ollie certainly appreciated it; he enjoyed interacting with perceptive people, and Kate was clearly one of the breed. Plus she didn’t hold back her opinions, which he liked even more.
“Okay,” he said, “how would a mentorship program work? Pairing us up one-on-one would be a good way to match skill levels, and it would mean that the folks in rehab would be out there working alongside us. And under our watchful eyes, not to put too fine a point on it. That should be the bulk of the endeavour, because it’s out there on the front lines where heroes get made, especially when you’re counting on each other to stay alive; it’s the times you’re facing down flaming danger from outer space or waiting out a long boring-ass stakeout together when you start to re-think your beliefs and ethics. For the good, hopefully. And arts and crafts can come later.” He rearranged himself in the chair, switching to the other ankle on the opposite knee. “Whaddyou think? I’m probably gonna be bugging you day and night about this project if we go ahead with it, so best-case scenario is having you on-board from the get-go!”
Clearly the coffee was a good idea. Kate decided she could make more friends among the JL cohort by plying them with hot drinks, maybe even cafe con leche if she could get the right supply.
“So you’re planning a buddy system,” she said, after Ollie had laid out his concept. “That’s sensible, and I can see why it would work—as you said, people figure themselves out in the roughest and dullest times, and figure out how to work as a team.” Never mind that she was sort of shitty at teamwork herself. “Though the good guy mentor needs to be upskilled in managing the situation, and needs to be prepared for things to not work out…for things to explosively not work out. Building trust will be difficult in that situation, so your ideal candidates are people who are patient, are willing to plan for the worst without being negative, and are self-confident without being cocky. You also need…”
Kate grinned with a wide display of teeth. “Lots and lots of waivers to be signed. And paperwork.” If she couldn’t scare him off with that, they’d be okay.
Ollie laughed, flinging his arms open expansively. “Lady,” he declared, “when you’re descended from a long line of robber barons like I am, you get used to wielding a pen at even the most innocuous of social functions. For a while when I took over the family company I think I was writing cheques and signing off on paperwork in my sleep.” He sat forward in his chair, electric excitement zinging through him. Adrenalin bursts when you were taking down a cotillion of armed goons were great; vast plans for social change were even better.
“As for the rest of the rank-and-file up here, they’ll get used to it. A hand cramp and the fine print’ll be the least of their worries.” He sprang to his feet and thrust a hand out across her desk: “Especially if you’re the one delivering those waivers, Kate, because damned if you couldn’t sell a fanny pack to a kangaroo. And that’s a compliment.”
Kate was pretty sure she had Ollie pegged…one of the rich liberal breed of white guy that California did really well, except they usually didn’t have quite as much near-manic enthusiasm.
They were, admittedly, handy to have on your side, better than when people were telling you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps (like some of Peter’s relatives—she was sure she’d been an unwilling example for many of their neocon arguments to that effect, and it made her cringe). As long as Ollie kept checking his privilege, and didn’t try to interfere with her doing her work, they’d be okay.
She grinned at him, wryly, amused and maybe a touch flirtatious. “I don’t get along with everybody, I promise you that. Wait…a fanny pack to a kangaroo? That’s a new one. Is that a Star City saying?”
“Ollie Queen original, far as I know. But it gets the point across, doesn’t it?” He grinned back at her, letting it stretch for a beat longer than plain ol’ friendly camaraderie. Why not, he reasoned with himself, she’s a helluva attractive woman. And he liked all kinds.
“Well, I won’t take up anymore of your time for today, but I really appreciate the help on this, Kate,” he told her, “and you gotta let me take you out to dinner sometime to demonstrate it. My gratitude. Y’know.”