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Topic: Legal Drama
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The Accountability Sink
Approx. 15 min read
Wend Osei's job is to be the human face of blame. When an algorithmic system harms someone, he signs the report, apologizes on camera, and absorbs the penalty, and he is very, very good at contrition. Over the years the line between performing responsibility and believing it begins to blur. Then a case crosses his desk in which a real person, with a license and a choice, actually caused a death, and he discovers the courts no longer have any language for anyone but him.
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What the Jury Carries
Approx. 16 min read
In a near-future justice system, a drug called Witness lets jurors feel a person's remembered emotional state from the inside. The law requires that they experience the victim's account before deliberating, and after verdicts turn severe, defense attorneys win the right to make jurors feel the defendant too. Juror number nine draws a case where both accounts are unendurable, and no verdict will let her set either one down.