Unsaid

by Neil Abramson

  “Is she property? Perhaps so. But that is a limitation that is imposed by the law. You will see that this legal status certainly was not a limitation on Dr. Cassidy’s heart. And today it need not be a limitation on yours.

  “It has been said—and we have learned from history—that the only thing necessary for wrong to triumph over right is for good men and women to do nothing. Don’t allow this wrong to prevail. Don’t do nothing. Use your voice and set Dr. Cassidy free.”

  David finishes his opening, nods to the jury, and then quickly returns to his chair. There is a murmuring from the spectators, but it is quickly shut down by Allerton’s gavel.

  Allerton, poker-faced as ever, says, “Let’s take lunch before the first witness.” He then turns to the jurors. “I remind you that you’ve not yet heard a single shred of evidence. You should not discuss anything about this case among yourselves or anyone else. I will instruct you when it is time to begin your deliberations.”

  Once the jury is dismissed and Allerton is off the bench, David allows himself a little smile as he accepts compliments from Max, Chris, and Daniel. Then Jaycee steps up to him. “Thank you,” she says.

  “That’s the easy part,” David tells her.

  Jaycee leans over to David and whispers so only he can hear. “I think Helena would’ve been proud to hear you speak.”

  David nods and walks out of the courtroom.

  Proud? I don’t think I’ve earned the right to feel pride. But I am grateful.

  23

  Following the lunch break, the government begins its case against Jaycee. The evidence is, as Mace had promised, straightforward and without any surprises. The guard whom Cindy bit testifies in short order to the elements of Jaycee’s crime—that Jaycee had somehow broken into the building that used to be her lab, carried out the specimen chimpanzee, and was attempting to get to her vehicle with the specimen when she was apprehended. It takes less than an hour to put all the nails into Jaycee’s legal coffin.

  As soon as Mace is done with the witness, David rises to cross-examine.

  “So, you saw Dr. Cassidy running toward the fence with the specimen?” David asks.

  “Right.”

  “The specimen was a chimpanzee, right?”

  “That is what I observed, sir.”

  “So what did you think was going on?”

  “I don’t understand your question, sir.”

  “You knew the woman was Dr. Cassidy, correct? You’d seen her before? Worked with her?”

  “Correct.”

  “Well, did you think this was like a chimp-napping in progress or something? You get a lot of that?”

  “Objection,” Mace calls out.

  There is some laughter from the benches, but Allerton quickly shuts it down.

  “I’ll withdraw the question, Your Honor,” David says.

  “Good thinking.” Allerton gives David a cold Stop screwing around glance.

  “When you told Dr. Cassidy to drop to the ground and release the specimen, I assume the specimen, now freed from her clutches, ran away, right?”

  “Not exactly, no.”

  “How ‘not exactly’?”

  “Well, the chimpanzee was still in the area.”

  “Not just in the area, but actually clinging to Dr. Cassidy, isn’t that correct?” David asks, raising his voice slightly.

  “Yeah. I guess that’s right.”

  “Dr. Cassidy was facedown on the ground with your weapon pointed at her and this chimpanzee actually was holding on to Dr. Cassidy, wasn’t she?”

  “As I said, yes.”

  “When you tried to separate the chimpanzee from Dr. Cassidy, the specimen bit you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The chimpanzee was protecting Dr. Cassidy from you, isn’t that right?”

  “I couldn’t tell you what was going through the chimpanzee’s mind, sir.”

  “Do you know American Sign Language?”

  “I do not.”

  “Pity, because if you did, perhaps you could’ve asked the specimen precisely that question.”

  “Objection!” Mace shouts.

  “Sustained,” Allerton rules.

  David begins to walk back to counsel table, but stops in mid-stride, as if he forgot something. “One more thing. When Dr. Cassidy was being removed in handcuffs and you finally pulled the chimpanzee off her, what was the chimpanzee doing?”

  “The chimpanzee appeared to be upset.”

  “Can you describe that?”

  The guard pauses before answering that one. “The chimpanzee was screaming and reaching for Dr. Cassidy.”

  “Do you have any children, sir?”

  “Yes, a girl.”

  David drops into a more conversational tone. “How old is she?”

  “She’s twelve,” the guard says with obvious pride.

  “Do you remember when she was four?”

  “Of course.”

  David smiles at the guard. “I hear four-year-old girls can be a handful.”

  The guard smiles back. “That, counselor, is what you would call an understatement.”

  There is some laughter in the courtroom, and David waits for it to die down. “They can be stubborn?”

  “Same answer.” More laughter.

  “Do you remember ever trying to take your daughter from her mother when she didn’t want to go?”

  “Oh, yeah,” the guard says, playing up to the crowd now. “You never forget those screams.”

  At the word screams, the courtroom becomes still, David’s point suddenly obvious. “But Cindy’s screams didn’t sound anything like that when you pulled her off Dr. Cassidy, I guess.”

  The guard looks down at his shoes, avoiding David’s stare. That is enough of an answer for David. “Nothing further,” he says.

  After the guard leaves the courtroom, Mace rises to his feet. “The government believes it has made out the elements of the crimes Dr. Cassidy has been charged with. Indeed, we believe those elements are not disputed, subject only to the defendant’s claim of mitigating circumstances. Accordingly, the prosecution rests its case at this time, but reserves the right to put on a witness to rebut any evidence of mitigation the defense may make.”

  “Very well, Mr. Mace. Mr. Colden, you have the floor.”

  All eyes in the courtroom turn to David as he rises from his seat and says in a strong, clear voice, “The defense calls Dr. Jane Cassidy.”

  Jaycee walks to the front of the courtroom and climbs up into the box next to the judge. “Remain standing while we administer the oath, please,” Allerton says.

  The court clerk comes over with a well-worn Bible. “Please raise your right hand,” she says above some excited chattering from the benches and the shuffling of papers at the counsel table.

  Allerton stops the clerk. “Hold on a sec, Bev.” He turns to address the rest of the courtroom, and his demeanor is deadly serious. “I’m just going to say this once. The oath is a solemn vow. People have gone to jail for violating it. It is what truly matters in the administration of the law and justice in this country. The taking of the oath is entitled to at least the minimum degree of respect you can show—silence while the oath is being given. That means no talking, no whispering, no getting up and going to the bathroom. I want complete and absolute silence during the oath in this courtroom. If that is unclear to anyone, you can leave now.” Allerton waits a few seconds to see if anyone takes him up on his offer. He then nods to the clerk. “Okay, Bev. Go ahead.”

  Jaycee puts one hand on the cover of the Bible and raises the other as the clerk asks, “Do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

  “I do,” Jaycee says.

  “Be seated and spell your name for the court reporter,” the clerk commands. Jaycee complies.

  David, a slim binder in his hand, moves to the podium near the counsel table. “Good morning, Doctor.”

  David and Jaycee begin the Q&A that they’ve been rehearsi
ng for several days now.

  Jaycee, trying to maintain eye contact with the jury, responds to David’s first question by reciting her impressive academic credentials, her employment as part of the research faculty at Cornell and Tufts, and her membership in the International College of Comparative Anthropologists. Then they move on to her work at CAPS.

  “Why do you care about the use of language in your work?”

  “Our language has always been relied upon as the great divide between us and every other creature. We have it; they don’t. Historically, human language has been used as the proxy for sentience. So I set out to test the scientific validity of the premise that only humans can acquire and use human language.”

  “How did you go about testing the premise?”

  “Frankly, with a great deal of difficulty. It’s not like you can just put a microphone in front of a chimpanzee and engage it in a conversation. Chimpanzees and bonobos cannot speak as you and I speak because they don’t have the moving parts in their vocal apparatus that we do.”

  “So, why isn’t that the end of the story?” David continues.

  “There’s a difference between unspoken and unsaid,” Jaycee says. “Just because chimpanzees cannot speak doesn’t mean they have nothing to say; the ability to vocalize thoughts is not the same as the ability to acquire and use language. We know this as a scientific fact because the ability to speak language is a relatively recent development in hominids. Chimpanzees share over ninety-eight percent of our genetic code, but they actually have ninety-nine point seven two percent of the specific gene that controls the development of human speech as we know it today. Evolutionally speaking, they are a hairbreadth away from being actually able to vocalize human speech. The real issue from a research perspective is how to bridge the gap between how chimpanzees communicate and how we as humans listen.”

  “How did you plan to bridge the gap?”

  “We started with the core concept that communication is merely the transfer of information in a manner that has meaning to the recipient. An animal communicates whenever he or she intentionally behaves so that another senses the behavior and reacts. We know that animals are great meaning makers—the dog that growls when you go near his food bowl when he is eating, the cat that purrs in your lap, the parrot that tosses food it doesn’t like from her cage. Language is really just a systematic means of communication through symbols or sounds. Almost all animals use language. The problem is that when it comes to the issue of language, humans are incredibly narcissistic. Since we literally hold the key to their cages, our language is the only one that counts. So we needed to find a way to get Cindy to communicate in a language that counts to her captors even though she does not have the ability to actually speak.”

  “Objection,” Mace calls out.

  “Sustained,” Allerton says without pause. “Dr. Cassidy,” Allerton continues, “you will be better served in this proceeding if you keep to the facts and leave the advocacy and commentary to your counsel.”

  “Yes sir,” Jaycee answers quietly.

  “And Mr. Colden,” Allerton says, “we’re getting too far afield. Let’s get back to the point here.”

  “Of course. Can you describe your methodology?” David asks.

  “We got Cindy as an infant when we started. From day one, we treated her as if she had a concept of self, as if she could intentionally communicate and use language, and finally”—here Jaycee struggles to maintain her composure—“as if she were my own child.”

  “What was the process that you used to teach Cindy?”

  Jaycee then explains the painstaking technical steps through which Cindy learned to communicate with humans: how Cindy was taught American Sign Language; how the interstitial linguistic programming was refined and modified for ASL and then adapted to the primate hand; how the ILP-programmed gloves were created and Cindy was taught to use them; and finally how Cindy was taught to use the lexigraphic keyboard to supplement the ASL and to take the place of non-manual markers.

  While this testimony provides an important foundation for the evidence that would follow, it is also dry, impersonal, and abstract. David marches Jaycee through it as quickly as he can with one eye on the jury to make sure he’s not losing them.

  When Jaycee is done, David says, “Perhaps, Jaycee, you can give the jury a concrete example of what you’ve been explaining?”

  “Of course. Take the sign for ‘play.’ You make the sign for two p’s—the tip of the thumb to the middle of the middle finger—and then swing the p back and forth.” Jaycee displays the sign from the witness stand for the judge. “Because of the placement of Cindy’s thumb in relationship to her other fingers, if she were to sign this, it might look like this.” Jaycee makes the sign, but it clearly appears different. “She could be trying to sign the word for ‘play,’ but she also could be trying to sign any number of other words. When we put the gloves on her, and thereby compensated for differences in physiology, it was clear that she was in fact signing the word for ‘play.’ We ran the gloves back through the programming and Cindy’s signs were converted into English words that appeared on my computer screen. Cindy also used her keyboard to add a mood or tone—like play now!” Jaycee says in a demanding tone, “or as a shortcut for a response—like a yes or no.”

  “Do you believe that you succeeded in having Cindy acquire and use human language?” David asks.

  “I have no doubt that we did.”

  “Did you ever have Cindy independently evaluated?” David asks.

  “Yes. Prior to the time that the project was terminated, we had Cindy’s cognitive age equivalent tested by the Language Institute at Cornell.”

  “What do you mean by cognitive age equivalent?”

  “It’s just what it sounds like. Using an assessment of the subject’s language acquisition and usage, the subject’s skill level is measured against the test results of other subjects in various age cohorts and is then placed in a similar grouping.”

  David removes the document from a file folder and has it marked as an exhibit. He hands a copy to Mace, one to the clerk, and one to Jaycee.

  “What did Cornell conclude?” David asks.

  “When the project was terminated, Cindy, who was at this time four years and eight months old, had a cognitive age equivalent of a four-year-old.”

  The sound of surprise spreads throughout the benches. Allerton bangs his gavel once in annoyance. “All right now. Settle down.”

  David takes a moment for the room to quiet and to be sure that he has Allerton’s attention. “Can you explain what that result means?”

  Jaycee takes a breath and turns her face so that she is looking directly at Allerton. “It means that as compared with other humans and as measured by humans, based on factors such as vocabulary, arbitrariness, semanticity, spontaneity, turn taking, duality, displacement, and creativity, Cindy has the verbal mind of a four-year-old child.”

  This time there is a collective murmur from the audience that quickly expands to a dull rumble. Allerton bangs his gavel several times to establish order.

  David turns to Chris and says, “Hand me the CD.”

  Chris takes out a small, square white envelope and gives it to David. He, in turn, hands the envelope to the court clerk, and she removes the CD and places it into a small computer/projector in the front of the courtroom. The clerk hands David a remote control. Mace watches David’s movements, waiting for the correct moment to object.

  “Dr. Cassidy, did you make a photographic record of any of your work with Cindy?”

  “Oh, tons.”

  “What happened to those recordings?”

  “I don’t know. I tried to take a number of disks with me, but was advised by Director Jannick that they were the property of NIS.” There is a noticeable stirring at Mace’s counsel table.

  “Are you aware of any photographic recording of Cindy that is not presently in the possession of NIS?” David asks.

  “I’d saved a few files bec
ause I forwarded them to my home computer.”

  Mace stands. “We renew our objection to this evidence, Your Honor. Not only is this irrelevant, but any recording that Dr. Cassidy or her colleague made while working at CAPS is the property of NIS and was to be turned over to NIS before Dr. Cassidy departed. We cannot—”

  “Your Honor, this is inappropriate,” David challenges. “You’ve already ruled during the break that this tape could—”

  “Objection overruled, Mr. Mace.” Allerton doesn’t even wait for David to finish. “Proceed, Mr. Colden.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.” David pushes a button on the remote control, and a large flat-screen monitor near the clerk’s desk turns on.

  A few more seconds pass, but nothing happens. David pushes another button on the remote control, but the screen remains blank. The court clerk comes over and tries to help get things going without success. The jury members begin to shift in their seats—the sound of impatience—and it could not have come at a worse time.

  “It was working this morning,” David says to Allerton.

  “Another copy, perhaps?” Allerton offers.

  “Just one moment, please,” David answers and heads back to Chris.

  She gives David another disk. “This is the original,” she whispers. “I’ve only viewed the stuff we’ll be using. The whole file runs for almost an hour, so you’ll need to cut it off.”

  David gives the second disk to the clerk and holds his breath. Images soon appear on the screen—Cindy in the Cube, wearing her gloves, the large lexigraphic keyboard in her lap, Jaycee in front of Cindy and adjacent to her own keyboard and oversize monitor.

  David had always said that the best type of trial witness tells a story. But he also knew that no matter how good the witness is, no matter how well the witness has been prepared, and no matter how interesting the witness’s story may be, words cannot compare to a picture. Such are the limitations of human language.

  David pauses the playback. “Can you tell us what we’re looking at here, Dr. Cassidy?”