There is. As of the DS9 episode “The Sword of Kahless”, Toral is still alive and free.
Also, if I recall correctly, one of the clues that leads Worf to the realization that K’Mtar is the future Alexander is the appearance of a dagger with the crest of the House of Duras. When he confronts Lursa and B’etor with it, they’re shocked because the crest isn’t theirs, but the crest that the elder sister’s firstborn son would hold as an adult, indicating that there are more in Toral’s generation of the family.
Rounding out the Trek trials (at least until someone remembers any I’m missing) there was Wesley’s trial (or was it tribunal? hearing?) in “The First Duty” for attempting an unauthorized manuever leading to the death of a colleugue and the ensuing cover up.
And Worf stood trial again for apparently destroying a Klingon civilian ship in “Rules of Engagement”
And besides ST6, Kirk stood trial in “Court Martial” and ST4:TVH
Captain Archer was tried by the Klingons too in “Judgement”
Star Trek loves trials apparently. Perhaps the next spin-off should be Star Trek: Trial by Jury
If it’s the episode I’m thinking of, Toral (manipulated by his aunts, Lursa and B’Etor) was petitioning to be named Imperial Chancellor – i.e., that he was heir to his father Duras’ claim on the position. Picard, called in to arbitrate, ruled against him on the grounds of his youth, precipitating the Civil War between the Duras and Gowron factions. So it wasn’t exactly a “trial,” more a political arbitration.
My favorite episode of The Twilight Zone, titled The Obsolete Man, was about a man on trial after having been accused of being obsolete as a human librarian, inferior to the robots in charge of the world he lived in.
In Life, the Universe, and Everything, by Douglas Adams, mention is made of a trial on the planet Argabuthon. Now, a certain witness named Prak was being difficult, and they decided to inject him with truth serum before he testified. Due to outside interference (darned krikkiters), Prak was injected with too much.
So, they asked him to “tell the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth.”
And he did.
Strange information, truths to drive men mad (or half-mad, if you make an excuse and leave early)…
When the court realized that he was telling the absolute truth about everything, and they couldn’t shut him up, they evacuated the courtroom, sealed it shut, and erected barriers of steel, barbed wire, and energy fields to keep everyone out…and Prak inside, where he was discovered by our heroes…
Another Star Trek one, I think it was called Justice in season 1 TNG. Wesley accidentally trod on a flower bed in a society where any crime however minor is punishable by death.
I see someone finally mentioned Galley Slave, but there’s still at least one Asimov trial which still hasn’t been mentioned. “Legal Rites”, in which a ghost is claiming squatter’s rights on the house it haunts.
Another short story, though I don’t remember the author (I think it was called “whosawhatsis”) took place in a courtroom and focused on the legal implications of sex-change operations.
We’ve seen trials in a few episodes of Babylon 5, including one where a human wearing denim overalls and a straw hat sues an alien which looks like one of the standard “greys”, for the humiliation the human’s grandfather suffered when the alien’s grandfather abducted him. Another B5 trial culminated in a serial killer being sentenced to brain-wiping.
In one of the Lensman books (I think it was Gray Lensman), Kinnison presides over a trial where he serves as high, middle, and low justice over a man accused of murder. His judgement is based mostly on his telepathic reading of the accused, and the sentence is carried out by telepathically forcing the accused to face the enormity of his actions, which self-confrontation ends up causing his brain to shut down.
And in the Honor Harrington books, there are a number of trials of various sorts, courts-martial, show trials by autocratic regimes, etc., but aside from being set in a science fiction story, they didn’t really have many SF elements to them. Electronic evidence (surveillance footage, sensor records, etc.) plays a significant part, but then, we’re pretty close to that now.
Note: jms is a sick bastard, and he admits it. At the end of the episode,
[spoiler]Thomas/Jinxo left on a ship named the Marie Celeste, named after a ship which had it’s entire crew mysteriously disappear. His response is:
Yeah, it was a bit of really perverse humor…Jinxo survives all five Babylon stations, and leaves thinking all is well…on a ship named the Marie Celeste?
We’re a sick bunch, but we’re fun.
"…what company in their right mind would name one of their ships the “Marie Celeste”?
Dunno, but I’d bet good money that whoever it is, it’s an Australian company. Nothing frightens those people; they’re fearless. [/spoiler]
all quotes taken from The Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5
John G. Hemry has 2 books out dealing with military law and courts martial in the near future. A Just Determination and Burden of Proof are quite good. Sort of JAG in space, with real military, not the stuff they show on TV.
I thought about this too, on the other hand, Starfleet might have had a valid salvage claim on him in this scenario. The colony was devastated and it was not known at the time that Soong was dead, or that he had any living heirs. Starfleet was first to get to the scene of the disaster, and found Data just sitting there (or something like this.) Not quite sure what federation salvage laws are like, but there might have been a claim possible.
On the other hand, allowing a ‘salvaged’ piece of property to sign up for the academy as if he’s a person, and then turning around and claiming he’s property seems more than a little two-faced.
PS: (echoes of the Terry Schiavo case) How exactly do you get to act on the behalf of the Soong estate?? Just because you say you’re acting in their interest?
I don’t think there were any charges laid in that case. Wanting to marry Sheen was not an issue, but there was an inquiry called to decide the legalities of designating her as the heir to his estate. Still qualifies as a trial in the general sense, I suppose.
Ghod, what a stinker THAT episode was! And at the end, Picard just ignores the Prime Directive and wisks Weley out of the jurisdiction. There is NO justification for this episode, aside from the skimpy outfits.
Ah, yes. The episode known as “The Planet of the Blond Joggers.”
There was also a ST:TNG episode where a woman pretended to be some mythical figure who supposedly now owned the planet. There was perhaps the dumbest courtroom scene in science fiction. The trial was on an alien world, run by alien, and they were using American courtroom procedures :rolleyes:
Getting back to Jim Morrow, his This is the Way the World Ends has an extended courtroom sequence where the protagonist is tried for being responsible for the end of the world.
What was there in that trial that was specifically American procedure?? It seemed relatively nicely alien to me. They made a point of having Data say that he had to run the trial by Andalosian law… (or whoever… and it was Data who was serving as the judge – the woman nominated him since he could be impartial…) and every so often he pointed out an Andalosian precedent that worked against Picard’s case.
Of course, unless they started quoting specifically american precedents, just about anything can get explained away with ‘convergent legal evolution’
Oh, one thing I have to throw in about “the planet of the blond joggers” too.
Beaming Wesley up into the ship to save him from execution - no, no way can they do that, even though he isn’t a native of the planet.
But Jean-Luc can go down there and literally try to convince these people that their system of justice is fundamentally flawed?? It would seem to me that if you believe at all in the prime directive, that would be a hugely more serious violation of it than simply using superior technology to rescue the kid.
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