First Impact Statement
Your honor, I’m not here as someone who believes that crime should be legal and goodness punished. In my heart, I’m glad that the defendant was apprehended before he could carry out his plan. I’m grateful at the outcome of his trial. But I’m also here as someone who believes that failure is not an option. And it is the defendant’s failure to commit his crime, more than the failed crime itself, that has affected me.
I am a small business owner. I submit for the record tire workout coupons and discounted memberships for my gym. I am a husband and father. I submit for the record our last Christmas card where we are sat before our fireplace in matching graphic sweaters and me in a Santa hat. I am an exemplar of communal values. I submit for the record by comment history on Nextdoor. Clearly I have no need for the defendant’s “professional” assistance or his social companionship.
Not that it is all puppies and rainbows. I’m plagued, on occasion, by inadequacy. I’m haunted, every so often, by unmet potential. I know there are paths uncleared, horizons unscaled, and terrains unmapped. I would never just abandon my obligations to go on some adventure. But along comes this stranger to nudge me into one.
When I first heard about his plan to douse our water supply in psychedelics, my thought was “Who is this person to judge me? By what right does he have to say my life is unfulfilled?” I’d hoped I’d be able to leave it at that. But as the trial proceeded the thoughts not only remained but they changed shape. I was left to wonder just what sort of person would emerge from a sip of tainted water and what adventures lay before me thereafter. I felt like I was being offered something new, not judged for what I lacked. Now that the trial is over and the conclusion is being reached, these thoughts refuse to leave.
I am not here to claim victimhood, but to have it known that a change has taken place. The defendant’s lack of followthrough has cast a shadow over my life, over the people I provide for, and over my rhetoric on Nextdoor. In my mind there is this other version of me that the defendant saw more clearly than I could and thought that it should be made even clearer. But he lacked resources and hustle. He is a bad example to our young; and he does not take closure seriously. I hope that will be considered as you pass sentence on this man. Thank you.
Second Impact Statement
Your honor, I’m speak before the court not on my own behalf, but on the behalf of a collective. The crimes of which the defendant is convicted have inflicted deep emotional wounds upon many people, whose signatures append this statement, bonded by a particular interest: water positivity—better known to some as hydration enthusiasm or, less preferably, as “hydrophilia.” Their lives have been impacted by the defendant in the following ways.
None of us can speak with any certainty to the defendant’s prejudices against water itself; but his malicious indifference towards the water-positive community’s ability to hydrate safely is all too evident. In seeking to do what he did, though he was not as successful as he’d hoped, this maniac never stopped to consider how this would harm the joys of thirst-replenishment. Worse still, the defendant considered the water supply of our town in need of improvement, and took outrageous and audacious steps to bring it up—or down, rather—to his bizarre, demonic standards.
There is a saying, I don’t know from what origin, that the water-positive rally around: we are water. We are water in the literal sense, yes; but we are also water in the spiritual sense. Water dilutes adhesives, but to us it is our spiritual glue. The town reservoir is a sacred space. We frequent it often to celebrate its majesty and the wealth it contains. I’ve never seen the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London but I imagine it is the same kind of thing. We only regret that we were not there on the day this malignant villain appeared to corrupt that wealth.
Because we are water, we aim to live as the best kind of water: transparently. This is very much unlike the defendant whose idea of water is clouded with substances unfit to mingle with the drink of life, like raw sewage or White Claw. We were always assured of the man’s guilt; and we debated passionately as to the fairest punishment. On behalf of the water positive community and our cosponsor Liquid Death™—“Murder your thirst! (not literally, of course)—it is our hope that your sentence will take into consideration our hurt and anguish.
Had the defendant been successful in his crimes, the effects would have been far worse than they were. We would have, at least in a transcendental sort of way, been ensnared in a perpetual and torturous thirst. It is only just that the defendant be trapped in his own state of thirst for as long the state thinks appropriate. He should be denied water’s joy and its vivifying power. If there is true justice in the world he will reach a point where he will be on his knees in enforced solitude asking the darkness around him “Where is water? What is water?” To which the darkness will respond, “This is water, dickhead.” I thank you and apologize.
Judge’s Sentence
Since becoming a judge, I’ve made it a habit of recording my thoughts in commonplace books—or, failing that, the Journal app on my phone. The purpose at first was to maintain a keen mind amid the more tedious aspects of managing a court. Though my ultimate hope was that I might elaborate my most valuable observations for a treatise on the wonders and good sense of our legal system for the enlightenment of America’s youth. Each case I’ve presided over has provided its own insights. This case in particular has had enough for many additional books and more cellular data than I thought possible to use. Yet as the case progressed, both my keenness and my hope proved more and more dubious.
Turning over my entries, they seem less like the sober musings of a judge and more like the gothic reveries of a poet. That this occurred to me only after closing arguments was disturbing in its own way, and bore two conclusions. First is that dream logic guides and has always guided the judicial process and may even form the basis of our laws. Second, this trial itself may be hexed, as if by some kind of druidical toxic event.
Weighing them both, I find the second conclusion less alarming and more plausible. Enough, indeed, to factor it into my decision. It is worth considering, for instance, how many more dreamers exist now in our prisons. Dreamers that the defendant had a hand in imprisoning. Dreamers who are awaiting reunion with him for some undetermined yet unsettling purpose. Had I still been bewitched by the Stonehenge ambience of this case, my judgment would decree that reunion immediately. Being as tenuously free of it in this moment, however, I find no merit in so judging. So I must come to a decision that leaves all parties here satisfied.
On the indictments of attempted malicious mischief and reckless civil disobedience, I hereby sentence the defendant to the custody of the District Attorney to be confined for an indefinite period to his spacious and luxurious pool house. At least until such time as the penal system can arrange for better accommodations that can withstand Celtic occult influences. It is so ordered.
As I understand it, the defendant’s counsel has left nothing further to add since going on wellness leave, so I give the floor for the defendant to speak on his own behalf.
Defendant’s Statement
Your honor, the sentiments of the impact statements I’ve heard seem valid enough; just as the record of my actions and their consequences seem accurate enough. I am sorry to everyone who directly or indirectly felt the brunt of those consequences. I am sorry to those whose lives I’ve made worse in spite and because of my efforts to make bad situations more bearable to the best of my understanding.
Being now a convict, I reserve the convict’s privilege in not disclosing the subjective dimensions of my choices. Not out of a desire to cherish them privately and unto death as is often the case, but out of an expressive incapacity. I find no words adequate enough to describe to you, to the public, or to myself how clearly those choices materialized in my conscience and how correct they were as I turned those choices into actions.
I remain true to my principles on whichever side of the law I find myself. I respect the jury’s wisdom and defer to the court’s judgment.
I would say that if I had any advice to give, it’s that it is helpful to detect, or to know someone who knows how to detect, the difference between lysergic acid diethylamide and Kool-Aid mix.