Ink Pen by Phil Dunlap for July 01, 2015

Tyr – Patron God of the Cardassian legal system..

Friend of mine got out of a court-martial by muttering “I hope they fry the bastard” within earshot of a defense attorney, who tossed him with a peremptory challenge right after court resumed after a recess.

From the Star Trek Memory Alpha entry on Cardassians:A typical example of the Cardassian approach to life was found in their jurisprudence and criminal trials, in which the verdict was always determined beforehand – guilty – and the purpose of the proceedings was not justice in the Human sense but bringing the offender to recognize the power and benevolence of the State. A trial, therefore, was an opportunity for the State to reveal how someone’s guilt was proven by what they considered “the most efficient criminal investigation system in the quadrant”. Consequently, charges against the accused were announced at the commencement of the trial itself, the execution date was set in advance and only the offender’s spouse as well as the court-assigned nestor and counsel could attend the trial. When Benjamin Sisko once asked Gul Dukat why bother with a trial at all, Dukat responded that the people demanded it as they enjoyed watching “justice triumph over evil”. The notion that they might try an innocent man by mistake was foreign to them as they believed in and always operated under the assumption that “Cardassians don’t make mistakes”.