The Constant Rabbit

In the news, the refusal of the rabbits to move out of Colony One was causing something of a headache for Smethwick and the Taskforce. A vixen had been appointed the new Senior Group Leader. She was named Jocaminca fforkes, with two small ‘f’s – as if having two ‘f’s wasn’t pretentious enough – and the papers had reported ‘tensions’ within the upper echelons of the Taskforce. Prolonged and heated discussions had taken place amongst the elders of Colony One, the Rehoming team, Smethwick himself, fforkes and the Grand Council of Coneys.

The failure to reach an agreement on the Rehoming was blamed on the rabbit’s intransigence, while rabbit spokespeople cited ‘a litany of broken promises’ in past human/rabbit negotiations, which Smethwick defended on the grounds that ‘we may have been lying then, but we’re totally telling the truth now’, and since that particular gambit had always worked on humans, then it was reasonable that rabbits should adopt it also. The impasse was all set to evolve into an escalation, as the fifteen hundred foxes and several thousand Compliance Taskforce personnel were currently billeted in and around Colony One. The enforced curfew, instigated the day before Mr Ffoxe died, was still very much in place: no one in, no one out.

‘Good news,’ said Lance as we sat together on the defence bench, the morning of my sentencing. ‘I found a boxed set of Judge John Deed in Oxfam and have watched the entire series twice and made copious notes. Let me tell you,’ he added in a confident manner, ‘there is nothing I don’t know about procedure within the British legal system.’

‘OK,’ I said, not sharing his confidence. ‘You do know that Judge John Deed is actually one of the least realistic British TV courtroom drama series?’

‘Is it?’ said Lance, genuinely surprised. ‘That might cause a few problems with your defence – but I’m sure we’ll muddle through. Now,’ he said, ‘which one is the judge?’

‘She’s not in yet. You’ll know it’s her because she’ll be wearing a wig and you’ll be asked to stand.’

I took a deep breath and looked about. The public gallery was full, but there were only two rabbits, neither of whom I recognised.

Once we had stood for the judge and were all then reseated, the usual legal preamble went backwards and forwards while Lance doodled a picture of a carrot on his legal pad. When asked to confirm the plea I had entered earlier, he suddenly stood up.

‘I would like to put forward a motion that all charges be withdrawn.’

The prosecution barrister also stood up.

‘The prosecution will vigorously oppose any downgrading of the charge to manslaughter,’ he said.

‘You didn’t hear me,’ said Lance, ‘we do not seek a reduction to manslaughter, but a dropping of all charges. My client will also change his plea to not guilty to intimate association, for which the court will have to furnish compelling evidence beyond the testimony of witnesses who are either dead or can be demonstrably proven to have anti-rabbit bias by belonging to TwoLegsGood, a membership list of which I will enter as defence exhibit A. Regarding my client’s confession, we will come to that later when I outline how, although not coerced by police, my client was nonetheless coerced.’

There was a stunned silence as Lance deBlackberry finished his short speech. The clerks looked at one another and shrugged, and the two prosecution barristers stared at Lance incredulously.

‘I have to say I’m intrigued but not convinced by this, Mr deBlackberry,’ said the judge, ‘but I will hear your arguments.’

Lance thanked the judge and continued.

‘The crime of murder can only be committed between two humans. Since we know that Mr Ffoxe was of dual taxonomic status and is to be considered a human for the purposes of this trial, it is this status I challenge. Since he was in that house to kill rabbits then it follows that on the evening of his death Mr Ffoxe should be defined as a fox – if he wasn’t, then he would legally not be allowed to murder a rabbit, any more than a human is allowed to kill an anthropomorphised rabbit. The law affords us that protection.’

He paused.

‘So if the victim was legally a fox, then my client’s act becomes simply a man shooting a fox, which he is legally permitted to do under the 1854 Destruction of Countryside Pests Act.’

The prosecution lawyer stood up again.

‘While we concede that legally Mr Ffoxe was required to be a fox to kill rabbits but a human to be a victim of murder, we contend that Mr Ffoxe was legally a human when killed as he had not yet done anything that would define him as a fox in the eyes of the law.’

But Lance was not yet done.

‘This is not a question about when my learned colleague decides – arbitrarily – that a fox is a human or a fox; this is a question of intent. If Mr Ffoxe entered the Rabbits’ house with the sole purpose of terrifying and killing the Rabbit family then he would be very much defined as a fox, and that being so – he cannot be murdered.’