The 37th Amendment: A Novel

The 37th Amendment: A Novel

©
Copyright 2002, 2011 by Susan Shelley
All Rights Reserved.

Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Permission is granted for the reproduction and transmission of brief excerpts in the context of a review or commentary.

ExtremeInk Books
Calabasas, California

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In loving memory of my parents,
Dave and Estelle Shelley,
who always lived in the future.

P
REFACE

W
hat exactly is “due process of law?”

I started looking for the answer to that question in 1996, when I first decided to write a novel about a fictional constitutional amendment that stripped the guarantee of “due process of law” out of the U.S. Constitution in the name of public safety. The idea was to set the story in the future, forty years after the ratification of the amendment, to see how it all turned out.

The premise fell apart as soon as I began the research.

At one time, “due process of law” meant the ordinary procedures of the law, the opposite of arbitrary power. Later, it came to mean fundamental fairness in procedures and also in substance.

At that point, it meant anything a judge wanted it to mean.

For example, in 1954 it meant racial segregation of schools was unconstitutional (
Brown v. Board of Education, Bolling v. Sharpe
), and in 1967 it meant state laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional (
Loving v. Virginia
).

The premise of the novel, that Americans would support the repeal of “due process of law” in the name of getting tough on crime, was impossible. Repealing “due process of law” would roll back a tidal wave of progress on civil rights. In case after case, the Supreme Court relied on the due process clauses of the Constitution to fill a gaping hole in the Fourteenth Amendment, which was carefully written in 1866 to protect racial segregation, not outlaw it.

The U.S. Constitution has never been amended to ban racial discrimination, or gender discrimination.

As I tried to construct the fictional events that would lead the country to amend the Constitution to remove “due process of law,” this was really in my way.

The premise of the novel could only work if the Constitution was first amended to ban racial and gender discrimination.

So that’s what I did. The story you’re about to read takes place in the year 2056, forty years after the Constitution was amended to remove the guarantee of due process of law, and forty-eight years after it was amended to ban racial and gender discrimination.

The 37th Amendment
was completed and published in 2002. The first edition included an essay on “How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing,” which has now been expanded, updated, and published as a separate title. For readers who would like to know more about the Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court decisions that changed everything,
How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing
includes extensive source notes and a bibliography, and it’s available in the Kindle Store at Amazon.com.

Los Angeles
August, 2011

“The due process clauses ought to go.”

Felix Frankfurter, 1924

C
HAPTER
1

Los Angeles, California. Monday, February 21, 2056

T
he blood on the windshield was the least of it, although from this angle, against the tall office buildings reflected in the tinted glass, the dark red droplets appeared enormous, covering some of the windows entirely and dripping in gruesome rivulets down the walls.

Detective Calvin Whitfield’s eyes darted over the reflections in the windshield and he turned around to see the buildings for himself. Two stacks of brightly lit windows stared back at him. Someone working late might have seen it happen, he thought, then realized that the size of the buildings made them appear deceptively close. In fact, they were separated from the parking lot by two long blocks of single-story shops and overpriced restaurants. No help there.

Detective Whitfield stepped away from the car and away from the thick puddle on the ground next to it. He scribbled on the screen of his notebook, too hard, and the stylus snapped in his hand. Swearing, he took another stylus from the pocket of his jacket and scribbled again. His wireless rang.

“Whitfield,” he said absently into the microphone clipped to his collar.

“Heads up, Cal, the mayor’s on her way over there.”

“What?” Whitfield’s attention was jarred away from his notebook. “Why? What does she want?”

“I don’t know, but traffic control has been told to accommodate the media.”

Whitfield winced. “Any report yet on Szafara?”

“Still in surgery.”

“Did you reach his wife?”

“She’s at the hospital.”

“Thanks. Let me know when you hear something.”

Whitfield reached down to his belt and pressed a key on the wireless to disconnect the call. His skin felt like bugs were crawling under it and he badly wanted a cigarette. A great time he picked to quit, he thought, two days before this lands on his desk, probably the worst violent crime Los Angeles had seen in five years. He unwrapped a stick of gum and shoved it into his mouth.

Sixty feet away, a young woman was crumpled over a concrete parking block, her clothes soaked in blood, her body as twisted and broken as if she had fallen from a thirty-story building. Her handbag, lying on the ground beside her, held a wallet with
$
851 and a driver’s license that identified her as twenty-six-year-old Maria Sanders of Van Nuys. DNA tests would be needed to confirm that. Her face was smashed to a red jelly.

Officer Karla McMahon, a beefy woman with crisply cut blonde hair, walked up to Whitfield and handed him a disk. “We’ve taken statements from three witnesses,” she said. “One woman says she saw a man, possibly in his thirties, Caucasian, medium height, dark curly hair, walking across the parking lot with a steel pipe in his hand. She said she assumed he was part of some construction crew.”

“Did anybody see what happened to Officer Szafara?”

“No. He was flagged down on the street by a woman who heard screaming. We took her statement. She didn’t see anything. A man who was across the street says he heard shots. Of course, he didn’t see anything either through this thing.” She waved her hand disgustedly at the decorative barricade constructed along the perimeter of the parking lot. From the inside it looked like eight-foot-tall sheets of plain painted plywood, but on the street side it was a
trompe l’oeil
scene of sidewalk cafes and leafy shade trees. The city offered generous tax breaks to parking lot operators who participated in the Beautify Los Angeles effort.

McMahon looked down at her shoes, planted well into the puddle that had collected under Officer Szafara before the helicopter arrived. A slight shudder went through her. “Two bullets fired from Szafara’s service weapon,” she said, taking two steps to her left and scraping her shoes uselessly on the gravel surface. “The suspect may have been wearing body armor, because he managed to hit Szafara in the head with the same steel pipe he used on the victim. It appears he dropped the pipe where we found it and took off.”

“Not on foot,” Whitfield said. “He would have been covered in blood. He must have had a car, maybe someone driving it for him.”

“He might have stolen a car,” McMahon said. “I counted eight cars in this lot when I got here and not one of them was locked.”

Whitfield looked at his watch. It was 10:15. “It’s been three hours,” he said. “Who uses this lot after 7:00 p.m.?”

“The gym is open.” McMahon pointed over the barricade at a two-story glass storefront across the street. “The shops on this block all close at six,” she continued. “The two restaurants on this side have valet parking, but people can use this lot and walk if they want to. There’s a coffee shop on that side that’s open but most of their business is at lunchtime.”

“Three hours,” Whitfield said. “Any of those people would have been back for their car before now unless they...” His words were pierced by the sound of sirens coming up the street. “That’s the mayor,” he said.

 “The mayor?” Officer McMahon looked skeptical.

A chunky, redheaded woman suddenly ran up to them, waving an ID in a leather case. “Excuse me,” she said, breathing hard, “The mayor is on her way. Can you tell me who’s in charge here?”

“I am,” Detective Whitfield said, without giving his name. “May I help you?”

“I’m Ronni Richards,” the woman said, her eyes flitting over the scene. “Chief of Staff to Mayor Martinez. She’ll be making an announcement about a reward.”

“I see,” Whitfield said.

“Why are the cameras all the way across the street?” the woman asked.

“We’re not letting any media on the scene until we’re finished.”

“I see,” the woman said. “Well, we don’t need very much space. Are you finished with this area over here?” She pointed to an unoccupied corner at the back of the parking lot.