Santa is Cross-Examined

We thought to start the New Year on a lighter note.

It was the week before Christmas.   The scene was a courtroom at the Headquarters of the First Naval District, in Boston.  I was a young Navy JAG officer defending a petty officer on the serious charge of sabotaging his ship by pouring five gallons of battery acid into its motor – an act that disabled the ship for over a year.  My client and his co-defendants had been heard to express the wish that the ship not sail on its next mission.  Misplaced containers of battery acid had been found in inappropriate places in the crew’s quarters. Things were looking bleak.   Also, there was the confession. 

A preliminary hearing under Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice was underway.  The hearing officer was a thoughtful graduate of Harvard Law School who was observed to take notes on the back of an envelope containing his application for admission to the Harvard Club.  He worked out of the same office as the prosecutor and I did, so could be counted on to allow a certain informality in the proceedings.  He was the very officer who, after I had posted a sign outside my office bearing the word “Delphi” – to indicate I was a source of helpful counsel – had added his own warning underneath: “Beware of noxious fumes and ambiguous advice.”

In the courtroom, we were hearing from a long distressing parade of crew members, all of whom seemed to bear a grudge against the officers, the ship, and its mission.  The testimony was that the U.S.S. Aeolus, a cable-laying ship with an unpleasant reputation, had been scheduled to depart for the frigid task of laying submarine-detection cable on the ocean floor in the North Atlantic in the winter, and no one wanted to go.  The evidence was piling up, as witness after witness testified to the defendants’ motive, opportunity, and self-incriminating statements.

During a recess, I noticed that the Naval Station Santa Claus was in the nearby corridor, dispensing the nautical version of Holiday Cheer.  On a moment’s inspiration, I obtained the hearing officer’s permission to call a witness out of order, and then brought a puzzled Santa into the courtroom. 

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but anything to break up the flow of damaging evidence could only help.  Although it would violate every rule of trial strategy to call a witness whose testimony I did not know, desperate measures were called for.  Because his testimony was completely unrehearsed, I was afraid I would likely have to ask leading questions, but the thought of asking to have Santa Claus declared a hostile witness was too much.  So I just had to hope that the Jolly Old Elf would be as nimble on the stand as he was on his sleigh.  So I plunged in:

Q: Please state your name.
A: Santa Claus.  [So far, so good]

1. Q. Where do you live?
2. A. The North Pole.  [Santa was playing along nicely; now came the tricky part]

Q. Is it your regular practice to make records of who’s been naughty and who’s been nice?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you make a list?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you check it?
A. Yes.
Q. How many times?
A. Twice.
Q. And do you make these records contemporaneously with the events they reflect?
A. Of course.
Q. And do you make these records in the ordinary course of your business?
A. Yes.
Q. So tell the Court, please, is the defendant on your list?
A. He sure is.
Q. Will you please tell the Court whether the defendant has been a naughty or nice?
A. Oh, he’s been very good.
Q. No further questions.

[To the prosecutor: You may cross-examine Santa.]
The prosecutor, having had no training in examining fictional characters, did not inquire.  The hearing officer put his Harvard Club envelope over his mouth and tried not to laugh.

I’m not sure how much Santa’s testimony affected the outcome of the case, though like chicken soup it probably didn’t hurt.  The hearing officer allowed the charges to go forward, but after a series of further pretrial maneuvers, they were reduced to “attempted damaging of an article of equipment of a value of $ 50 or less,” to which my client gratefully pleaded guilty. 

 My client served a short sentence, and was discharged from the Navy.  So was I, a few years later, though under more honorable conditions.  The Aeolus was eventually repaired, and resumed its dreary mission.  Fifteen years later, it reached the end of whatever useful service it had provided, and was intentionally sunk off the coast of North Carolina to create an artificial reef.  All of us involved in the case were pleased to know that it broke up while being sunk. 

​Many years later, I learned that a predecessor ship of the same name, had been in service as a passenger transport before World War I, and it had brought my great-grandparents from Europe to this country, thus setting in motion a chain of events that led to my appearance in court that December day 65 years later.

Ron Meister