I have never regretted taking a job as judge at the Lower Slavery Court. Before that, I had worked for three years at the Administrative Court and I really didn't miss the sheer boredom there. Slave court wasn't exactly a surefire ramp to career and promotion, but pay as a full judge is anyway more than decent and I saw the move as quite justified by quality of life issues. Slave court was many things, but rarely boring.
After donning my robe in my office, I entered the courtroom this day. Only two noticeable differences set the courtroom of slave court apart from those of other branches: Firstly, there were two different witness stands, one for slaves and one for free people. Secondly, the audience was packed, as usual. Slave court provided an unusual amount of entertainment to spectators: There was nudity, lurid personal tales, immediate drama and intimate looks into peoples personal lives. Watching trials at slave court was therefore a popular diversion across society.
Case #1 "The old couple"
The first case was, by the standards of slave court, a doozy. It consisted out of a 74 year old man suing his 52 year old slave housekeeper for theft.
His opening testimony was a chore; he talked slowly, wandered off and repeated himself. The gist was, that he had been regularly missing small sums of money and he suspected his slave woman of pocketing them to pad her peculium - the personal money of a slave, by law untouchable for his owner, possibly to be used to buy her freedom.
Slaves where not subject to conventional criminal justice, but when a slave was convicted of an offense in my court, I could give his owner permission to place him for a certain amount of time in the "torture chamber". That wasn't necessarily an actual chamber - though there were commercial providers for just such a service - but signified basically a length of time in which the laws against excessive cruelty to slaves, enforced by my very court, were suspended.
I asked the pensioner about his intentions towards his slave. They had come into the courtroom rather like an elderly married couple and I had a hard time imagining him truly putting the screws to her.
"If I find your housekeeper guilty, are you seriously going to torture her?" I asked raising an eyebrow.
He stared blankly for a moment and responded "Weeell your honor... Maybe... a bit. I don't want to hurt her, I just want my money back. I just want to force her to tell me where she hid it. I already gave her less to eat and I beat her almost daily with my belt to force her to tell me, but she keeps insisting I just lost the money!"
I wasn't quite sure, but I thought I could see the slave woman surreptitiously rolling her eyes at this point in the testimony. The man had visibly difficulty even lifting his walking cane, a belt spanking from him probably constituted more of an embarrassment to be humored by the slave, than something to be seriously feared.
Then, I called her to the witness stand. The witness "stand" for slaves was a metal chair with a phallic shaped metal rod protruding from its seat. The slaves hands and feet could be fixed to the rests and legs of the chair, when the judge ordered it, which I almost always did. The legs were then somewhat spread and even a judge likes a nice view.
Though hardly in this particular case. The rather stocky elderly woman undressed on my instructions and put her clothes away. The bailiff greased the phallus with gloved hands and guided the slaves behind on it. Her anus received the rod while she was grimacing and the bailiff pushed her all the way down with some force. After fastening all 4 cuffs he took a large alligator clip with an attached cable an fixed it on the defendants clitoris.
The law required slaves to be interrogated under torture, but in cases where it hardly seemed necessary - like this one - a fair judge - like I - could reduce it to a merely symbolic level. Therefore I used the controls on my desk to lead 2 electric shocks on the minimal setting through her genitals and rectum which elicited only a short groan from her.
She proceeded to give her testimony as composed as a stark naked elderly lady - even one accustomed to slavery - possibly could in front of a packed, if at that point slightly bored, courtroom. It was as concise as it was decisive. Clearly, her owner was merely exhibiting the onset of dementia. Her peculium-account showed no money whose provenance could not innocently explained.
After ordering the slave released from her predicament and allowing her to dress again, I delivered the obvious verdict. I awarded the slave woman appropriate damages for her peculium from her owner for the unjustified punishments from her owner and the torture in court (while describing her "distress and suffering", both the acquitted and I managed not to grin). For her owner I decided to inform the Family Court to check the necessity of appointing him a conservator. His dementia seemed rather harmless now, but should he decline further I feared for the safety of himself and his slave. My hammer banged on the desk and the first case of the day was off the table.
Case #2: "The attractive nuisance"
The second case seemed in the beginning promising in regards to its entertainment value, but ultimately wasn't.
A 25 year old enslaved former photo model was suing her owner, the 34 year old son of a wealthy industrialist, a classic rich idiot without a day job.
As the plaintiff, her testimony was first. This time, putting her on the stand was quite a bit better received by the audience. When the tall blonde disrobed she discarded a bespoke costume and several items of jewelery, all in all probably quite a bit pricier then every car I ever owned combined. When she unclasped her bra, her massive D-cups could be admired by the crowd, including her nipples pierced with diamond studs.
By the time the bailiff had forced her perfect toned behind on the cold metal of the witness chair and the torture dildo up her back passage, several of the spectators were lewdly cheering while the teeth of the alligator clamp dug into her clit atop her smoothly shaped sex. Annoyed, I sternly called the crowd to order.
This time I delivered rather more electricity through the slaves nether parts in several shocks. She was a woman in the prime of her life and anyway, the party that was bringing suit. I saw my job as bringing justice to the powerless, but nevertheless, one had to discourage frivolous litigation. The short torture brought tears to her eyes and moans to her lips and her long blonde hair was disheveled by her thrashing her head to and fro. With tied hands, she couldn't move the hair out of her face so there it remained for the rest of her testimony.
The rest of the case, regrettably, was dreadfully boring.
After her modeling career had hit a snag, she had looked for unconventional ways to maintain her living standards in the medium to long term. So she had sold herself into slavery to the heir, then a unsuccessful suitor of hers, for a truly exorbitant sum. Her slavery contract stipulated that she could buy herself out of slavery after three years, for half her selling price. In addition to this, she was to be paid a monthly wage into her peculium during her time as a slave, a sum rather in excess of my own paygrade.
After acquiring her, her new owners sexual infatuation with her had however cooled quickly and on the whole he was by now very dissatisfied with her service. On the other hand, he considered whipping a grown woman to be "undignified", by his own admission (I more strongly suspected sheer laziness). Instead he took his frustrations out on her by docking her pay. Once, shortly before, he had become so fed up with her that he had bundled her up with a crate of viagra and lend her out for a month as a charitable donation for an upscale nursing home, while he was vacationing in Monaco. During this time, which had proved to be less of a punishment than he had envisioned (her dry comment: "There's only so much you can do with medication"), she hadn't been paid at all. She was therefore now suing her owner for the restoration of her lost wages and the right to be disciplined through corporal punishment in the future, since pay cuts undermined the very reason she had sold herself in the first place.
While the entitled slave was hardly sympathetic, case law was clear. Fining a contractually salaried slave was permissible, but not to extent that was done in this case. I awarded the woman most of the money she sought and sardonically recommended her owner to invest the rest into the purchase of a sturdy bullwhip. Afterwards he didn't even allow his slave to dress but rather drove her naked with shoves and kicks through the cheering crowd, all the while ranting about the insane amount of money he had stupidly paid for three years of lackluster blowjobs, unenthusiastic sex and shoddy domestic work. In spite of all this, the naked woman was smiling, at least for now.
Case #3: "The unsatisfied cop"
Thankfully, from then on cases got more interesting. Next up was a 19 year old slave suing his owner, a 31 year old police detective, for cruelty.
The slave, 1,88 m in height and with a bronze-brown and extremely well muscled body was brought in by his petite owner wearing only boxer shorts and sneakers, so that his ringed nipples were on display from the beginning. His black hair hung in curls to his shoulders. Dropping his shorts he revealed an uncircumcised manhood, more than a little above average size, which had been colored, including his low hanging balls, by some sort of permanent body paint in bright shining gold. Of his shaved pubic hair, a small patch remained, closely cropped and trimmed in the form of a perfect little heart right atop his penis and dyed bright red. I idly mused inside my head, that it would have been unfortunate, albeit hilarious, if the gaudy paint had caused some allergic reaction inside his owners pussy upon first contact.
