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"I wasn't levying charges against him for impersonating the Ezra born of this instance, Judge." She flipped a page in her notebook. "The cases of others from the first instance do not include the existence of a pre-existing consciousness still present and trying to persist. Amending this charge to include that the Burning Man must have known it could be done and must have known it could be done without harm does not account for the fact that he should have been searching for a way to rectify it." She looked up.

"By including those stipulations, you are placing the Burning Man's life above that of Ezra Fitzpatrick, when they should be on equal footing. The case remains that upon inhabiting Ezra's body, the Burning Man needed to pursue a solution so that he wasn't using this man's life when the man in question could still use it. The prosecution wishes to put forth that the Burning Man did not actively pursue a separation and would therefore be guilty of the charges." If Leila and company could have done it through sheer will alone, the Burning Man, with all his experience, should have done it long ago.

Her eyes narrowed. Fine, she thought. It was clear that this seemed weighted in the Burning Man's favor. There was no way to prove the two stipulations about the Burning Man knowing he could separate and without harm to himself. He'd just ******** lie in his own favor and it didn't matter anyway. Whether he knew if it was possible or not, the onus was always on him to even try.

"Very well, judge," was all she said. Temperance already hated how everything had changed. She just wanted to go back to nursing work in her clinic - to actually finish setting up her clinic. Under the old rules for the nobles, that would have counted as nobles' work. This... she wasn't a lawyer, she was a nurse. Temperance flipped her notebook closed. To Chief Mercer first, then. And definitely to Leila and Eve. She swallowed a sigh.