Kill All the Judges

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There was no dispute about the facts. A hundred-pound weakling with the redundant name of Gilbert F. Gilbert had stepped into a crowded Vancouver courtroom and aimed a small-calibre revolver at Chief Justice Wilbur Kroop. A police officer leaped from the witness stand, and as he tackled Gilbert the gun fired. The officer stopped the bullet with his heart.

All these facts were admitted by the defence at Gilbert Gilbert’s murder trial in January 2007. It was conceded, too, that the accused-forty-five, single, friendless-was a senior court clerk. Thus he had easy access to the courtroom from Kroop’s chambers, where he’d been hiding.

They called Kroop the Badger, not just because of his squat, broad body but because of his claws. The defence portrayed him as a notorious bully who had taunted and shamed Gilbert, who made a fool of him in open court and sent him off in tears, who drove him to the precipice of madness and made him jump.

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