Beside my chair on the cedar decking, fast asleep on a braided wool rug with his heavy golden head resting across my boots, was Barnaby—the faithful eighty-pound Belgian Malinois who had watched over our family through every turn of the wheel.
Under the comprehensive military court-martial decrees, high treason convictions, and civil asset forfeiture settlements finalized in the United States District Court in Washington and the Federal Circuit Court in Cincinnati:
– Former Chief Justice Arthur Sterling-Vance Senior was convicted on sixty-four counts of High Treason under Article Three of the United States Constitution, Conspiracy to Sabotage Strategic Defense Infrastructure under Title 42, and Premeditated Attempted Murder under Title 18. Sentenced to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, without the possibility of parole, his sixty-billion-dollar shadow consortium completely dismantled into the sovereign custody of the United States Treasury, he spends twenty-three hours a day in an eight-by-ten subterranean concrete cell, having discovered that forty years of aristocratic calculation ends in an un-marked grave.
– Claire Collins was convicted of Seditious Conspiracy under Article Three, Transnational Factoring Fraud, and Grand Larceny of Testamentary Trust Escrows, sentenced to thirty-five years at the Federal Medical Center in Carswell, Texas, her stolen jewelry, designer wardrobe, and private trust allocations liquidated to fund full university endowments for working-class orphans across Virginia and Ohio, spending her afternoons working forty hours a week in the prison laundry sorting coarse canvas sheets, having finally discovered that family honor cannot be stolen with an un-earned emerald cocktail dress.
– Martin Edward Collins and his sons Gregory and Bradley were convicted of Transnational Factoring Fraud, Commercial Bid-Rigging, and Grand Larceny of Corporate Escrows under Title 18. Sentenced to twenty years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, their Indian Hill estate, sports car collections, and private bank accounts auctioned on the courthouse steps in Cincinnati to provide eight point four million dollars in permanent restitution to regional trade apprentices and homeless youth shelters across Ohio, they spend thirty hours a week scrubbing municipal road maintenance culverts, having finally learned what genuine labor, physical discipline, and basic honesty entail.
