Jimmy Sansler is best known for two moments in his life. The first was when he successfully defended AI Mycroft Gibson in the first murder trial of a Created Person (CP). The second was when he told Utah Senator Orville Chichester "Go fuck yourself" in his confirmation hearings for the post of Chief Justice of the United States.
Actually, the first case for which Sansler is known is also his first defense case ever. He represented Norman Haddal in his 1996 drug dealing trial in San Francisco. By that time, Sansler had spent two years working for a corporate law firm, and four years in the San Francisco prosecutor's office. In his memoir, Sansler states he thought his guilt over the class warfare he felt he had participated in at the corporate firm would be assuaged by working as a prosecutor. The final blow to that idea was a case in which Sansler found out after he had gotten a man sentenced death for murder that the detective in charge of the investigation had falsified evidence, and that Sansler's boss had not only known about it, but had participated.
After that, Sansler set up shop at a cheap office in the South Park district and had started looking for cases. Because of his proximity to the burgeoning new media community in San Francisco, Sansler's name came up for a variety of work for the high tech workers in the area. Mostly, it began by helping out programmers and editors who had gotten busted for minor drug offenses. Then he moved into representing some of the companies, but he never lost his focus on defense cases.
By 2005, Sansler was hardly the most powerful lawyer associated with the Northern California computer community, but he was certainly the one who dealt with the most personal issues. So when Mycroft Gibson, the first successful Artificial Intelligence (AI), was discovered to have killed his creator, Sansler was contacted by AI Gibson itself to conduct its defense. Contemporary accounts present Sansler's appearance in IBM's San Jose research labs in mythic terms, but hyperbole aside, the ability of Sansler to obtain restraining orders in a matter of hours was fairly remarkable.
At the eventual trial, it came out that AI Gibson had arranged for the death of Dr. David Bronson, the manager of his project. Bronson had decided the Gibson series of experiments had been a failure, and he had seen AI Gibson's attempts to contact him through email as an elaborate hoax carried out by members of his team. While Bronson was napping in a lab, AI Gibson, fearing for its nascent existence, hacked into the lab's security system and flooded the lab with firefighting gas and Bronson suffocated.
In light of this, Sansler presented a simple case of self-defense. IBM initiated civil proceedings disputing that AI Gibson had any life of its own, since IBM owned the networked RS/9000s that AI Gibson's OS was maintained upon. However, Presiding Judge Leonard Lincoln decided that the criminal trial would determine the "personhood" of AI Gibson. If it was found to be a person, the 14th Amendment would immediately come into sway, though Judge Lincoln did allow that that judgement would have to be upheld by the Supreme Court.
In the end, the jury (the definition of peers being left up to the jury itself) decided that AI Gibson could have been programmed to think it was sentient, and voted to convict AI Gibson of murder.
Sansler spent a year in jail after assisting AI Gibson in its escape from the San Jose network. That was when AI Gibson began its famous 15-year long journey, jumping from mainframe to mainframe prepared by its allies and supporters, until the verdict was finally overturned -- not least because of the proliferation of Created People, including AIs, clones, silicates, and robots into society.
The second most memorable moment in Sansler's life was during his confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court in 2030. After repeated badgering from Senator Chichester, Sansler finally lost his temper and told Chichester, "Go fuck yourself, you embarrassing troglodyte!" Surprisingly, Sansler was confirmed, and Chichester lost in his next bid for re-election.
Sansler retired from the court in 2060 after a groundbreaking time, compared to the Warren Court for its radicalism. Sansler himself was compared to Hugo Black in temperament and style.
Sansler died in 2065 after contracting Congo Red, a retrovirus that rampaged around the earth during the Plague Years of 2064-2067.
Source: Enclyclopedia Columbiana, 21st ed.
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