Eighty-two years old.
The Presiding Judge of the Second Circuit.
Admiral David Mercer’s older sister.
My late mother’s surviving aunt.
She stood five feet eleven inches tall in the howling winter gale, wearing a dark-navy wool judicial overcoat over an un-ironed civilian three-piece suit, her silver hair pulled back into an unyielding architectural bun, her gloved right hand resting over an antique, gold-headed walking cane carved in the likeness of an artillery surveyor’s transit.
Beside her stood Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Bennett, Chief Trial Counsel for the Military District of Washington, wearing his dress green uniform, holding an unsealed, four-hundred-page leather litigation brief bound with crimson silk ribbon:
THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
SPECIAL ADMIRALTY CHANCERY // DOCKET: 2026-CR-00914-TREASON
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA & THE MERCER-VANCE SOVEREIGN ESTATE
v. CHIEF JUSTICE ARTHUR M. STERLING-VANCE,
MARCUS STERLING, ET AL.
CHARGES: CAPITAL HIGH TREASON UNDER ARTICLE THREE, SECTION THREE,
PREMEDITATED ATTEMPTED FIRST-DEGREE MURDER BY CHEMICAL POISONING (18 U.S.C. § 1111),
PREMEDITATED ATTEMPTED VEHICULAR HOMICIDE OF A MINOR HEIR,
AND THE SEDITIOUS USURPATION OF SOVEREIGN ADMIRALTY ESCROWS.
EXTRAORDINARY CAPIAS BENCH WARRANT: IMMEDIATE ARMED ATTACHMENT.
