Hillcrest v. Velikovsky

Perhaps, if worst came to worst, their verdict might be set aside on technical grounds. But the closest thing to a precedent the Defence could unearth was Dexter v. HerpBGone, involving a mail-order scheme in which a mixture of sugar and baking soda had been marketed as a cure for herpes at $200/treatment. Although this ‘cure’ had (unsurprisingly) proven ineffective, HerpBGone’s council had cited Waber et al. 2008[1] — which clearly showed that a placebo’s efficacy increased with price — arguing that the treatment could have worked if Dexter had only paid more for it. As he had refused to do so (the same product was sold under a different name at $4,000), responsibility devolved to the plaintiff. The case had been dismissed.

It would have been a risky gambit. The parallels were far from exact. Instead, the Defence recalled Grace Balfour to the stand and asked whether she believed the Bible to be the revealed Word of God. Mrs Balfour readily conceded as much. It was her faith, she maintained, that allowed her to stay strong when that horrible man at the Creation display had mocked her with his talk of monkeymen and radioisotopes. She had seen fossils for what they truly were, the tests of faith described in Deuteronomy 13.

Asked then why her sister evidently did not share her strength of belief, Mrs Balfour allowed— somewhat reluctantly—that “that horrid little Russian” had shattered her sister’s faith with his “lies and deceit”.

But did not the Bible itself arm the faithful against such wickedness? Did not Matthew warn that “false prophets shall rise, and deceive many”? Could Second Peter have been any more explicit than “There shall be false teachers among you, who shall bring in damnable heresies”?

Well, yes, Mrs Balfour allowed. Certainly, Velikovsky was a False Prophet. Sadly, as the Defence reminded her, false prophecy was not a criminal offence.

Ultimately there was no need to resort to technical exemptions. The jury, having been presented with the facts of the case, was unanimous: Lacey Hillcrest had not shown the courage for their conviction. Whose fault was it, after all, that her faith had been so much smaller than a mustard seed?