View Topic

Second the motion to extend debate. There's a lot that needs to be worked out before this goes away.

The motion to extend debate passes.  Discussion will end on Saturday at 11:40AM PST.

Title
1. This shall be titled the Judicial Offices Amendment Act

Amendments
2. Section 3.3 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows:

3.3 A Court can return a NOT GUILTY, a GUILTY or a RECOMMENDATION verdict.

• NOT GUILTY - The Court finds the defendant innocent of his/her charge or specific charges, if more than one is brought.
• GUILTY - The Court finds the defendant guilty of his/her charge or specific charges, if more than one is brought. The punishments for a GUILTY verdict are to be drawn from the Code of Criminal Laws.
  
  • RECOMMENDATION - The Court finds the defendant either innocent or guilty but recommends special provisions be made that fall outside of the remit of the Code of Criminal Law. It is up to the Monarch to decide whether to implement these recommendations. A case can therefore have an INNOCENT - RECOMMENDATION verdict and a GUILTY - RECOMMENDATION verdict.

3. Section 4.1 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows

4.1 When a Court is formed and a case brought before it, the case shall be named as follows:

• [CASE NUMBER][PLAINTIFF NAME]v[DEFENDANT NAME]-[CHIEF JUSTICE][DATE]

The public record kept by the court must then outline the name and charge of the defendant, the name of the Chief Justice, the name of the Plaintiff and the names of the Associate Judges. This record shall be updated to list witnesses called and by whom.

4. Section 4.2 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows:

4.2 Only the Court Officials (Chief Justice and the Associate Judges), the defendant and any witness called may speak within the court and be kept on the record. Uninvolved citizens may observe the proceedings but cannot comment within the court.

5. Section 4.3 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows:

4.3 During the proceedings, a Court Official who calls a witness must pose their questions at the time they summon that witness. A witness then has twenty-four hours to provide their responses to the questions put to them. At any time, a Court Official may pose a question(s) for the defendant so long as no other questions for the defendant are unanswered and so long as no witness has questions left to answer.

6. Section 4.4 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows:

4.4 Once the Court feels it has enough evidence to reach a verdict, the Chief Justice must publicly announce that the Officials are withdrawing to debate their verdict. From this point on, no-one is allowed to comment within the court until the Chief Justice announces a verdict.

7. Section 4.5 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows:

4.5 If the Chief Justice and his Associate Judges feel more than 3 witnesses are required per day, they may vote to raise the limit for the duration of a specific court case.

8. Section 5.1 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows:

5.1 The Monarch has the Right of Recall. After seven days have passed since a verdict was publicly announced, the Monarch can call for a re-trial, and they may summon a new Court to hear the case anew.[/b] 

9. Section 5.2 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows:

5.2 A defendant, if found guilty, may Appeal their case after 14 days have passed since a verdict was announced. To do so, a defendant must file a request with the Monarch to allow an appeal.

This basically fixes a few things that caused the JoA to be illegal, and changes the wording on a few things. I initially introduced this into the citizen's platform[/list]

Edit 1: Changed "One Moment" to "twenty-four hours."

Edit 2: Removed a numbering error that shouldn't be in there.

1. The second point concerning section 3.3 irks me when it comes to the RECOMMENDATION verdict. It states that a verdict can either be "innocent or guilty," with a recommendation which the monarch can then choose to enact. What bothers me is the word "innocent." The only choices given as verdicts were NOT GUILTY, GUILTY and RECOMMENDATION. Innocent is not a synonym for not guilty. There is a huge difference, and synonyms should be avoided at all costs in law anyway.

We thus either have to add in INNOCENT as a possible verdict, or remove any mention of innocent when what's actually being referred to is the NOT GUILTY verdict.

2. With regards to the 5th point, concerning section 4.3, I have serious reservations about the wording in that section. By using the word "questions" (I've bolded the word in the quote) it implies that the person who summoned someone can initially pose a long list of questions, which in itself could be considered a problem, but for the sake of productivity, and because this is not a true court, but one for resolving situations for a NS region, I guess I can let that slide. My main problem comes in because there is no clause which states that the witness called must be online and acknowledge that they've been informed to appear before the court, and yet still the witness has only 24 hours to respond to the questions. What if 50 questions were posed, and the person only came online an hour before the deadline? Hell, what if the person came on a few minutes after the deadline? Will we lose the possibility of gaining that valuable information because the person happened not to be online in time? That is rather irksome.

3. I've completely rewritten section 5.1, as referenced by point 8, because there were some things that were too vague (like the "one week period") and the structure of the sentence left much to be desired.

4. I've added or removed a number of things, as well as altered some things by writing them in green. I think this act requires quite a bit more clean-up than I've already done, but my tired brain probably didn't even catch all the problems.

This has been marked for extended debate, so we really should use that time.

The period for discussion has long since passed.  Would anyone like to make a motion?

Since no one apparently wanted to fix this, is there any reason not to table this now?

I'm curious as well, if someone feels like they wanted to add to this discussion, they're still welcome to make a motion to extend debate.  Otherwise it sounds as if a motion to table might end up happening with the lack of progress made on this bill.

What's the point of tabling this now?  We were waiting on the end of the trial to work on this.  Motion to extend debate for 5 days (120 hours).

A motion to extend debate has been made.  Do we have a second?

So the trial has come and gone, but this remains here apparently forgotten, with a motion to extend the non-existent debate hanging over it... sorry about that, I am as much to blame as anyone else, and likely more so...

Anyway: while some of what's here has possibly been covered by the Judicial Reform Amendment, and much of this has been set as precedent in the resolution and handling of the case, but I think it would still be useful to have a law outlining some of the points here... so I am wondering is there anything more to be said on this. There probably is, I have a few points to make myself, but I don't know if there would be any use, As this is kind of in limbo right now...?

Well...technically it's just waiting on a second for a motion to extend debate. 

Well I guess I'll second the motion , and see what people (including me this time) can come up with.

The motion to extend debate passes, then.  You have until the 15th at 6:40PM Pacific Time before another motion must be made.

I gave my own thoughts and questions, and then no one was interested in commenting on it, so I'm over this bill.

You guys have two hours left to discuss this.  However, since the time hasn't been properly utilized, I'll ask anyways, and obviously you're free to still discuss if you wish to do so since you still have time left:

Does anyone care to make a motion?

Sorry I have been busy so this is a pretty rushed:

Title
1. This shall be titled the Judicial Offices Amendment Act

Amendments
2. Section 3.3 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows:

3.3 A Court can return a NOT GUILTY, a GUILTY or a RECOMMENDATION verdict.

• NOT GUILTY - The Court finds the defendant not guilty of the specific charge(s) that have been levelled against them.
• GUILTY - The Court finds the defendant guilty of the specific charge(s) levelled against them. The punishments for a GUILTY verdict are to be drawn from the Code of Criminal Laws.

• RECOMMENDATION - The Court finds the defendant either NOT-GUILTY or GUILTY but recommends special provisions be made that fall outside of the remit of the Code of Criminal Law. It is up to the Monarch to decide whether to implement these recommendations. A case can therefore have a NOT-GUILTY- RECOMMENDATION verdict or a GUILTY - RECOMMENDATION verdict.

3. Section 4.1 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows

4.1 When a Court is formed and a case brought before it, the case shall be named as follows:

• [CASE NUMBER][PLAINTIFF NAME]v[DEFENDANT NAME]-[CHIEF JUSTICE][STARTING DATE]

The public record kept by the court must outline the name and charge of the defendant, the name of the Chief Justice, the name of the Plaintiff and the names of the Associate Judges. This record shall be updated to list witnesses called and by whom.

4. Section 4.2 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows:

4.2 Only the Court Officials (Chief Justice and the Associate Judges), the defendant and any witness called may speak within the court and be kept on the record. Uninvolved citizens may observe the proceedings but cannot comment within the court.

5. Section 4.3 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows:

4.3 During the proceedings, a Court Official who calls a witness must pose the question(s) they wish to ask as soon as they summon that witness. A witness then has twenty-four hours to provide their response(s) to the questions put to them. At any time, a Court Official may pose a question(s) for the defendant so long as no other questions for the defendant are unanswered and so long as no witness has questions left to answer.

6. Section 4.4 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows:

4.4 Once the Court feels it has received enough evidence to reach a verdict, the Chief Justice must publicly announce that the Officials are withdrawing to debate their verdict. From this point on, no-one is allowed to comment within the court until the Chief Justice announces a verdict.

7. Section 4.5 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows:

4.5 If the Chief Justice and his/her Associate Judges feel more than 3 witnesses are required per day, they may vote to raise the limit for the duration of that specific court case.

8. Section 5.1 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows:

5.1 The Monarch has the Right of Recall. After seven days have passed since a verdict was publicly announced, the Monarch can call for a re-trial, and they may summon a new Court to hear the case anew. 

9. Section 5.2 of the Judicial Offices Act shall be amended to read as follows:

5.2 A defendant, if found "GUILTY" or "GUILTY-RECOMMENDATION", may Appeal their case after 14 days have passed since a verdict was announced. To do so, a defendant must file a request with the Monarch to allow an appeal.

Original act written by Chanku, with edits from discussions here, particularly Laurentus' statements.

So I have made a few changes here and there, I had trouble dealing with Laurentus' second point about the "questions", I can see it could potentially be an issue, but without adding a large amount of descriptions it would be difficult to fix properly, though I believe the odds of it happening are low... Also the idea a Judge would use this to trip up a witness doesn't appeal to me in general, so I think if this becomes an issue, it will be a small part of the problem....

Sorry that I haven't marked my edits, as I say I did sort of power through this, there are quite a few but most of them are minor, such as wording and grammatical changes...
I can see it is rather likely I have made mistakes or missed things here, so if you spot anything then it would be good if you could mention it.

And with that, as time is running out, I guess I motion to vote...