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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 is to 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

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

5.1 The Monarch has the Right of Recall. If after a one week period has passed since a verdict was publicly announced the Monarch wishes for a retrial, he/she may summon a new Court to hear the case again. 

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

5.2 A defendant, if found guilty, may Appeal his/her case after 2 weeks have passed since a verdict was announced. To do so, a defendant must file a request to Monarch allow an appeal.

All Skrifa may vote AYE, NAY, or may choose to ABSTAIN from voting.[/list]

Nay.

I still see the word "innocent" being used interchangeably with NOT GUILTY, and the "questions" complaint was a minor one. My main issue with that section was that the person didn't even have to be online.

I also didn't remove enough ambiguity with time, either, as we still use days instead of hours.

In short, I would not be happy if this act passes.

I actually did notice that Chanku had never edited his original post with HannahB's/your changes.

If it were changed to that, would people be more comfortable with it?

No, because they didn't change enough.

Fair enough.  Perhaps this would be best discussed more in the platform until we reach a more satisfactory result all around.

On that note, I'll vote Nay for that reason.

I would vote aye if the edits I and Laurentus did were here... But I vote Nay, I believe this act shouldn't pass in this form...

What you said isn't too difficult to fix, Laurentus, simply replacing all the instances of days with the corresponding amount of hours, and changing section 5 to somthing like

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

During the proceedings, a Court Official who calls a witness must pose their questions at the time they summon that witness. As soon as a witness is summoned they must anounce their presense, if they fail to do so in twelve hours then the court shall continue without them until they are available. When a witness states their presnese they then have 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.

Thats far from good, but just as an example,

So, I'm curious, if those changes where made would it have changed anyone's vote?

This needs a lot more actual discussion. We could make a few changes, but I don't feel we've given this the attention it needed. An act of this magnitude is a bit riskier to fix on-the-fly during voting as we did with the one recently passed, as there is a lot that still needs to get fixed, and the changes being proposed are not minor.

The fact that we're even having this discussion should be proof enough.

Oh I don't doubt this should go back to a discussion, my intention wasn't to add these parts just now, sorry that it came off like that... I was more trying to jump start the discussion here, by suggesting fixes for the problems... should probably wait until there is another chance to actually have this discussion though, instead of having it here.

This might come off as mean, but I think we should stick this strictly to voting for now, and keep the discussion for if this passes/fails, since the time for discussion is long since over.  I realize I didn't exactly help with that since I stated something to Laurentus, but we don't want to get this to become too discussion heavy when it's supposed to be just voting.

*cough* Nay.

Nay as well. I was actually going to add the edits in, but I ran out of time.

Alright, that's a unanimous nay all around, this bill fails.