Trial Thread

On the issue of perjury:

Before even getting to any individual quotes for deciding perjury charges, the entire concept of perjury potentially conflicts with the Bill of Rights' guaranteed freedom of expression. First, we need to confirm that there TRULY is a conflict. What exactly does freedom of expression protect? It could mean various things. One could potentially consider protection of:

• Venue of speech: forcing people to allow speech to happen in a certain channel. This seems wildly unreasonable.

• Audience: forcing people to listen to speech. This also seems wildly unreasonable.

• Content: not allowing punishment for one type of content over another. This is by far the most reasonable of the possibilities.

The text of the constitution does not specify, but it does require something is protected at a minimum. I therefore interpret it in the minimal and least objectionable possible way I see available, which is that “You shall not be forced to allow anyone to speak in your channels of communication nor be forced to listen to anyone, BUT you also cannot attack or punish anyone for the content of their speech.”

What about lies? An exception cannot be made for lies, given the current wording. There's simply nothing there that allows for such a distinction. It just says “impart ideas.” It does not say “impart REASONABLE ideas” or “impart BENIGN ideas” (I'm not suggesting those are good edits, necessarily) or anything else that you could use to claim exceptions.

Thus, I am forced to find the perjury law unconstitutional, since it violates even the minimum reasonable interpretation of the Bill of Rights, and the Bill of Rights takes absolute precedence over the Criminal Code in any conflicts (see II.C.i). Figasaur is therefore innocent on all 8 counts, by merit of an invalid law. Whether he lied or not on any specific point is irrelevant one way or the other.

Disruption of Trial: These charges were dropped.

Violation of Right to Dignity: I find from the evidence presented that Figasaur absolutely and unambiguously did violate many people's dignity. However... once again, this conflicts potentially with the right to freedom of expression at the same time. How do we resolve this conflict? The Law Conflicts section (III.C.i) gives instructions for how to deal with any possible conflict:

• First, you check whether any law exists in a higher document than another (this is what was used in the earlier example above). In this case, both are in the BOR, so no.

• Next, you check whether one was written more recently. Both were ratified at the same time in this case, so no.

• Finally, the law conflict rules say that the law written further down in the text wins. In this case, freedom of expression is written below freedom to dignity. So freedom of expression wins.

Figasaur is therefore innocent of all charges of violation of dignity, because even though he violated plenty of dignity, all instances of doing so were in the form of protected expressions, which is a more highly prioritized protection than that of dignity, by the constitution's current rules.

Violation of freedom of religion: Regardless of whether Figasaur did this, it would fail yet again in conflict with freedom of expression, by the same rules as mentioned above (both religious protection and freedom of expression were ratified at the same time, in the same elevated document, and religious protections come earlier in the text than free expression does). So again, he is innocent whether or not he did it, by constitutional prioritization rules.

First Degree Griefing: Figasaur argues that the “give notice or it's grief” law conflicts with the base definition of property. And this is true. However, this time, the law conflict resolution rules work against Figasaur. Although the basic definition of property does say that property must not overlap an already owned area, that clause is in the same document and was ratified at the same time as the “give notice” clause. Therefore, since the “give notice” clause comes later in the text, it wins the conflict, and ownership for purposes of giving notice overrides the more general basic definition of ownership, when/if the two conflict.

Since both parties agree that Figasaur gave no notice, and since both parties agree he removed the obby anyway, and since the law conflict rules uphold the validity of griefing being owned until notice is given, Figasaur is guilty of first degree griefing.

Is this a ridiculous law? Yes. It is utterly preposterous. Does that give me the power to ignore it? No. All I have the power to do is choose the minimum sentence for these charges.

Minimum sentencing for 2 charges (as there are two verified obby bombers represented here) is 2 weeks total pearling. This shall be exile pearl only, not prison pearl (again, minimum option available due to the ridiculousness of the law in question).

Other misdeeds were, in my personal opinion, much more serious, but I would consider it deeply unethical of me to use this charge as a "back door" to punishing for other charges that resulted in innocent verdicts. Sentences should reflect exactly the charges that they match, in isolation of others.

Thank you.