[Proposal] Criminal Powers Amendment (September 2018)

[McChimp]

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Criminal Powers Amendment (September 2018)

Proposed By: McChimp

Preamble

This amendment of the Twelfth Mandate of Lazarus grants the delegate greater power to impose justice on those the Court of Lazarus has gathered damning evidence against.

Section 1. Amendment of Article II

(1) After subsection 7, insert:

(8) The Delegate may impose upon a person a punishment permitted by law, including revocation of citizenship, restriction of ability to vote and/or hold office, ejection and/or banishment from Lazarus and other measures, should the Court confirm by two-thirds vote that the person has committed a criminal offence. The person must have had reasonable opportunity to defend themselves against the charges during a Criminal Review. The Assembly may overturn or reduce such punishments by three-quarters vote.[/align]

Section 2. Amendment of Article V

(1) After subsection 6, insert:

(7) The Court may conduct Criminal Reviews in order to determine whether a person has committed a criminal offence. Procedure for such Criminal Reviews may be established by law.

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The criminal code proposal appears to have gained some momentum but as the constitution currently stands there is no suitable infrastructure for one to be enforced. Unless the constitution is amended, the delegate shall have to get confirmation from the CLS (an already immensely powerful institution) in order to carry out sentences. It seems a touch optimistic to presume that the executive, the Court and the CLS will all be in agreement so this allows the delegate to act on court findings independently of the CLS.

On first reading, it may seem like it makes the delegate judge, jury and executioner but in reality this is not so. If two justices are not convinced that a crime has been committed, they can refuse to confirm the report to the delegate. Even then, the delegate can only apply punishments within the bounds of the Criminal Code. This system does mean that the delegate does get to veto a verdict, maintaining the delegate's ability to ensure that common sense is applied as the mandate originally intended.

More detailed court procedures and rules could be detailed by law, allowing the nitty gritty to be more easily amended than a section of the constitution.

 

[Amerion]

It looks good. I've just made some minor edits to the formatting and slight changes to the wording.

Spoiler: Proposed changes

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Criminal Powers Amendment

Proposed By: McChimp
Preamble

This amendment of the Twelfth Mandate of Lazarus grants the delegate greater power to impose justice on those the Court of Lazarus has gathered damning evidence against.

Section 1. Amendment of Article II

(1) After subsection 7, insert:

(8) The Delegate may impose a punishment on a person in accordance with the law, including revocation of citizenship, ejection and/or banishment from Lazarus and other measures, should the Court confirm by two-thirds vote and present a report containing compelling evidence that the person, having had reasonable opportunity to present evidence themselves, has committed a criminal offence. The Assembly may overturn such decisions by three-quarters vote.

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[McChimp]

Proposed changes have been incorporated into the OP.

 

[Amerion]

You just taught me a better way to format insert quotations

 

[McChimp]

You just taught me a better way to format insert quotations

Tables include an implicit [align=centre][cell] outside of a table it splits your post in half and looks really cool.

 

[New Rogernomics]

You just taught me a better way to format insert quotations

Tables include an implicit [align=centre][cell]

Well the neat thing about myCodes is that you can do this:

Spoiler

So potentially we can create html codes for lots of things.

 

[McChimp]

Well the neat thing about myCodes is that you can do this:

Spoiler

That's a really cool way of doing that

 

[Cormac]

The amendment completely undermines the purpose of the provision being amended, which was to give the Delegate and the CLS flexibility so they could remove disruptive individuals without being constrained by poorly defined crimes and nonsense court rulings. This amendment would force our community to potentially go through the kind of crap TSP goes through, where people can disrupt the community, drive people away from the region or even the game, etc., and not see any consequences for long periods of time, if ever, because they didn't technically commit any crime. Why would we want that? Where's the benefit?

I'm 100% against this. We don't need a criminal code, and we don't need a criminal court. It will just lead to unchecked disruption of the community and turn us into another toxic waste dump like TSP and other so-called "democratic" regions.

 

[McChimp]

The amendment completely undermines the purpose of the provision being amended, which was to give the Delegate and the CLS flexibility so they could remove disruptive individuals without being constrained by poorly defined crimes and nonsense court rulings. This amendment would force our community to potentially go through the kind of crap TSP goes through, where people can disrupt the community, drive people away from the region or even the game, etc., and not see any consequences for long periods of time, if ever, because they didn't technically commit any crime. Why would we want that? Where's the benefit?

I'm 100% against this. We don't need a criminal code, and we don't need a criminal court. It will just lead to unchecked disruption of the community and turn us into another toxic waste dump like TSP and other so-called "democratic" regions.

This amendment does not alter or remove the section empowering the delegate to do the same things with the approval of the CLS.

 

[Cormac]

The amendment completely undermines the purpose of the provision being amended, which was to give the Delegate and the CLS flexibility so they could remove disruptive individuals without being constrained by poorly defined crimes and nonsense court rulings. This amendment would force our community to potentially go through the kind of crap TSP goes through, where people can disrupt the community, drive people away from the region or even the game, etc., and not see any consequences for long periods of time, if ever, because they didn't technically commit any crime. Why would we want that? Where's the benefit?

I'm 100% against this. We don't need a criminal code, and we don't need a criminal court. It will just lead to unchecked disruption of the community and turn us into another toxic waste dump like TSP and other so-called "democratic" regions.

I misread and didn't realize this doesn't amend Article II, Section 6 of Mandate 12, so my apologies for that. I don't understand the point of this amendment though -- why would the Delegate ever want to use this process instead of the simpler process in Section 6, and why would we ever want the Delegate to use this process when the simpler and less drama-filled process could be used? I don't understand why there is interest in a criminal code or criminal court at all.

 

[McChimp]

It is my opinion that the CLS ought to be confined as much as possible to matters regarding the mechanical security of the region. It's significance ought to be its ability to respond legally and rapidly to threats to the twelfth mandate.

On the other hand, there are less critical offences that it would be nice to see handled in a more democratic institution should the delegate decide on a case by case basis that that is an appropriate route to take.

 

[Sheepshape]

It is my opinion that the CLS ought to be confined as much as possible to matters regarding the mechanical security of the region. It's significance ought to be its ability to respond legally and rapidly to threats to the twelfth mandate.

On the other hand, there are less critical offences that it would be nice to see handled in a more democratic institution should the delegate decide on a case by case basis that that is an appropriate route to take.

Yes, I think I agree with this take. When the only use of the delegate's power to remove someone is defined as "regional security", you end up with an incentive to craft ridiculous justifications in order to meet that standard... or you ignore it and ban people just because you think they deserve it. I think someone can both not pose a threat to regional security and yet still deserve to be banned (or some lesser punishment).

And I think the court is generally the right body to make a determination of (il)legality - its whole purpose is to understand and interpret the law as best it can. Especially since justices serve life terms rather than being elected every few months, I think the court is probably better positioned to consider a matter impartially.

I would suggest rephrasing in the following way:

(8) The Delegate may impose a punishment on a person if the Court confirms by majority vote that that person has committed a criminal offense. Punishments should be proportionate to the crime that was committed, and may include, but are not limited to, revocation of citizenship, ejection and/or banishment from the region or forum of Lazarus, and restrictions on the person's ability to vote or hold office. The Assembly may overturn or reduce such punishments by three-quarters vote. The accused individual must be given a reasonable opportunity to defend themselves against the charges. Specific procedures for initiating a Court review will be defined by law.

I changed some of the wording around a bit for increased clarity, and added in a note about proportionality. I also gave the Assembly the power to reduce rather than simply overturn punishments; if the delegate imposes a ban of 12 months and the Assembly thinks 6 months is more appropriate, I don't want it to only be able to overturn the punishment in whole - that would probably prevent a number of people from voting in favor, since they wouldn't want to see the person not be punished at all.

I also took out the requirement that the Court present a report - I think what the court has to do is better determined by law, not by mandate, since it's more subject to change as we explore this approach. And I also clarified that regular law will address how one of these gets started, since we might want only the delegate to be able to initiate it, or we might want any citizen to be able to do so.

Also I think we will need to amend the section that deals with the Court itself, since right now that power of review is not granted to it. I suggest this:

(7) The Court may conduct Criminal Reviews to determine if an individual has broken any laws in Lazarus.

I do have some other changes in the pipeline for the court section; we're not quite ready to roll them out (want to get everything that needs done written first, and presented as a package). But I think this addition would suffice for now.

 

[Cormac]

I'm not fond of the idea of the Court conducting criminal reviews without a petitioner. That would allow the Court to investigate someone for criminal wrongdoing on a whim, which just increases the likelihood of corruption and abuse of power down the road.

 

[Sheepshape]

I'm not fond of the idea of the Court conducting criminal reviews without a petitioner. That would allow the Court to investigate someone for criminal wrongdoing on a whim, which just increases the likelihood of corruption and abuse of power down the road.

I agree, and I'm envisioning that being described in regular law rather than mandatical amendment.

One of the parts of my planned court amendment involves actually explicitly prohibiting the court from exercising any of its powers without someone first bringing a case to it, which I think will take care of that. The specifics of who can bring what kind of case can then be handled with a regular law.

 

[McChimp]

The proposed changes, additions and clarifications have been included. Hopefully I have managed to maintain the mandate's format, too.

If the court intends to legislate regarding who can levy which charges, I do not intend to impede them by contradicting them within the mandate. The mandate would now make clear that they can establish their criminal procedures through law.

 

[TempestShadow]

If I'm reading correctly, the given list of punishments is assumed to be non-exhaustive, and can be presumed to be listing general maximum punishments, yes?

 

[McChimp]

If I'm reading correctly, the given list of punishments is assumed to be non-exhaustive, and can be presumed to be listing general maximum punishments, yes?

The purpose of the given list of punishments is to confirm explicitly that such extreme lengths are available. It follows approximately the same format as the existing subsection Cormac thought I was changing. In reality, the harshness of punishments is specified by a criminal code like the one that's also on the table at the moment.

I cannot imagine any IC offence so great that those given would prove insufficient.

 

[TempestShadow]

If I'm reading correctly, the given list of punishments is assumed to be non-exhaustive, and can be presumed to be listing general maximum punishments, yes?

I wasn't suggesting that we have greater punishments, I just wanted to be sure that was the intention (what you basically said) of the stuff as written.

 

[McChimp]

Basically, yes.

 

[McChimp]

Alright, I think this has probably had long enough now and people don't seem to be discussing it much anymore.

I motion to vote.