The charges against Blue Wolf II were for treason and sedition. On both counts he was found not guilty by this Court. The Legal Code defines treason and sedition as the following:
A- "Treason" is defined as taking arms or providing material support to a group or region for the purpose of undermining or overthrowing the lawful government of The North Pacific or any of its treatied allied groups and regions as governed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
A - "Sedition" is defined as an intentional attempt on the official forums or within the NationStates region "The North Pacific" to incite the Nations of The North Pacific to revolt in a manner not sanctioned by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
To prove treason, therefore, would require evidence that action was taken in game – such as troop movements, etc. Though the discussions seen in the evidence provided by the prosecution proved that Blue Wolf II
discussed carrying out what would potentially be treasonous activity there was no evidence that this activity itself ever occurred. Without any evidence or proof that “material” actions were taken in game, I did not feel there were any grounds for a conviction for treason.
The first charge was fairly easy to reach a conclusion on. The second was somewhat more problematic. The first evidence provided to the Court did not form part of the trial as Outer Kharkistania who provided the evidence and was to be a witness, destroyed the evidence and refused to take the stand. That incident was one that just highlights the difficulty of conducting a trial here. After all, it would not be possible for someone to do that in RL – without facing charges themselves. I’ll come on to that later. The evidence and testimony of Former English Colony was the most persuasive as it was of solid providence and from a former Delegate of TNP at that. The latter evidence in the case detailed similar activity by the defendant but some of it was of less certain origin.
However all the evidence provided sufficient detail of activity carried out by the defendant which can easily be described as “intentional attempts to incite revolt”. However the crux of the argument therefore falls on the definition of sedition which specifically refers to activity on “the official forums or within the NationStates region "The North Pacific”. The law is, in the case, quite specific. And none of the evidence provided proved that any potentially seditious activity took place in game or on this forum. Some of the evidence and testimony did allude to in-game activity but no evidence of this activity was provided to reasonable prove it. I wrestled for quite some time with this seeming technicality. Afterall, part of the job of the justices is to deliver interpretations of the law requested by judicial review. In this case the law is not ambiguous and to have found any other verdict would have been not a matter of interpretation of the law but of ignoring the law. It was for this reason that I reached the verdict of ‘not guilty’.
Recommendations
This trial was for me, if not all others involved, a learning experience. For a wide variety of reasons there were things that did not function well during the trial. As such I have a number of recommendations to make to the Regional Assembly so that future trials, if or when they occur, will hopefully avoid some of the problems that I faced this time around. These are merely my thoughts from the running of this trial which I believe the Regional Assembly may wish to consider.
Firstly, the existing Legal Code for crimes needs to be re-looked at. The definitions of the crimes, such as sedition should be re-written to take into account the wide variety of sources that are linked to – but not part of – the game. The crimes should be expanded – in particular to provide for contempt of court so that future witnesses cannot derail proceedings (or, at least, face consequences for doing so) as happened at the very beginning of this trial.
Though it was not relevant to this trial in the end, sentencing is something which will need to be addressed. The Constitution as it stands only allows for ejection as a punishment for breaking the law. Whilst that would be the sentence I would expect to hand down for treason and serious offences I think that for lesser crimes ejection is a bit extreme and that expulsion/suspension from the Regional Assembly should be considered as could prevention from running for office as might be relevant to certain crimes (election fraud, etc).
Lastly, a more robust and definite procedure for the running of trials should be instituted. I believe that Eluvatar had a proposal along these lines before the Regional Assembly a few months ago, I don’t know whether that proposal died in the Assembly or was just forgotten. Nevertheless I believe that we need to consider the structure of running a trial in a forum environment. The procedures in the old Court Guidelines are too lengthy and based too heavily on “real life” legal systems and as such are too unwieldy – in my opinion – for our forum.
As I say, these are just my thoughts, I am happy to discuss them further with the Regional Assembly although I feel that my current position as Chief Justice means that I should not be the one to create the legislation itself as I may be called upon to review the legislation in the future.
Haor Chall
Chief Justice of The North Pacific
