A bill for RA review of court sentencing

I believe the Judiciary should remain autonomous without the need for concern over whether or not the current trends of the RA will approve of their rulings. If the RA has concerns about the conduct of a specific Justice they can recall them. If they have concerns about the level of punishments allowed by the law, they can change it. But, this just adds another, and unnecessary, layer of bureaucracy to an already cumbersome system.
 
Recall is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. the RA may be generally happy with a person as justice but feel, in one instance, that the penalty imposed was too harsh or too lenient. there ought to be a corrective.

it is not as if this will happen often. Sentences happen once in a blue moon. given the hoops the court already jumps through i do not think one more layer of bureaucracy will break things any more than they are already broken.
 
flemingovia:
Recall is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. the RA may be generally happy with a person as justice but feel, in one instance, that the penalty imposed was too harsh or too lenient. there ought to be a corrective.

it is not as if this will happen often. Sentences happen once in a blue moon. given the hoops the court already jumps through i do not think one more layer of bureaucracy will break things any more than they are already broken.
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There is an appeal process in place.
 
mmm. some of us feel that an appeal to a different body than the body that laid down the original sentence might be more robust.
 
flemingovia:
mmm. some of us feel that an appeal to a different body than the body that laid down the original sentence might be more robust.
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The appeal is to the whole Court, not just the presiding Justice. Regardless, there is an appeal process in place, which addresses the concerns raised herein. It is unnecessary to create a new process when a remedy already exists. Further, amendment to that existent procedure would surely make more sense than creating a new level of bureaucracy, correct? You seem to rail against the bureaucracy often enough, it seems like an obvious choice.
 
I don't think existing avenues for appeals are sufficient in the case of a sentence.

That is, we don't actually have any existing avenues for appeals.

Decisions by individual justices can be appealed to a full court, but verdicts and sentences are handed down by a 3-person panel, not by the moderating justice. They could - due to bias (for or against), or due to lack of familiarity with past sentences, or due to a misalignment of the severity of a crime - hand down a sentence which the region as a whole considers wildly disproportionate to the crime that was actually committed.

Sure, the RA could choose to recall the justices if they did that. Maybe. If they could get the votes, which is historically very rare and hard to do. But that wouldn't actually help the defendant or provide them with any relief from the unfair sentence. At best, they might be able to file a request for review of their sentence and allege that it violates their rights against excessive punishment, but even if that court were recalled it's a bit of a crapshoot to count on that.

Hell, we have an existing example of the court ignoring the recommendations of the prosecution and issuing a much harsher sentence than was recommended, or than the person actually deserved. And I say this as the person who brought the criminal complaint against them in the first place.

I believe this bill - and to be clear, I like COE's language much better, but I have some suggestions of my own that I will post - will provide a badly needed check on the Court's power to remove people from our community. It's not that I think any prior court has deliberately abused their power in any way, but I do think that, like the power to ban someone from the region, it is something we should want to keep a very close eye on and ensure that any use is in line with what the community more broadly deems appropriate.

To answer an earlier question: If the RA voted to adjust a sentence in either direction and the Court came back with one that was one day different from the original, I cannot see them being charged with grosse misconduct. Nor do I think it likely that they would be recalled. However, I can definitely see that reaction being brought up in the next judicial election, and it having an impact on whether people want to vote for them for another term. That's going to happen either way; many people do take into account past performance when choosing who to vote for. But adding this provision to the law will introduce a bit of dialogue into the question and prevent members of the court from being penalized simply for selecting a bad sentence without malice. I see that as a good thing all around.
 
I maintain that there is a judicial branch separate from the legislative branch for a reason. Popular concern regarding a sentence is absent the judicial concern and attention that a panel of justices undertakes when providing a verdict and a sentence. Because of confidentiality in deliberation, the public is not always aware of all the reasons or justifications that go into a sentence. Will this require that private deliberations be immediately available for review as well? If not, how can the RA be expected to make a sound determination? And if so, why not abolish the judiciary altogether? Because this will sufficiently corrupt the system so that no justice will carry out their duty based on their conscious but will always need to concern themselves with the value of public opinion and the concern that their private discussion will immediately (instead of one year removed) be under public scrutiny.
 
We could set the bar for RA review high - say 75%. that should mean that only the most egregious sentencing gets overturned.

Another thing - I personally would like the mandatory sentence for treason looked at, especially if the AG's office is going to clobber relatively minor affairs with that charge.
 
I like flemingovia's idea of 75% for review because it means that only the very overly harsh/lenient will be changed to help keep the sentences as fair for the crimes as possible.
 
I don't support this bill, I think it's a silly thought up solution to an imaginary problem that hasn't actually done anything.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I object to the motion to vote.
 
I agree with Raven. And I also object to the motion to vote.

Allowing the RA to demand sentences be made lighter or more severe is a terrible idea. The severity of a sentence will be determined by the defendant's popularity. That means lighter sentences for people with connections, harsher sentences to people who don't.

And to address COE's argument that "the community feels the pain of the crimes committed, so they should decide the sentence" is ridiculous. Remember the intense pain all of us felt when Flemingovia was denied his NPA application? Remember how we all wailed with torment when New Kenya tried to conspire with Ivan to coup our region? I swear I still cry every night over that one!

It is the Court, not the RA, that is abreast of the facts of the case, the severity of the crime, and thus the severity of punishment needed. I highly doubt that most RA members (even the ones voting) are even paying attention to TNP criminal cases.

And the argument "that there is no precedent" is ridiculous as well. How does allowing the RA to object to a sentence's severity establish precedent?
 
The severity of a sentence will be determined by the defendant's popularity. That means lighter sentences for people with connections, harsher sentences to people who don't.
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Do you honestly think that is not the case already?

Most of Plemboria's objections can easily be met by setting the benchmark for review of sentencing very high, so that only the most egregious miscarriages of justice are set right by the Regional Assembly. At the moment there is no effective recourse outside of the court that did things wrong in the first case.
 
I will note, the motion to vote is not accepted. Only the proposer (here, Kondratev) can move to vote on legislative proposals.

Objections to motions to vote are improper, objections can be made to a decision to schedule a vote, after the conclusion of formal debate, not to formal debate itself.
 
Surely the court has been elected to make these decisions, if the community can over turn decisions then you may as well just have sentencing by vote.
 
I really don't believe that RA review of court rulings would be a good thing. The court is not there to make popular decisions, it's there to make the ones that (in our case) they were elected to make. The recent ruling in the UK about brexit demonstrates, like many other cases, that even RL courts make deeply unpopular decisions sometimes.

But that doesn't mean that those rulings, or the sentences, should be swayed by public opinion. In a small community like this, people's popularity will always weigh in, but I don't think the response to that is to ingrain that bias into the system. In TNP, the response is to elect justices with a policy of respecting popular opinion, not to do something like this. I'm yet to be convinced by the arguments. I agree there's a problem with sentencing and the lack of precedent. But this isn't the solution.
 
Teesea:
Surely the court has been elected to make these decisions, if the community can over turn decisions then you may as well just have sentencing by vote.
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Honestly, if it were feasible, I would be in favor of this. Obviously the public should not be in the business of determining guilt or innocence, but I think we are best positioned to determine what the most suitable punishment would be. We don't need to be familiar with every bit of the trial and evidence to make a decision about the sentence. All we need to know is "This guy did this thing. This is the punishment."

EDIT: And seriously, are people forgetting that in much of the civilized RL world, we have trials by jury in criminal cases? What is with all the mistrust of the citizenry at large?
 
We used to attempt trial by jury here and it rarely worked for exactly many of the reasons pointed out above. Getting 'the citizenry' to collectively and actively investigate all the circumstances around a case beyond 'he/she/it seems cool/gross/assholish/whatever' in regards to legal precedent and law just isn't realistic.

This isn't RL - too many people try to make it RL which is one of the problems with the overly burdensome Court system, but I don't see this as a helpful solution to that at all.
 
GM, you will notice that this is not a proposal for trial by jury, nor is it an attempt to try cases before the entire RA, nor a plan to have sentences determined by popular vote. My point is that the people can be trusted with important judiciL things, as evinced by the RL prevalence of jury trials. So to scoff at something minor like a review of sentences because you don't trust that the outcome will be fair seems... strange.
 
Crushing Our Enemies:
GM, you will notice that this is not a proposal for trial by jury, nor is it an attempt to try cases before the entire RA, nor a plan to have sentences determined by popular vote. My point is that the people can be trusted with important judiciL things, as evinced by the RL prevalence of jury trials. So to scoff at something minor like a review of sentences because you don't trust that the outcome will be fair seems... strange.
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I'm not scoffing at the idea of review because it may not be fair, in my mind that is just a given.

I discredit the idea because I do not believe it necessary or useful and seems to be adding yet another later to an already cumbersome system. It also blurs the separation of powers that has traditionally existed between the Court and the RA. Justices are elected for a reason. Sentencing is carried out after private discussion for a reason. As I noted above and no one addressed, will the private conversations of the Justices need to be reviewed by the RA? If not, knowing that the Justices often have reviewed evidence and considered circumstances and other information that may not be readily available to the public, how can the RA, which seems to rubber stamp any proposal that crosses its collective desk recently, be expected to make an objective determination?

And if those discussions are to be public, why have a Court at all? Just have the Speaker act as presiding justice and have the trial within the RA.
 
Gracius Maximus:
It also blurs the separation of powers that has traditionally existed between the Court and the RA. Justices are elected for a reason.
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We already blur the line between the executive and the RA, so why not between the RA and the court? :w00t:
kidding. obviously.

Sentencing is carried out after private discussion for a reason. As I noted above and no one addressed, will the private conversations of the Justices need to be reviewed by the RA? If not, knowing that the Justices often have reviewed evidence and considered circumstances and other information that may not be readily available to the public, how can the RA, which seems to rubber stamp any proposal that crosses its collective desk recently, be expected to make an objective determination?
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I don't see any logical reason why judicial deliberations would need to be made public in order for the public to hold a referendum on their decision. I also think you're incorrect that the court reviews "evidence", "information", or "circumstances" that are not available to the public - except in what would have to be considered extremely odd circumstances, all evidence must be presented publicly, and argumentation must reference anything the attorneys want the court to consider. What exactly the justices are thinking might be opaque sometimes, but that's something that they can or should lay out in the sentencing itself, and it's also something they can explain to the RA if asked directly.

You (and others) are absolutely correct that not all citizens, and not even all citizens who vote, are going to be completely informed about the goings-on of a trial. However, many of them are, and those who are will be perfectly capable of bringing the salient points up in the RA during discussion/debate.

I would also hypothesize that more citizens keep themselves well-informed of trial details than they do for pieces of legislation - writing bills is (usually) boring, while every trial we have becomes an over-dramatized circus. And yet, this incomplete informedness does not worry us overmuch when it comes to passing laws. We basically trust in our citizens' competence enough to read a bill (or skim it) and make a reasonable decision, and we trust that our system is robust enough that a few outright clowns can't fuck it all up.
 
Is there an update on this? It seems safe to move for a vote on this at this time, but I don't see a motion from Kondratev.
 
I was going to return to this after the other RA vote and the elections settled, but then had a busy week and reduced activity. In a few days, expect a modified text that addresses many concerns stated here.
 
Why not create an appeals Court with a roster of Justices (made up of all former Justices, AGs, and Speakers for example) that are only called upon when an issue like this comes up (which will possibly be never)? The roster could work in a rotational fashion. This would at least keep the decision on the appeal limited to those that actually take the time to review and know the laws. Just a thought.
 
Eluvatar:
That's actually already practicable through a request for review.
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No, not really. I am suggesting a body that is composed of former members of the Court, the AG's Office, and the Speaker's chair, not the current roster of Justices.
 
As the proposer is no longer a citizen (and so can no longer move this proposal forward in accordance with the Rules), I shall lock this thread.

If another member wishes to carry this proposal on, they should create another thread to do so.
 
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