Your honour,
The defendant has recently informed me that they do not wish to plead guilty.
Thank you for that information, counsel. It seems to me that I cannot therefore accept a guilty plea, as the right to trial is for the Defendant to decide to waive.
Your honour,
First, I would like to note that the defendant has not been responding to my messages on the subject of the trial, and as such I will be acting in accordance with the law and will proceed with the case through trial on behalf of the defendant.
Secondly, with all due respect, the Defence objects to all evidence presented by the Prosecution. None of the evidence names the defendant, exhibit C is hearsay and cannot be proven to come from Ihese, and no criminal activity is shown in exhibit D. Furthermore,
@Pigeonstan does not speak for the NS or TNP moderation teams.
Your honour,
Apologies for the second post in a row, however I would like to note that exhibits A and B would require a witness to confirm their validity, as the nation of "Dictatorship 9" and "Tasihese" have not been sufficiently demonstrated to be relevant to the case. As well, C and D do not appear to contain statements from the client, and serve no evidence value beyond tainting the court.
Your honour,
For the objections presented by the defence on the Exhibits A, B and D, the evidence does name the defendant through one of their alter-egos, Tasihese, one of the defendant' nations as they themselves prove with the mention of the ban on such nation within Exhibit D.
On the objection on Exhibit C, I will concede such argument and will retire it from the evidence list.
And the criminal activity shown in Exhibit D would be Fraud, as it will be explained within the Argumentation stage of the trial.
Your honour,
I object to the statement by the Prosecution. The Prosecution has already made their submission, and is now trying to fix their mistakes after the fact. Furthermore, even if Tasihese can be linked to the Defendant, "Dictatorship 9" has not been demonstrated to be relevant.
Your honour,
The submission period is still open, and thus I can still make amends to the submission. The reason of choice of the Dictatorship 9's message quoting Tasihese is because of the current inability of the original quoted comment to be found, and the existence of such shall be backed with the provided authentication witness testimony of REG.
This is my judgment on the evidential motions.
It appears to me that the defence raises a number of issues in relation to different exhibits. All of the exhibits are objected to, it seems, on grounds of irrelevance. Exhibit C is said to be hearsay and so prejudicial as to require exclusion; these objections are conceded by the prosecution. Exhibits A and B are both said to require authentication before being admissible. Exhibit D is said to be prejudicial.
Given it is not in contention, I will deal with exhibit C first, then the other exhibits in order.
Exhibit C
I wholly agree with defence counsel that the exhibit is hearsay and that its inclusion as hearsay would have been unfairly prejudicial. While there are exceptions to the exclusion of hearsay, it seems to me that the prosecution was right to concede this issue. Exhibit C is not admissible and may not be considered by the Court.
Exhibit A
In relation to relevance, while I see the force in the defence’s argument that the exhibit relates to the conduct of the nation “Tasihese” and not in itself to the Defendant Ihese, I do not think that enough to render it irrelevant. The prosecution case is that the Defendant and the nation in question are one and the same. While exhibit A on its own does not prove that, it seems to me that it can go to doing so by showing similarity to the Defendant’s conduct and that, if the prosecution does prove that the Defendant and Tasihese are the same, the relevance of exhibit A is self-evident. Ultimately, if the evidence proves not to relate to the Defendant, it’s inclusion will not be of detriment.
As to authentication, it seems to me that authentication is required, though not for the reasons put forward. The need for authentication is not governed by the relevance of the evidence but by its nature. The Rules require some documentary evidence to be authenticated, due to its nature being a reproduction of original content, not in its original form or place:
“Content which does not appear in its original form and location, such as off-site chat logs, screenshots, transcripts, or quotes, must be authenticated through witness testimony regardless of how public it is when it is presented as evidence.”
Other documentary evidence, being posts and threads that the Moderating Justice can view in their original form and location, does not require authentication:
“Forum posts and threads may be accepted without authentication, as long as the Moderating Justice is provided with a direct link to the posts and threads entered into evidence and is able to view them in their original locations. The Moderating Justice must confirm that the evidence submitted does not contain any content that does not appear in the original location before accepting it without authentication.”
It seems to me that Regional Message Board posts readily fall into the latter category. However, the post comprising exhibit A appears to me to include a quote from something apparently said in another. I do not think that the words in that quote can be said to be in their “original location”, which appears to me to be another post.
For that reason, I consider that exhibit A cannot be entered into evidence without either authentication of the truth of that part of the exhibit or a motion to waive the requirement for authentication.
Exhibit B
For the same reasons I gave in relation to exhibit A, I do not think exhibit B falls to be excluded as irrelevant. The identities of the nations in question have been explored elsewhere in evidence and it does not appear to me that simply because this post does not prove either identity on its own, it is irrelevant.
However, again for the reasons given in relation to exhibit A, I think that exhibit B does require authentication as the post it is comprised of includes a quote of words that do not appear to be in their original location. Alternatively, as with exhibit A, a motion to waive authentication would be required.
Exhibit D
Exhibit D seems to me to be entirely relevant to the case. It contains the alleged false statement said to comprise the fraud in the indictment.
I am not persuaded that exhibit D is unfairly prejudicial. There does not appear to me to be anything so remarkable as to taint the Court. Moreover, it seems to me that such prejudice as there may be has to be balanced against the value of the evidence in proving or disproving what is alleged. In that respect, exhibit D has very significant value as it contains the alleged falsehood whereas any prejudice it causes seems slight.
Exhibit E
In my judgment exhibit E is relevant evidence. It can go to prove a course of conduct by the Defendant regarding Pigeonstan. It also seems to me that it can go to proving the prosecution’s contention regarding the identity of Tasihese, in showing a similarity in conduct, language used, and syntax.
I note, in relation to authentication, that exhibit E was authenticated by the witness Eluvatar in his deposition.
Decisions
For the reasons I have given:
- Exhibit A is not admissible at this time, due to lack of authentication or waiver thereof;
- Exhibit B is not admissible at this time, due to lack of authentication or waiver thereof;
- Exhibit C is excluded;
- Exhibit D is admitted into evidence as it does not require authentication;
- Exhibit E is admitted into evidence, having been authenticated.
The evidential motions were made during the set period for evidence. While they have been decided some time after the period originally set, it seems to me that that is not due to any default by the parties. As I have indicated, I consider it is appropriate to allow a period for parties to take any further steps in relation to evidence as are needed in light of my judgment. Subject to further motions from the parties on the timetable, I will extend the period for evidence to two days from now at (time=1601546400).
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