[Private] Indictment filed against rand.

St George has filed an indictment against Rand alleging he committed Fraud and Espionage. Details can be found here : https://forum.thenorthpacific.org/topic/6989211/9#post-10674171

First read through, while it could be argued that Rand Committed a crime. He was not under the jurisdiction of TNP at the time of the offense since he did not hold residency or have a nation in the region. On the Reconsideration of the Jurisdiction of the Criminal Code being the current ruling on the matter, i am not sure if there is a treaty in affect at the time that would give us jurisdiction.

I don’t see how you get around the jurisdiction ruling. It clearly does not contemplate jurisdiction over foreign nationals committing what we consider to be crimes. The treaty is binding on our residents, Rand wasn’t a resident, unless that can be shown to have been the case. Charging a new resident with a crime that took place before they were in our region is one of those common sense things where you implicitly understand it’s an invalid thing to do, but you can look around the law and not clearly see that you cannot do it.

Even if you want to stretch it somehow, he was not acting as a member of our government, but a foreign government. I wouldn’t say that dual citizens are precluded from our legal code applying to them by virtue of their committing some act as someone else, but that dual function is highly relevant to the case and also means that we have to deal with that dimension as well. Without the residency aspect all we have is the foreign actor aspect and claiming jurisdiction over another region’s official is stretching what we can do I feel.

Constitutionally, there’s a provision against ex-post facto laws. This isn’t such a thing, but at the very least it’s a cousin - a citizen is being charged for a past act that was not committed in this region as a citizen (and arguably not even in the jurisdiction of TNP, since this was a DM between the delegate and the president of Euro, not even our Discord server). And if we now say that that is possible, we’re rewriting our understanding of law for this person.

I hate to say this, but this is r4r territory. I don’t think a criminal case should be brought on this question with the uncertainty in the air. All the arguments I suspect MadJack and the rest of us are prepared to have are all about the feasibility of this indictment, not the merits of the accusation. That invites briefs and debate, a criminal case is not the place for that.

I think the indictment should be rejected citing the existing jurisdiction ruling. Whether someone tries to r4r that after the rejection is up to them.

The ruling cited also has a section on crimes committed on TNP soil and lists the region's Discord server as part of that. It does not however list DMs or interregional coordination discords. I think you're both right that we have to decline the indictment and cite that ruling.

I don't think we should explicitly invite R4R and I definitely don't think we should remind St George that he was a party to that ruling.

Eluvatar:

The ruling cited also has a section on crimes committed on TNP soil and lists the region's Discord server as part of that. It does not however list DMs or interregional coordination discords. I think you're both right that we have to decline the indictment and cite that ruling.

I don't think we should explicitly invite R4R and I definitely don't think we should remind St George that he was a party to that ruling.

Click to expand...

I am in agreement. Would you like to do the honors of rejecting the indictment?

EDIT: I have taken a quick look and it’s not entirely clear how accepting indictments works, but it looks like traditionally the chief justice responds, so I guess it would have to be me yeah?

EDIT EDIT: looks like someone took his Wheaties now. Oh well it’s not like it’s in stone who has to do it.

Done