[Draft 2] - Repeal "Procedural Rights of Defendants"

[Simone]

The World Assembly (WA),

Noting its efforts to bring justice to the dark corners of the multiverse and acting as a shining beacon for hope and fairness;

Horrified that, in the opinion of the WA, the resolution, "Procedural Rights Of Defendants", establishes certain ill-defined rules but otherwise fails miserably to properly define nor enforce any of the concepts of "procedures", "rights" and "defendants", in that:

1. The definition of a "defendant" (sub-clause (1)(a)) includes suspects facing criminal proceedings, and fail to account for WA states where juridical or prosecutorial investigations are carried out on a preliminary basis, or if certain fact-finding missions are carried out without an assumption of criminality (such as tax audits), as well as affecting those WA states where prima facie evidence is required before anyone is charged with a criminal offence;
2. The definition of an "officer" (sub-clause (1)(b)) leaves a loophole for anyone who does not fall into that specific definition to carry out extra-judicial acts, such as prosecutors or juridical magistrates, and compounds this issue in sub-clause (2)(b)(iii) by permitting the use of "lie detectors or other mind-reading technology" by non-officers (as defined therein);
3. Sub-clauses 2(a)(i) reeks of giving an impression of implying guilt, in the absence of clarifications to the contrary;
4. Sub-clause 2(a)(ii) potentially places an unfair burden on the defendant (as defined in that resolution) to verify (or disclaim) certain factual matters if the answers are likely to be incomplete;
5. Sub-clause 2(b)(i) again fails to adequately protect defendants from having their refusal to answer a question be used as evidence, and compounds this error by its utter lack of a definition of what constitutes "reasonable interrogation tactics" by officers;
6. The procedures defined in clause (3) regarding warnings imposes certain warning procedures that are not necessarily widely used across all member states, and which may not necessarily be appropriate for all crimes;
7. The poorly defined meaning of "supplied" in "all evidence supplied by the defendant" in clause (4) of the target purports to disallows evidence supplied by a potential "defendant" (as defined in that resolution) prior to becoming charged from being used at all, even if the evidence was originally supplied for (say) an unrelated case or investigation, or as part of public knowledge;

Notes that the WA already has several resolutions governing due process of law such as GA580;

Calls upon WA member states to consider a proper and well-defined replacement of this resolution if it deems appropriate;

Hereby repeals the target resolution, "Procedural Rights Of Defendants".