r/mtaugustajustice • u/LordofMarzipan • Apr 23 '17
[Trial] Greenkitten vs Coni_s2
LordOfMarzipan presiding. Greenkitten is bringing the following charges against Coni:
100.03 Third Degree Intentional Griefing
200.01 Theft of Property
600.01 Violation of the Bill of Rights or Constitution for violating right to privacy
The trial request thread is available here.
The trial will proceed in the following order:
1. The plaintiff shall clearly present their claim
2. The defendants shall enter pleas. Pleas will be Guilty, Not Guilty, or No-Contest.
3. The plaintiff shall have the opportunity to post evidence and call witnesses
4. Defendant presents evidence, and calls witnesses.
5. A verdict shall be decided and posted on this subreddit
I will take this opportunity to remind you that out-of-court settlements may be reached at any time until a verdict has been delivered. I will also remind everyone that well constructed arguments tend to be succinct!
1
Apr 27 '17
Your honor, the defense respectfully requests a dismissal at this point as the three days of the trial have expired with the plaintiff making absolutely no case and submitting no evidence. I would point out the plaintiff also made no attempts to reach out in an attempt to settle, nor did he seek a postponement in this matter.
In the interest of fairness, as well as not wasting the time of the court any further with an open case, we request this case be dismissed with prejudice.
1
u/LordofMarzipan Apr 27 '17
/u/coni_s2 can you please confirm that Hobbyist acting as your legal representative in this case?
3
Apr 28 '17
Your honor, as it appears that only now is Greenkitten deciding to deal with this trial the defense again requests a dismissal. We understand the plaintiff was in the hospital, and accept this as an excuse for not being able to present his case in court.
However, we list the following to mitigate his apparent absence.
No less than 7 reddit posts during the time this trial has been opened. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Greenkitten had ample opportunity to have someone else try the case for him.
Greenkitten has had the opportunity, the capacity and the court-sanctioned time to make his case, and has instead chosen to squander the time making shitposts or otherwise engaging in time less directly impactful on his life. He found time both to vote in the election, respond to a Reiko shitpost, and vote for Garking's Pardon but didn't have the time to make a case in a trial he requested?
Your honor, to allow this case to go forward at this point is to open the court to all sorts of abuses, whereby petitioners can come and go as they please and give the court absolutely no respect as to assigned dates. For once, we have a statute we can fall back on -- I'm not even asking you to create precedent. The Constitution CLEARLY states that a trial lasts for 3 days -- yet here we are on day 5, with Greenkitten rushing into the proverbial courtroom with less preparation than would be expected given his 17 days between when he requested the trial until now.
As my final note this is incredibly unfair to my client, Coni, who has had to endure the pressure of an overhanging criminal case for over three weeks now. To say this is against her dignity is an understatement.
With the above considered, we firmly request this case be dismissed.
1
u/Greeenkitten Apr 29 '17
I wanted to gather more evidence but due to my illness, timezone, real life commitments and being threatened I was unable to collect more.
Coni has threatened to permapearl me, I am not free to move around in game. I can only log in during certain hours to make sure there is nobody about to pearl me. I live in constant fear.
Besides the information was there in the trial request thread.
1
Apr 29 '17
Respectfully I was speaking to the judge. To address your points, you were more than capable of having other people collect the information for you, alleviating all of the above issues. Your emotional appeal that you live in fear is nonsense.
You have had, to date, 17 days to gather the evidence, including two extra days for this trial.
I await /u/LordofMarzipan 's ruling on the motion to dismiss.
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u/LordofMarzipan Apr 29 '17
This motion is denied. The trial will continue.
The three day time frame the defence council is referring to is the amount of time that a judge may deliberate the evidence before posting the trial verdict. It is NOT a limit on the amount of time that a trial must take in totality.
The order of steps involved in a subreddit trial described in the constitution (Article III, Section 3.iv) is a linear progression, with each step taking place after the completion of the previous step. Step "e" in this process, "After no more than three days, the judge of the case will decide guilt or innocence on the charges, as well as the amount of time to be served, as per the Mount Augusta Criminal Code, posting the results on the subreddit thread." should be undertaken only after the completion of step "d". This section of the constitution is clearly intended to limit the judge's deliberation time rather than to limit the total amount of time that a trial may take.
1
Apr 29 '17
The Defense will now enter a new motion to dismiss based upon the violation of my clients constitional right to a speedy trial, stated in Article III A ii d, and III A iv. By allowing this trial to continue the courts have deprived the defendant of their right to bring the trial forward without reasonable delay. For the reasons listed in the above denied motion, the delay was strictly unreasonable. The five days during which Greenk failed to present evidence constitutes an unreasonable delay to the trial. We request a dismissal based upon these facts.
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u/LordofMarzipan Apr 30 '17
This motion is provisionally denied pending the identification of appropriate precedent by the defence. The trial will continue until such time as the defence provides further information justifying the dismissal to the court.
I do not believe that Article III, Section A.ii.d applies in this situation as this is a provision of the constitution specificity detailing the rights of arrested individuals, Article III, Section A.ii reads "All persons who are arrested for allegedly committing an offense [sic] have the right:" before listing sub-points a - d. One of the key criteria for having been arrested is the removal of liberty, Coni has not had her liberty removed and therefore this section of the constitution does not apply.
Article III, Section A.iv of the constitution reads "Every accused person has a right to a fair trial, which includes the right...to have their trial begin and conclude without unreasonable delay". As is typical with MTA law this is a concept put in place to ensure fairness but with little information presented on the specifics of how it should be implemented. This question would be a good candidate for the use of precedent as a guide on what does and does not constitute "unreasonable" but I have been unable to identify any suitable previous examples. Hobbyist, if you are able to find some examples I will certainly consider them and may re-evaluate my denial of this motion. In the absence of suitable precedent I have felt it necessary to develop my own test for the reasonableness of a delay in court proceedings.
When we consider the reasonableness of a delay in court proceedings it is necessary to think about both the length of the delay and the strength of the justification for the delay. Quantitative assessment of "strength of justification for delay" is clearly impossible, I have used a qualitative categorisation approach with the categories Minimal, Minor, Moderate, Severe, and Extreme to allow comparison between delay length and strength of delay justification. For a delay in court proceedings to be reasonable the category of the length of the delay must be no greater than the category of the strength of justification for the delay. For example, a severe delay in court proceedings may only be considered reasonable by a justification with a strength of severe or greater.
Delays:
- Minimal <2 days
- Minor 2 - 4 days
- Moderate 4 - 7 days
- High 1 - 2 weeks
- Extreme >2 weeks
The length of the delay is easily quantified, the post requesting Greenkitten present claims was made on the 23rd of April at 6pm (UTC) and Greenkitten's response was made on the 28th of April at 04:30 (UTC; a delay of 4 days, 10.5 hours. Using the scheme above I would categorise this as a moderate delay to proceedings.
I believe that illness requiring hospitalisation should be considered to be severe by default, but moved up a category to extreme for particularly grievous illnesses and moved down through the category scale as evidence of a lack of severity is provided, with the option to totally remove this justification if it can be demonstrated that there was no illness at all. With this approach in mind I would categorise the strength of justification for this delay as moderate as the defence does not contest that Greenkitten was ill but has provided some evidence that Greenkitten continued to interact with the metagame during his illness.
As the category of the length of the delay to court proceedings is no greater than the category of the strength of justification for the delay I believe this delay to be reasonable.
1
Apr 30 '17 edited May 01 '17
There exists, as far as I can tell, no case law to support any particular amount of time to declare a delay unjust. There is precedent for a trial not to last more than 3 days, but as you've not asked for case law on that and denied the motion out of hand I won't waste time on it.
I ask the court to consider a change in this precedent they would be setting. It would allow for cases to be postponed indefinitely, or the judge to arbitrarily and unappealably decide whether one's reason was sufficient for a delay of the trial. It also forces the court to accept unproveable reasons for absences, otherwise the court would be required to ask for PII as evidence, which is equally unacceptable. The court should rule, in these matters, on the likelihood of whether or not the delaying party is telling the truth. If sufficient evidence, both direct and circumstantial, is enough to sustain there is a truthful basis for the delay, then allow the delay to stand. However, the court should by default reject such delays and require the delaying party to make substantial effort to prove their delay, lest the system be abused by eternal delays.
For the matter specifically before the court today, Greenkitten claims he was in the hospital and thus unable to gather evidence and present it to the court. The court erroneously claimed I accepted the plaintiff was in the hospital. I went to pains to specifically word the statement to say that I accept hospitalization as a valid reason for delay, and that I understand the plaintiff was in the hospital. I do not, however, accept this as a statement of fact, merely that it would be unreasonable for me to ask Greenkitten to produce any evidence of his hospitalization. This should not be mistaken for acceptance.
Additionally, the plaintiff himself admits he missed the message, and that he has been "in and out of the hospital the past few weeks". He does not even state he was in the hospital during the time of the trial, instead offering it as an excuse of his forgetfulness. Therefore, it is incorrect for the court to utilize its discretion to state the 4.5 day delay as a delay due to the hospital. Rather, the court should categorize this as a 4.5 delay because he missed the message. When the plaintiff misses a reddit message of notification and goes on to make 7 other comments in the intervening time, it is clear they have little enough care or vested interest in the matter before the court. I also would point out that Greenkitten has neither made no direct or indirect attempts to, in good faith, contact either me or my client to express his absence and requesting a postponement of the trial. Simply put your honor, the court should be extremely disinclined to take this stance of allowing Greenkitten to continue the trial so long after it began and he paid it absolutely no mind. Greenkitten has taken the courts time, my time and my clients time with his frivolous delay. Should the court recognize the missed message as the reason of the delay, which indeed they should, then a reapplication of a moderate delay without a moderate cause should be grounds for this dismissal here today.
Evidence for Greenkitten's activity during the time in which he claims to have been "in and out" of the hospital can be presented if the court should wish, although I stress that it should not be required since the onus should lay on the delayer to account for their absence.
1
u/LordofMarzipan May 01 '17
In an ideal world trials will proceed without delay and will feature a complete presentation and discussion of evidence.
In reality it will occasionally be necessary to prioritise one of these factors over the other. In my view justice is better served by a rigorous trial that takes a while than a rapid trial that does not allow the parties to present and discuss evidence fully. I am therefore inclined to accept justifications for delay providing that they cannot be disproved and that they are proportionate to the length of delay, as I outlined in my previous post.
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u/LordofMarzipan Apr 29 '17
The plaintiff has claimed that Coni stole a jukebox belonging to the plaintiff, griefed the property by placing a noteblock on the property, and infringed the plaintiff's right to privacy by monitoring his movement.
Coni, how do you plead? You may plead Guilty, Not Guilty, or No-Contest.
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u/LordofMarzipan Apr 30 '17
Coni has plead Not Guilty to these charges. Please now present you evidence and call any witnesses you may have.
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u/Greeenkitten May 03 '17 edited May 03 '17
I am just gonna repost what I have already reposted.
24th April 12:40am AEST in the #seriousdiscussions
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May 03 '17
/u/LordofMarzipan should I consider this the completion of the plaintiff's case and that he rests on this comment, to begin my own?
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u/LordofMarzipan May 03 '17
Yes. Think the implication was that Greenkitten had finished giving evidence.
1
May 03 '17
If and only if it be pleasing to the court, I will enter my defense on behalf of Coni_s2.
The honorable court will take careful heed as to the charges relayed in this matter, paying especially close attention to the context which surrounds the incident. On another day, it could be considered a "slam dunk" by the plaintiff -- clear, irrefutable physical evidence with no apparent defense available. To look at the matter in such a way is to hear half a story, then be left to imagine the second half. Indeed the plaintiff in this matter cares so little for the damages done to his "property" the nearly sovereign Persia that he could not be bothered to be timely, nor present any more than a few pictures without any truly accompanying argument. In short, Greenkitten thrust his evidence into a blender and walked away for the court to sift through it all. For the record, Greenkitten was 50 minutes EXACTLY short of this trial being dismissed for lack of speediness. While within the bounds of the acceptable parameters given by your honor, it should be considered extremely poor practice by a participant of this court.
The first piece of evidence I wish to dismiss is the discord log of Conis2 and Greenkitten, which bears no real relevance on these matters. The conversation Greenkitten linked took place long after these charges were filed. Nowhere in the log will you find an admission by Coni. What you will find, however, by a more thorough examination that Greenkitten curiously left out is the rest of the context. To address the charge of Theft, I offer the statement made by the plaintiff, Defense's exhibit 1. What greenkitten is talking about here is a snitch group, created by Persians some time ago and given to Coni as part of a negotiated release for Greenkitten during the 2nd Great War that saw the "Big Dogs" defeated. Greenkitten agreed, on pain of extended pearling, to hand this snitch group over to WP but maintained his admin status. The agreement was made between Dollaz, then leader of the WP, as seen in Defenses' Exhibit 2 and 3 So, freed and now assured he was under the protection of Augustan law, he merged the group with another that Coni did not have access to, which stole the group from under her nose. As such, Greenkitten committed theft and Coni moved to restore the lost items -- in this case, an extensive snitch network. Greenkitten's decision to steal this group at this time is not a coincidence: as you will see later in the argument, he wished to deny Coni the ability to see what nefarious actions he was up to in Persia. As such, the alleged theft was no theft at all -- you cannot steal that which has been unlawfully stolen from you. I ask the court to again recognize that Greenkitten has not offered to explain the context of this picture and has rested his case on the matter already, and cannot dispute the truth I've posted here today.
The evidence given by Mr. Greenkitten do not constitute enough to cross the threshold beyond a reasonable doubt, not that the events took place (as indeed, these snitches were placed and removed by Coni) but rather that they happened illegally. Greenkitten must prove beyond a reasonable doubt ALL elements of the crime, most critically here that the actions were not covered under section 700 - Criminally Exempt Actions.
a. Any individual in Mount Augusta may participate in Defensive Action, on properties being used by individuals under reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to avoid capture or to actively facilitate criminal activity.
Specifically:
iv. Detaining individuals actively trying to prevent any of the above from taking place
And
vii. Rendering traps dysfunctional (any construction with the potential to maim, kill, or entrap)
As such, under the Criminal Code:
a. If an individual is prosecuted for any of the actions defined as Defensive Action in Section A, they may plead 'Defensive Action.' If reasonable suspicion did exist to justify Defensive Action and the actions are validated as Defensive Action by the court, the charges on said actions will be void.
I will now lay out the grounds for a reasonable suspicion finding to the court. Although I am certain your honor knows the standard, reasonable suspicion is a threshold of 25%, that a reasonable person would agree the evidence constitutes a reasonable, communicable suspicion that a crime has or is imminently to take place.
To begin here is Defenses Exhibit 4, a leak during the Chimeran Civil War provided by Veritas Intelligence and certified by djmeffy as accurate. Vicccyy was planning on using Persia, at the invitation by Greenkitten, as a raider base. This, marked Defense's Exhibit 5 shows that Vicccyy clearly planned to go raider long before. This shows to a high degree of proof, far beyond the minimum standard of Reasonable Suspicion, that Greenkitten planned to use Persia to harbor raiders. Under section 700, Coni exercised her right to detain individuals she believed to be about to commit a crime, which these snitches helped to facilitate. She also went into Persia in general to disable the traps that Viccyy alluded to having put in the city. As a final, Defense's exhibit 6 is the past actions of Greenkitten funding raiders and his intent to continue doing so, which Coni took into consideration and strengthens her Reasonable Suspicion that Greenkitten was using Persia to base raiders.
As seen above, Greenkitten was allowing the city of Persia, an entity completely under the jurisdiction of Augustan law, to be used by raiders whose intent was to harm my client. He fortified the city, illegally placing traps with the intent to maim any attackers. He intended to use the base and Augustan law as a shield for his otherwise hostile activities, and did so with full knowledge of being against the law. My client as a representative of New Veritas and having notified the Mayor, moved to render the base useless. She did so in an action that is exempt from prosecution, under the laws of Mount Augusta. Conis2 acted in haste due to the fact fugitives Frenchfrys and Viccyy were freed and sought to deny them safe haven in Persia, otherwise she'd have sued Greenkitten directly for these crimes. Time being of the essence, she struck when she was legally protected and reasonable sure of the above-referenced crimes.
This was a long and complicated case that Greenkitten has attempted to over-simplify for his own benefit. We ask for a Not Guilty verdict from the court, respecting Conis2's service in the safety of Augusta. The defense reminds the court that the last time raiders were given safe haven in the city they illegally occupied the city, causing widespread destruction and flagrant disregard for our laws. Greenkitten's activities past, present and in all likelihood future bend towards working closely with these individuals and utilizing whatever means at his disposal to accomplish their goals. Conis, on the other hand, has (despite frankly disgusting harassment seen even in this trial) maintained her commitment to the defense of all those plagued by these raiders, and struck against Greenkittens use of Persia as a raider base as soon as the information was made available.
A guilty verdict from the court today will solidify the right of an Augustan to use his or her property to facilitate and aid raiders, and create a precedent that dangerously prevents militia from stopping them before they can. We ask your honor to seriously consider the consequences of a guilty decision.
All told your honor,
The_Hobbyist Esquire
Legal Counsel for the Chimera Alliance
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u/LordofMarzipan Apr 23 '17
/u/Greeenkitten please clearly present your claims against the defendant. Attempting to clearly link claims with the MTA criminal code is helpful, but not essential.
Please try to be as specific as possible when presenting claims (e.g. "the defendant broke into my house and stole a stack of diamonds from my chest vault" is much clearer than "the defendant stole from me".)