[I am still on the fence on this one. This is how I'm leaning.
counter-arguments welcomed].
CFJ statement: pikhq initiated a criminal case in Message-id:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Proto-judgement:
The message in question contains two parts.
The first part of this message, prior to the CFJ, misidentifies
Murphy as the Promotor (the Court agrees with the Caller that the
spelling error is inconsequential - though try telling that to
Harry Buttle).
However, the CFJ attempt itself makes no particular mistake: it merely
alleges that "the Promotor" committed an offense. The action of
calling is most appropriately treated as severable from the preceding
text (and mistake). If distributed by the CotC as a case, it would
stand alone outside the early portion of the message. Therefore the
question is, does the following portion of pikhq's message:
"I call for judgement on the following statement (this is a criminal
case against the Promoter): proposal 5269 was never submitted, and
therefore should not have been distributed. Since the Promoter did
this without a submission to the proposal pool, he made a proposal
outside of rule 106, and is therefore in violation."
clearly specify the identity of the defendant, as required by R1504(a)?
(The requirements of R1504(b) and (c) are clearly met in this extract).
We must be especially careful that a criminal case does not specify an
incorrect defendant, thus there is an extra burden of accuracy that
should be placed on the caller of criminal case. Importantly, offices are
mutable, and it is important that guilt does not "transfer" if the
office changes hands. In this case, the "Promotor" at the time of the
CFJ was not necessarily the Promotor at the time of the alleged offense.
Weighed against this, it is a simple matter to confirm through this message:
http://www.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2007-October/003464.html
that Zefram attempted the alleged offense in question, and there is no
evidence that the Promotor has changed between the alleged act and the CFJ.
Thus we can infer the identity of the promotor from the caller's correct
specifications required by 1504(b) and (c). Since the CotC is required to
notify the defendant, this provides extra insurance that the person associated
with the act is indeed identified as the defendant.
However, in balance, we note that if "the Promotor" is sufficient to
identify the defendant from the beginning, it would be sufficient throughout
the case, and the whole case could be tried with reference to "the Promotor"
with no mention of Zefram. It is conceivable (though unlikely), that
if the Promotor changed hands at the last minute, than the punishment
could be applied to the new officeholder.
In balance, it better serves the game to require rigid specifications
of individuals, not mutable offices, in the case of criminal proceedings
(such rigid requirements do not necessarily transfer to proceedings with
a lesser burden of proof. Therefore this court finds that pikhq's
call did not identify the defendant to a standard consistent with
R1504(a), and therefore the court PROTO-finds FALSE.
Judge's evidence
Rule 1504/16 (Power=1.7) [excerpt]
Criminal Cases
There is a subclass of judicial case known as a criminal case.
A criminal case's purpose is to determine the culpability of a
particular person, known as the defendant, for an alleged breach
of the rules, and to punish the guilty. A criminal case CAN be
initiated by any player, by announcement which clearly specifies
all of the following:
a) The identity of the defendant.
b) Exactly one rule allegedly breached by the defendant.
c) The action (which may be a failure to perform another action)
by which the defendant allegedly breached this rule.
