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Civics: The Bill of Rights, The Community Center, Wednesday Evening

Alex was brisk and businesslike as she entered the classroom today. She set her cup of tea down and got straight to the point.

"The sixth is a lengthy one again," she said, "and it's very procedural, but that doesn't make it any less important. Let's begin.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

"Once we, the state, have arrested you, the criminal -- or, and this is an important distinction, you, the innocent person that we have mistakenly accused of a crime -- then we have certain obligations. There are rules. We can't lock you into a basement dungeon and throw away the key."

Unless you were a foreign alleged terrorist held at Guantanamo, but Alex was going to skip over that entire can of worms, thank you very much.

"Let's start at the top. You have the right to a speedy and public trial. Trials can take several months to put together; this amendment doesn't guarantee you the right to have a trial tomorrow. It does mean that the government can't schedule your trial for several years from now as a way of forcing you to serve some jail time in advance. In general, the more serious offenses require more trial prep, so lesser charges can get faster trials. And if you're found guilty, time served before trial gets taken away from your sentence.

"Why are public trials so important? This ties back into the first amendment, letting the media be more than just a vehicle for the government's aims. Justice Louis Brandeis -- a populist, an outspoken advocate for free speech and the right to privacy, and a great man -- once said 'Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.' Corruption is hard to hide in public, with all the windows open and the public invited in to see.

"The accused gets to hear the charges against him, instead of sitting in a cell and wondering what the government thinks he may have done. She gets to confront the witnesses against her, and cross-examine them, instead of hearing that some people have said accusatory things and not knowing who. She can get witnesses on her behalf, either to provide an alibi, or to speak to her character. And he may have an advocate in his defense -- and some defense lawyers are some of the most skilled, intelligent, and well-paid individuals I know. They exhaust every loophole they can to keep their clients out of jail. They make the prosecutors work that much harder. And every time they do, it strengthens the system. It makes the government go back and close that loophole, if it's an oversight. It makes it that much harder for us to convict an innocent person."

She had slipped, there, a few times. Referring to herself, thinking of herself, as a prosecutor again. She wondered if anyone would notice.

"At the same time, to some citizens, this looks like overkill. Why should criminals be coddled? Why should criminals go free on technicalities? Why should loopholes or flashy lawyers mean that people who commit crimes can walk the streets again? What do you think?"

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Eating something.

Rude

Dani Davis

Jack Priest

Get some snacks. Chit-chat. Talk to people while snacking.

Rude didn't do chit-chat.

What he did was hang around and watch people.

Dani had shown up out of curiosity, but finding snacks was an added bonus. She grabbed something to nibble on and got settled in.

The one clause we didn't cover above was that the case should be tried in the same state and district as where the crime was committed. Why might that be important? When could it be an advantage? When could it be a disadvantage? If you committed a crime (or were wrongly accused of one) in Fandom, would you rather be tried here, or tried somewhere else?

"If the case has to be tried in a specific court, that might make it harder to get a sympathetic judge."

Some judges weren't sympathetic. Of the unsympathetic ones, some weren't bribable. Some of the non-bribable ones also didn't respond well to threats. And when you got a judge of firm moral character that wouldn't be threatened? Then you were left having to kill them, and that always was a little awkward.

"Sympathetic to which side?" Alex asked. "If the crime was committed in this town, the judge might be a friend of the alleged perpetrator's family. Or a friend of the victim's family. Ideally, a judge would recuse him- or herself for bias before it ever comes to that."

"Sympathetic to my side," Rude clarified. "I like the idea of fair trials, but they're... inconvenient."

"So already, you're looking to rig the system, and not to find a system that's fair," Alex said. Calmly. She wasn't judging, she was just seeking to clarify what they were talking about, here.

"I'd probably want to be tried here in Fandom if the hypothetical 'crime' happened here," said Dani. "Imagine trying to explain gremlins to a jury in California. They wouldn't buy it that you were under the influence of gremlin venom."

"Can you blame them?" ALex said, offering a light smile. "Let's say it's not related to Fandom-specific phenomena. Would you still elect to stay here? This place has its own rules, its own code of conduct, so to speak. It might prove more forgiving for certain behaviors. It might also judge more harshly if the victim was well-known. And in a small community like this one, almost everyone knows everyone else."

Do you think that criminals (both alleged and actual) get too many rights? Too few? If a drug dealer has paid a showy defense attorney and beaten seven arrest charges in a row, does that mean he's beating the system, or does that mean the system needs to step up its game? Is it morally reprehensible to represent someone you know is guilty and attempt to have them acquitted for a crime you know they committed? Or, further, to profit from it?

"Every system can be beaten. That's why you need someone to... take care of problems."

Alex smiled, wryly. "Astonishingly, I'm not asking for ways to circumvent the system," she said. "I'm asking if you think the system, itself, is fair."

"It... sounds fair," Rude decided. "It's... hard to tell. How does it work in... practice?"

Alex considered that.

"The rich get better treatment than the poor," she said, "and the upper class, better than the lower class. The powerful, better than the underprivileged. Every bias you can think of. It reflects human weaknesses, because the system is always implemented by humans, which is a very necessary sort of evil, if it can be called evil at all."

She chewed her lower lip before saying, "I think it's ... I wouldn't say fair, exactly. I'll say that there are things I would change, and I know it's not ideal. It's flawed, and I'd make changes if I could, but it's so much better than it might be -- and so much better than some other processes I could name -- that I'm willing to call it a good starting place. How's that for an answer?"

"That fancy attorney comes at a price. The more a drug dealer spends on defense, the less money he has available for managing his business or taking care of his family," Dani pointed out. She hesitated before adding, "My dad spent so much money on his legal defense that he virtually bankrupted the family business. In the end, he was able to escape prison, but we lost nearly everything in the process."

Alex nodded, very quickly. "I'm very sorry to hear that," she said. "I nearly added a discussion about that particular proviso, but we ran short on time. I wish I had, now. Defendants can be issued court-appointed lawyers, free of charge, but public defenders are notoriously overworked and usually fresh out of school. They're little help, especially on major charges. If he paid a high-priced attorney, that may well have been the only thing that kept him out of jail, but that would be a very small consolation to you if you flirted with bankruptcy in the process."

She hesitated before asking, "Would you say it was worth it? To him, or to you, personally, or your family?"

"I'm sure he thinks it was worth it," said Dani, a bitter tone in her voice. "When he got out of prison, he just picked up on his shady business deals like nothing had ever happened. I was the one who saved the family business while he was gone, and I lost everything when he took over again."

"So it sounds like your family might have been better off with a cheaper attorney, and a longer prison stay for your father," Alex said softly. "It's a shame you weren't able to move more of the finances out of his name while he was incarcerated."

"Oddly enough, my father transferred everything to his children right before he was arrested," said Dani. "But there was no cash left at that point, just the house, the land, and the horses. We had to let all of the staff go because we couldn't afford to pay them. We could have sold something, but I had a better idea. I brought in an investor with plenty of her own money to buy out my brother's share of the business. And it worked -- until my investor got dumped by her boyfriend. She sold her share to my dad and took off for Europe. I still don't know where Dad got the cash for that deal."

"Probably via extralegal means," Alex suggested. "He doesn't sound as though he was constrained by ethics, at that point."

Anything not covered above goes here.

She's here.

Jack hadn't said anything during class -- the timing was a bit too ironic, all things considered.

"It's ironic you were touting the benefits of sunlight," he said, after class. "May I have a word with you?"

[OOC: Probably on srs SP, sorry.]

"Sunshine helps, but it only goes so far," Alex said, offering him a weary smile.

After all, Katniss's games had been televised. Transparency didn't help in cases where the public just didn't care.

"Always," she said, gesturing to the nearest seat. "What's on your mind?"

(totally fine! major SP from this end, as well, as I'm still going slowly zomg, so there's no rush bb <3)

"I had a bad experience at home," Jack said, taking the seat with a quick, anxious glance to Alex. He wasn't sure his timing was right, but he trusted her and waiting was not going to help him settle his mind. "An innocent man was ... basically executed. I don't think I could have stopped it, but I was wondering what I might be able to do if something similar comes up in the future, god forbid."

She flinched. "I'm so sorry," she said. "That's the nightmare scenario of the justice system, the one that most of the loopholes are created to prevent against. I've personally never faced it, that I know of. I'm usually on the other side of the table. If I've been the agent of an innocent person's death, I don't know it."

She liked to used the death penalty as leverage -- trade the threat for a plea to lesser charges, like life in prison. Not to say she wasn't a fan of capital punishment itself, when she felt it was warranted. And in entirely too many cases, it was.

She watched him for a moment. "Ways to keep it from happening in the future. The big problem is that every person about to be executed waves the innocence flag, so all the showstopping moves are pulled in every single case. That's not to say they're not worth trying, however. Are we talking legal maneuvers, civil ones, or ... extra-legal?"

She wasn't above giving hypothetical advice about breaking an innocent man out of a high security prison, if that was what Jack was asking.

Jack flushed a bit from discomfort. "Nothing that simple, I'm afraid," he said apologetically. "I don't know if I've mentioned this -- my world has vampires. The accused was one, and the police walked him out into the sun. It's not precisely legal from what I can tell, but the authorities do not make a habit of being kind to the supernatural."

Not wampyr, anyhow. There were some werewolves who worked with the police, or had been during Jack's childhood, but that struck him as an extraneous detail.

"That's ... appalling," Alex said, staring at Jack. "Why even have due process if you can just murder a suspect at dawn, is that it? That's ... grotesque."

She was indignant. And underneath, Alex had to admit that she felt a rush of shame. She was so accustomed to feeling off-kilter by all the strange supernatural other-worlds that she hadn't once stopped to think about the ways in which vampires, for example, might be victims of social injustice. It made her feel ... very small, as if she was too busy being tied to her own prejudices to see the bigger picture.

Barry Mordock would be ashamed of her.

"Let me guess," she said. "Second class citizens. You can do what other people do, until we say you can't, and the second you step out of line, or we think you did, then we put you down like a rabid dog."

"In essence," Jack agreed, appreciating how quickly Alex had understood what had happened and why. It saved explaining. "Vampirism used to be a crime in itself, but someone finally got a bit of sense -- they don't have to kill in my world, and as long as you don't you'll be left alone. But there were two gory murders, and it was leading to a public panic."

he gestured, a delicate shrug. "Rights went out the window."

Alex was rubbing her forehead. "Scapegoating," she said. "The best way to calm the public was to grab someone, anyone, they had the least shred of evidence for and make a big show of railroading him. Satiate the public's bloodlust, and pretend that counts as justice."

It was an old story, one she had been caught in the thick of herself a few times. It had even taken more subtle forms, groups pitted against one another. A Latino boy in elementary school had shot and killed an African-American girl, the same age; the riots had started almost immediately.

"What you need is a movement," she said. "This kind of thing ... it won't stop happening until vampires stop being second-class citizens. I'm not saying you need to abolish prejudice altogether, but until they have legal protections ... minorities are entirely too easy to scapegoat."

"The vampire was named by someone who was trying to protect a lover," Jack explained. "Rich, spoiled prat from the sound of things, and violent too -- but I wouldn't be surprised if his family was throwing money around to make absolutely certain the finger of the law didn't land on him."

He closed his eyes, leaning his head back, looking resigned and, weirdly, a bit pleased. "So I need to start a social movement," he said. "My guardian will adore that. My politics have always made him nervous."

"So someone panic, and tried to keep someone they loved safe," she said. "Which is at least slightly more human, if no less despicable of the authorities for jumping onto the idea."

Desperate people did desperate things. It was tragic, but she could feel pity for even him, the spoiled prat who was trying to save someone close.

Pity wasn't anything near to condoning what he had done, and she hoped that he felt the full weight of the senseless death on his conscience.

She offered him a light smile. "That's how you know you're doing something right," she said. "When your boss is angry with you, when your friends and cohorts are telling you to water it down. Nobody ever changed the world by asking nicely."

"Right." Jack's eyes were bright with thought. Sebastien would loathe the concept, unless he was approached very very carefully, but ... "I'm past 18, anyhow. I'm a bit old to curtail what I do so I don't make my family mad. Anything I should read to give me ideas on where to start? There's no organized movement as it is."

I am so sorry, guys. It goes like this.

9:30 AM: Wake up, because random guy is pounding on my front door. Do not answer the door in time, possibly because I stop long enough to throw clothes on. (You are welcome, random guy.) Have no idea what he wanted. Decide it was not important.
9:45 AM: Power goes off. Decide he was probably going to warn me about the power going off. Am impressed with own cleverness.
11:00 AM: Power still off. Decide to nap on couch. By the time I wake up, power will be back on. There is no way this plan can backfire!
3:10 PM: Wake up on couch. Realize class was due 10 minutes ago. Oh. Hey. That counts as a backfire.

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Civics: The Bill of Rights, The Community Center, Wednesday Evening

Sign In - CIV05

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Arrive and Mingle - CIV05

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Discussion #1 - Location, Location, Location - CIV05

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Discussion #2 - Rights of the Accused - CIV05

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Discussion #3 - General Discussion - CIV05

Talk to Alex - CIV05

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OOC - CIV05