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maidenson88 · 4 months

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MATRIARCHY CRIMINAL LAW — BASIC LAWS — PART II

IN THE NAME OF THE QUEEN, HER ROYAL HIGHNESS, EMPRESS OF THE MATRIARCHY, RULER OF THE MATRIARCHAL WOMEN, PRIME EMPRESS IN HER OWN RIGHT APPOINTED BY HER GYNARCHIC SISTERS — HERE THERE IS THE CRIMINAL LAW OF THE MATRIARCHAL STATE!

Now that we have the basic principles of foundation of Matriarchal State we can advance to the next step, to analyze the Criminal Law of Matriarchal State. Criminal Law in Matriarchy State is the compendium of Matriarchal & Gynarchic Laws that relates to a crime. It prescribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and welfare of Lady-Citizens of Matriarchal State. Most Criminal Law is established by statute, which is to say that the Matriarchal Laws are enacted by a Matriarchal legislature. Criminal Law includes the punishment and rehabilitation of male domestics or Lady-Citizens who violate such laws.

Women must have preponderance in the Criminal Law of Matriarchy State over any male creature.

Criminal Law varies according to jurisdiction, and differs from Civil Matriarchal Law, where emphasis is more on dispute resolution between two Lady-Citizens and victim compensation, rather than on punishment or rehabilitation of rebel males.

Criminal procedure on Matriarchy State is a formalized official activity that authenticates the fact of commission of a crime and authorizes punitive or rehabilitative treatment of male offenders.

THESE ARE SOME OF THE CRIMINAL LAWS UNDER "MATRIARCHAL JURISPRUDENCE" AND ITS BEST CRIMINAL LAWS PROPOSED BY THE LEADING GYNARCHIC LADIES WHO HAVE EXCELLED IN GYNARCHIC LAWS IN THE MATRIARCHY STATE OVER THE YEARS...

CRIMINAL LAW ON MATRIARCHY STATE

1.-) GENERAL PROVISIONS

a.-) Purpose of Criminal Law is to protect the interests of Matriarchy State (MAST) and the rights of all Lady-Citizens and male domestic slaves of state or private.

b.-) Means to achieve the purpose of the Criminal Law are threats of punishment, sentencing and executions of punishments and other precautions.

c.-) Criminal Law applies to all persons with Matriarchal citizenship no matter where they commit the crime.

d.-) Criminal Law applies to all persons without Matriarchal citizenship if they commit the crime in the territory which is under MAST administration.

2.-) FUNCTIONS IN THE JUSTICE SYSTEM

a.-) Person in charge of MAST Judicial System can only be a Woman with the status of Lady-Citizen of MAST.

b.-) Functions in MAST Justice System are:

i.-) Imperial Judge – appointed and dismissed by the Empress.

ii.-) Authorized Court Lady-Officer – appointed and dismissed by the Empress.

iii.-) Imperial Prosecutrix – appointed and dismissed by the Empress.

iv.-) Head Court Executrix – appointed and dismissed by the Empress.

v.-) Regional Court Executrix – appointed by the Empress after prior approval from the Head Court Executrix, dismissed by the Empress.

vi.-) Prison Wardress – appointed by the Empress after prior approval from the Head Court Executrix, dismissed by the Empress.

3.-) A CRIME

a.-) A criminal act is a dangerous act for Matriarchy State (hereinafter MAST) or for an individual, which damages or harms Her/his rights or legitimate interests.

b.-) Crime committed by Woman must be intentional to be criminal; For men it is enough to be negligent to commit a crime.

c.-) Degree of danger of committed crime is determined mainly by the significance of the protected rights or interests affected by this crime, the manner the crime was committed and its consequences and the motive of the culprit.

d.-) The Decision, whether the committed offense was a criminal act, its name and definition, its qualification and the subsequent sentence of punishment is the responsibility of the independent Imperial Lady-Judge or the Authorized Court Lady Officer, who judges the case.

4.-) DEFINITIONS AND TYPES OF CRIMES

a.-) Crimes are divided according to their severity, the amount of caused damage and danger for society:

i.-) Offense.

ii.-) Crime.

iii.-) Extremely serious crime.

b.-) Extremely serious crime is considered especially:

i.-) Insult to Her Majesty the Empress of Matriarchy State.

ii.-) Disgrace and defamation of Imperial Symbols of Matriarchy State.

iii.-) Subversive activities against Matriarchy State.

iv.-) Avoiding Tax obligations against Matriarchy State.

v.-) Repeated violations or defamation of any of the "Basic Principles" listed in Matriarchy State Deed of Foundation.

5.-) AGGRAVATING CIRCUMSTANCES

The aggravating circumstance that allow the use of a higher penalty rate is considered:

a.-) If there is very serious consequence caused by the crime.

b.-) If the offender committed the crime repeatedly.

c.-) If the crime was committed against a MAST Lady-Citizen who performs a state function, Noble-Woman of MAST or against the Empress.

d.-) If the offender had not confessed before the end of the trial.

e.-) If the offender is a State or Private Slave registered in the Imperial Registry of Slaves.

6.-) EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES

An extenuating circumstance, that allows to lower the penalty rate, will be taken into account as follows:

a.-) If the offender is a Woman.

b.-) If the offender confess before the end of the trial, expresses regret in a form of financial compensation to the damaged party.

c.-) If the only motive of committing the crime was to protect interests of Matriarchy State or the Empress or his Lady-Owner or Female-Guardian.

d.-) If the crime was committed by a free male based on a wish or an order from a Lady-Citizen.

e.-) Ignorance and lack of knowledge of Legal Norms is not an excuse and is not an extenuating circumstance.

7.-) DOUBTS

a.-) In case of doubt or lack of evidence, the Court always decides in favor of the defendant if it is a Woman.

b.-) In case of doubt or lack of evidence, the Court always decides in disfavor of the defendant if it is a male.

8.-) CRIMINALITY OF THE OFFENSE

a.-) Acts committed by the Empress are not considered as criminal.

b.-) Noble-Women of MAST with higher nobility rank are judged for their crimes by the Empress only.

c.-) Act committed by Woman is a criminal crime only if the crime has been accomplished.

d.-) Acts committed by males are criminal already at the stage of preparation or attempt to commit a crime.

e.-) Criminality of the offense shall be judged according to Matriarchal Law, which was valid at the time that the offense was committed.

f.-) Judgment of foreign state cannot be executed in the territory under Matriarchy State administration nor can have any other effects there.

9.-) NECESSARY DEFENSE

a.-) Act, which would normally be considered as a crime, but used to eliminate threatening or persistent assault on Law protected interests, is not a criminal offense.

b.-) Necessary defense is not considered in a case, when the defense is clearly inappropriate to the attack.

10.-) LIMITATION

a.-) Criminal prosecution in the form of an indictment can not be commenced for an offense committed by a Woman if at least one calendar year has elapsed since the commitment.

b.-) For offenses committed by males, the limitation period is set to 20 years no matter the type of offense.

11.-) PURPOSE OF THE PUNISHMENT

a.-) Purpose of the punishment is to protect Matriarchy State and individuals against offenders, to prevent the convict from committing further crimes and lead him by the punishment to a proper life in the future.

b.-) The purpose of publishing all sentences and public execution of corporal punishments is, moreover, preventive educational influence on potential future offenders.

12.-) TYPES OF PUNISHMENTS

a.-) For the committed offenses, a MAST Court may impose the following penalties:

i.-) Forced labor (for male slaves only of state or private.)

ii.-) Loss of honorary noble titles and awards (for Lady-citizens.)

iii.-) Prohibition of activity (for Lady-citizens/male slaves.)

iv.-) Financial penalty (for Lady-citizens/male slaves.)

v.-) Confiscation (for Lady-citizens/male slaves.)

vi.-) Corporal punishment (for male slaves only of state or private.)

vii.-) Punishment of public humiliation (for male slaves only of state or private.)

viii.-) Imprisonment (for male slaves only of state or private.)

ix.-) Prohibition of residence (for Lady-citizens/male slaves.)

x.-) Loss of Matriarchal citizenship (for Lady-citizens/male slaves.)

b.-) The Court may order a combination of different types of punishment in one sentence to the offender.

c.-) Punishments described in §12, letter a), roman numbers i, vi, vii, viii may be imposed by the Court to male offenders only.

13.-) PUNISHMENT ASSESSMENT

a.-) Determination of the punishment type and its assessment for a criminal offense is fully within the jurisdiction of the Court, unless this law specifies otherwise.

b.-) When determining the type and extent of the sentence, the Court will take into account the attenuating and aggravating circumstances and the state of health of the convicted person.

c.-) For each type and extent of punishment, the Court also determines an alternative punishment in the form of a financial penalty, except the punishment under §12, letter a), roman number x.

d.-) When determining the amount of an alternative financial penalty, the Court will take into account the real financial possibilities of the convicted if these are known.

e.-) If the Court sentences the offender who has been previously convicted, but the sentence has been suspended conditionally, the Court adds to the sentence also the original conditionally suspended sentence.

14.-) PUNISHMENT OF MULTIPLE OFFENSES

If the Court sentences the offender for committing more offenses, it will punish him separately for each offense and the total punishment is the sum of all the sentences stated in the judgment trial.

15.-) CONDITIONAL PUNISHMENT

a.-) A Court may postpone the punishment execution under condition that the convict will not commit any other offense in the future against Women, MAST or a third party.

b.-) Conditional punishment execution may only be imposed to persons that have not committed a crime in the past against Women, MAST or a third party.

c.-) If a person in conditional sentence commits another crime in the future, it is not possible to punish such person conditionally again.

d.-) Conditional punishment can not be sentenced for committing a extremely serious crime against Women, MAST or a third party.

16.-) ACCUSATION ACQUITTAL

a.-) If innocence of the defendant is proved during the trial, She/he is acquitted by a liberating verdict of the Court.

b.-) Court case records where the accused has been acquitted are removed from the publicly accessible sections of the Register of Criminal Records of Matriarchy State.

c.-) All costs are paid in this case by the complainant.

d.-) Acquittal is not possible in self-indictment.

17.-) PUNISHMENT EXECUTION

a.-) If the Court impose an unconditional punishment, it will be executed without any delay and with maximum strictness.

b.-) The Court precisely defines the type and extent of the punishment in the judgment.

c.-) Imposed punishment of forced labor according to §12, letter a), roman number i, must be executed only in favor of MAST or MAST Lady-Citizens.

d.-) Imposed corporal punishment according to §12, letter a), roman number vi,:

i.-) Must be executed by the Court Executrix of Matriarchy State unless it is stated otherwise in the judgment.

ii.-) The execution must be documented for the Court's purposes and its subsequent publication in the Register of Criminal Records of Matriarchy State.

iii.-) The execution must be public and with announced date, time and place, if it is executed in the territory under Matriarchy State administration.

iv.-) The corporal punishment may be repeated if the Lady-Judge decides that the punishment has not been executed with sufficient severity by the Court Executrix of that punishment.

v.-) It shall be executed by using a single tail leather whip with length of at least 130 cm (51 3/16 in) unless stated otherwise in the judgment.

vi.-) It may be interrupted as a result of the sentenced person's health problems and it will be completed as soon as the conditions of the convicted person permit.

vii.-) The convict has a right to choose which Court Executrix will perform his punishment, if it is not directly stated in the judgment.

e.-) Punishment of public humiliation according to §12, letter a), roman number vii, may only be executed in the territory under MAST administration, with announced date in advance, time and place.

f.-) Punishment of imprisonment according to §12, letter a), roman number viii, can only be executed on place and in a facility certified by Matriarchal State's Court Executrix Office.

g.-) The convict is obliged to pay all costs associated with the execution of his sentence imposed on him.

18.-) CRIME NOTIFICATION

a.-) Any person who learns in any way of committing an offense which has a sign of a criminal offense is obliged to inform immediately to Empress' Office or to any Lady-Citizen who is an Imperial Lady-Judge, Authorized Court Officer, Imperial Prosecutrix or Court Executrix.

b.-) Failure to notify a criminal offense may be considered by Court as a criminal offense.

c.-) A notification that is knowingly not based on the truth will be considered as a criminal offense on false accusation.

19.-) CRIME INVESTIGATION

a.-) Any investigation, taking and verification of evidence, as well as the possible hearing of suspects and witnesses, shall be carried out by the Lady-Imperial Judge or the designated Authorized Court Lady-Officer.

b.-) Every Matriarchal citizen is obliged to provide maximum cooperation to all authorities involved in the investigation.

c.-) Imperial Lady-Judge is authorized to use painful interrogation methods on male slaves private or public in the presence of his Lady-Owner if applies, and/or if She has asked for it.

d.-) To perform a painful interrogation, the Lady-Judge may appoint any Woman providing any function in Matriarchy State Justice System.

e.-) Painful interrogation must not leave a permanent consequences on the interrogated male slave of state or private.

f.-) Information obtained in painful interrogation has the same probative value as the information confessed to the Court voluntarily.

20.-) TESTIMONY

a.-) Every Matriarchal citizen is obliged to testify in front of a Court if called upon to do so by Court.

b.-) The witness is always obliged to tell the truth to the Court, and give true information during Her/his testimony.

c.-) In case of doubt, the testimony of Woman has more probative value than the testimony of a male.

d.-) If the Court insists on testifying in person at the place where the Court takes place, all costs are to be paid to the witness after the trial has ended by the convicted person or by the complainant if the convict was acquitted.

21.-) SELF-INDICTMENT

a.-) Any Matriarchal citizen who has committed a criminal offense, or an act that may be considered a criminal offense by a Court, is obliged to notify the Court of this fact by submitting a self-indictment.

b.-) All male slaves of Matriarchy State are obliged to submit a self-indictment for crimes they have committed before gaining an open case for criminal status by an Imperial Prosecutrix.

c.-) For crimes reported on the basis of self-indictment, the Court will impose a moderate punishment, since the self-indictment is considered as a attenuating circumstance.

d.-) Authorized Court Lady-Officer may also decide on guilt and punishment in the case of self-indictment, without the need of proper judicial proceedings led by a Lady-Judge.

e.-) Submitting a self-indictment is charged according to Official Matriarchy State Price Lists and the fee is paid by the complainant.

22.-) ACCUSATION OF ANOTHER PERSON

a.-) If there is a reasonable suspicion that a person to whom this Law applies, has committed a criminal offense, then Matriarchy State will accuse such person through the Imperial Prosecutrix.

b.-) Any Citizen of Matriarchy State can submit an accusation in order to be investigated by Imperial Prosecutrix's Office.

c.-) Accusations of other persons is always decided by the Imperial Lady-Judge in a separate Court case.

d.-) The Court is entitled to reject any meaningless accusations or by lack of evidence without discussion.

e.-) Accusation of another person based on false information is a criminal offense on false accusation.

f.-) Submitting an accusation on another person by a Matriarchal Citizen is charged according to the Official Matriarchy State Price Lists.

23.-) PARTICIPATION

a.-) Person who was involved in a crime even partially conscientious will be punished just like the principal offender.

b.-) Person who knew about a crime set up and did not report the preparation to a person in a Judicial Matriarchal System or the Empress' Office will be punished for assisting a criminal offense.

24.-) CRIMES COMMITTED BY MALE SLAVES

a.-) For the purposes of this law, a male domestic slave is meant a State or Private slave registered in the Imperial Registry of Slaves of Matriarchy State.

b.-) A male slave is criminally responsible, just like any other person or subject under this law.

c.-) A male slave is also criminally responsible for acts committed upon order from his Lady-Owner or Female-Guardian.

d.-) A Lady-Owner of a male domestic slave is not criminally responsible for the acts committed by Her slave without Her knowledge.

e.-) If a male slave has committed a criminal offense based on order from his Lady-Owner, then the Lady-Owner is fully criminal responsible for this act against the Legal norm.

f.-) A Lady-Owner of a slave bears financial responsibility for the material damage caused by the crime committed by Her slave who was in Her ownership and watch.

25.-) VIOLENT OFFENSES COMMITTED ON MALE SLAVES

a.-) If a male domestic slave is damaged by his Lady-Owner, such conduct is not qualified as a criminal offense and cannot be persecuted by Matriarchal Justice System.

b.-) Unauthorized use or damage of a strange male domestic slave by Woman is qualified as a misdemeanor and can only be subject to a financial penalty with obligation to compensate any material damage to his Lady-Owner or Female Guardian.

26.-) JUDGMENT

a.-) The judgment at the end of each Court case is made by an Imperial Lady-Judge or by an Authorized Court Lady-Officer, who has judged the case.

b.-) The judgment is made in written form and delivered to the defendant, to the complainant and to the Register of Criminal Records of Matriarchy State.

c.-) If there is a conviction, the judgment is placed on the publicly accessible Matriarchal State website and other sites of information from the Register of Criminal Records Section.

d.-) The judgment becomes effective:

i.-) Immediately, if the convicted gives up the right to ask for mercy.

ii.-) After 7 days if the convict has not sent a request for mercy to the Empress' Office.

27.-) APPEAL AGAINST THE JUDGMENT

a.-) Only Woman has the right to appeal a formal sentence of a Lady-Judge in Matriarchy State, this could be submitted to the Wise Women's Council Office or to the Empress' Office directly.

b.-) No appeal is permitted against the judgment of the Imperial Lady-Judge or the Authorized Court Lady-Officer by any male domestic, from state or private ownership.

c.-) An Imperial Prosecutrix can appeal a judgment against the acquittal of any male slave, if She deems necessary, or if She thinks Lady-Judge did not judge the male slave with the severity expected, or if She thinks there were flaws in the trial or if new evidence that was not taken into consideration during the trial appears later on time.

d.-) A Lady-Prosecutrix can appeal a judgement for serious crime cases committed against Woman or Matriarchy State, i.e., She can appeal an acquittal on:

i.-) Male castration (In case of repeated rape or repeated physical violence against Woman.)

ii.-) Male euthanasia (In case of murder against Woman or in case of a deceased Lady-Owner with no transfer of rights to another Lady-Owner, a Daughter, or Matriarchal State and who clearly states in favor of male euthanasia in Her will.)

iii.-) Capital punishment by hanging (In case of acts of rebellion against the Matriarchal State rightful order of Women over men on its "Gynarchic Principles" or against the Empress Herself.)

28.-) EMPRESS' MERCY

a.-) Every convicted person has the right to appeal for mercy from the Empress of Matriarchy State within 7 days period from the judgment through the Empress' Office.

b.-) Submitting an appeal for mercy is conditioned by payment of a non-refundable fee according to Official Matriarchal State Price Lists.

c.-) Until the decision on mercy is made by the Empress, the sentence is suspended.

d.-) The Empress is not bound by any time limit for Her decision of mercy.

e.-) The Empress in appeal for mercy may decide:

i.-) Comply in full extent.

ii.-) Comply partially.

iii.-) Reject the appeal.

f.-) The Empress's decision of the mercy is delivered to the sentenced person and published in the Register of Criminal Records of Matriarchy State.

g.-) If the appeal for mercy is fully or partially rejected, the judgment becomes effective immediately.

29.-) REGISTER OF CRIMINAL RECORDS

a.-) Register of Criminal Records (hereinafter RCR) is administered by the Empress' Office.

b.-) Purpose of the RCR is to register and publish accusations, self-indictments, and judgments on publicly accessible websites of Matriarchy State, publishing evidence of punisment, executions of convicts, disclosing and publishing further Court cases within Matriarchy State.

c.-) Record in the RCR is decisive in any dispute over the criminal history of each Matriarchal citizen.

d.-) Each Matriarchal citizen has right to request the RCR to delete the record of his case, sentence and/or punishment, but not earlier than six months after the date of publication of the relevant material.

e.-) This request is charged with a non-refundable fee according to Official Matriarchy State Price Lists.

f.-) Deleted record is no longer accessible to the public but is archived without time limitation for the needs of the Court or for another Matriarchy State Authorities.

g.-) All other features concerning the Register of Criminal Records are described in its internal regulations according to Matriarchy State regulations.

30.-) FINAL PROVISIONS

a.-) This law becomes valid on the date of signature by the Empress of Matriarchy State.

b.-) This law becomes effective on the day of publication on the official websites and newspaper of Matriarchy State.

This Compendium Of Criminal Laws Has Been Approved By The Empress Of Matriarchy State.

SUMMARY

Firstly, as we have learnt in this second part regarding Criminal Law of Matriarchy State, Women must have preponderance in any criminal law legislature in a Matriarchal State over any male creature. Is important for Gynarchic Women to exercise with severity their own compendium of Matriarchal criminal laws, in order to set an example and to prevent future infractions by male domestic slaves, owned by the state or private, i.e., imagine the case of a serial male rapist who sexually abuse a Lady-citizen and is sentenced to male castration, it could be that he gets an Empress' mercy decree the first time, but the second time that he commits another sexual abuse against another Lady-citizen then is here when the Gynarchal Women must set an example and certainly castrate this male rapist to prevent more similar crimes to this one against other Lady-citizens, Criminal Law it is also a good thing in order to maintain order in a Matriarchal State and certainly male castration must be regulated on this Compendium of Gynarchal Laws.

Secondly, I consider most relevant is the one related to "doubts," as the Gynarchic Women clearly state in case of doubt or lack of evidence a Gynarcha Court must always decide in favor of Women; While in case of doubt or lack of evidence a Gynarchal Court must always decide in disfavor of male domestics slaves. This point is very important because in this way Women take again preponderance, the same that I stated above, the preponderance of Women in Gynarchy is Paramount, it really does not matter what a male said, what really matters is what Women said in a Gynarchal Court of Justice, that is the reason why Women in Gynarchy must have high standards and convictions towards Female Supremacy. And it may be that sometimes the system can play agaisnt males, but is not that the point? The Gynarchal systema was not designed to favor males but instead it was designed to favor Women. That's why teenage Women must learn since an early age to never feel "sorry" or "pity" for a male domestic when he has been affected by an unfair or mistaken judgment by a Dominant Woman, on the contrary Gynarchy Women must feel empowered when something like that happens and the enjoy the unfair fate of that male, as She must be fully Gynarchic all the time no matter what.

Thirdly, I consider relevant the "limitation" point because again it gives Women of the Gynarchy preponderance just by the fact of being Woman, just as it should be, as it clearly states that in order to prosecute a Woman it has one calendar year before the offense expires; While for offenses committed by males the limitation period is set to 20 years and no matter the type of offense. This is one of the most beautiful paragraphs of criminal law in Matriarchy State because it gives Women Freedom while in the case of male domestics it bounds them to a pepetual good behavior in obedience to the Gynarchic Deeds of Foundation for life. Is important in any Gynarchic Criminal Law that crimes committed by male domestics do not expires so quickly, and the Gynarchic Women have considered 20 years to be ideal for this regard, i.e., imagine the case of a male domestic who has committed sexual harassment against a teenage Woman, when that Woman becomes more Dominant by Gynarchic nature, She will have up to 20 years upon this offense to accuse that male domestic to the Prosecutrix Office and take that male to trial, blessed be the Gynarchic Justice System, and any male accused of sexual harassment must pay his wrongdoing against any Woman of the Gynarchy.

Fourthly, regarding the types of punishment for male slaves, owned by state or private, I think is marvelous and it should be taken as the perfect model by Women everywhere, let's start analyzing the first one: "forced labor." Of course forced labor can only apply to male slaves and is the first point because the Gynarchic Women through forced labor redirects the negative energy from male slaves offenders into something good for the Matriarchal State. It is very important that Women everywhere see "forced labor" of male slaves as something normal and use it wisely for the advancement of Matriarchal State and Women in general. "Corporal punishment" also plays a very important role here, and as the Gynarchic Women say, Lady-Judges must always search severity on the punishment by the Imperial Executrixes, and if they are not satisfied, they should ask for the repetition of the punishment with more severity and these corporal punishments must be always carried on with a single tail leather whip of 130 centimeters this is very important so that the male domestic offender can feel the pain in his flesh and prevent him to commit another offense in the future. I consider Paramount as well male "imprisonment," as this in imprisonment in a facility certified by Matriarchal State's Court Executrix Office must bring the male domestic offender to Gynarchic order. Here is important that Court Executrixes exercises a stern correcting behavior so that this male offenders totally surrender to the Matriarchal State standards, i.e., Court Executrixes must feed all males in imprisonment in dog bowls from the male slop with the leftovers of the Lady-Citizens always and without any excemption.

Fifthly, when regarding to "Testimony," in a Gynarchic Court is important that in case of doubt, the testimony of Women must have more probative value than the testimony of any male domestic. This is important because again it gives Women preponderance in the Gynarchy, just as it should be, according to the Gynarchic Women it only takes the testimony of two Women against a male domestic for him to be condemned, which is something wonderful and an admirable thing, that Women everywhere should embrace it and fully accept it. It is important that the Woman always has a position of Lordship over all males, no matter Her age, so that this point can be fully exercised. Women must be feared and respected by the male domestic slaves, period!

Sixthly, I consider of vital importance to Matriarchy State the "Appeal Process." According to this point only Woman has the right to appeal a formal sentence of a Lady-Judge; And no appeal is permitted against the judgment of a Lady-Judge by any male domestic, from state or private. Again Women take preponderance in Gynarchy, just as it should be, and there is nothing wrong even if the defendant is innocent and is declared guilty, because males must have limited rights or no rights at all in a Gynarchal System, so it must be the responsibility a male drone to prove his innocence to a Lady-Judge, this is the foundation of Gynarchy and for what we all who believe in Gynarchy & Matriarchy must pray on to the Gynarchic Goddess to become in reality, once you reach this point there is no turning back, as the Gynarchic Women will exercise the Gynarchy with severity, just as it was supposed to be with Dominant and Demanding Ladies everywhere. blessed be the Gynarchic Goddess! It's important that State Prosecutrixes appeal when a male domestic is acquitted, there have been cases in Matriarchy State where, for example, a Gynarchy Court has ruled against castration of a male domestic, however thanks to the appeal initiated by the Prosecutrix, many of these males if not almost all of them, will end up being castrated even if they are innocent, because this is Gynarchy and this is as it should be, Women need to learn to be bitches, witches or whatever you want to call it because it is only through this way that Gynarchic Goddess can fully bless the Gynarchy! My admiration to those Prosecutrixes that have reverted a male castration acquittal through the appeal process, they are exemplary Women of law in the Gynarchic State, just as it should be. Prosecutrixes must not be limited to revert male castrations through the appeal process but as well as cases of "male euthanasia" and of course in cases of "capital punishment" especially in cases of sedition and male insubordination to Matriarchy State. At the end that's exactly the work of an Imperial Prosecutrix "chase male offenders."

And finally, Seventhly, here I want to give a general summary focused on "the Empress." As you were able to see, the role of the Empress is Paramount in "Gynarchy," She is in fact like a Queen Bee to the honey bees, and it is for that reason that an Empress must be trained for that executive position of the Matriarchy since childhood. Much of the success of the "Gynarchy" depends on the fact that an Empress should not be soft and weak Empress, but on the contrary She must be a stern Empress, a hard and firm Empress, who must set the example to all the Women in the "Gynarchy." Only a harsh and rough Empress can vitalize the Gynarchy, when we see at nature most often the honeycombs that fail are those who have a weak Queen Bee and these honeycombs usually are destined for extinction: While on the contrary the honeycombs that have a strong Queen Bee are destined to success, and that success can be felt in the honey that has produced that honeycomb. That's why if an Empress need to set an example, i.e., with Her own son then She does it without hesitation, in any area that is required, from the castration of Her own son, or to the euthanasia of Her own son, or to even a capital punishment of Her own son then She does it. These three are like the most radical exampes, but we can summarize this point that the Empress must set an example in exercising the full "Gynarchy" with Her own male relatives always and no matter what, with no exceptions allowed even for Her own son or any other male relative. When to exercise the "Mercy" or not is something that the "chosen" Woman to be a future Empress must be taught during Her Gynarchal instruction and education, but we can say that and 80/20 rule is the most optimum, which means She must only have mercy in the 20% of the cases, in other words She must have "mercy" in rarely occasions, even if the male is innocent She must deny "mercy" in the 80% of the cases. A good Empress certainly will allow as many castrations of male drone/domestic offenders as possible, as well She must allow as many male euthanasias as possible and of course She must allow as many capital punishments as possible in order to safeguard the Matriarchy State from sedition, insurrection and male rebellion against the Gynarchic Deeds of Foundation its Principles and the Matriarchal State Itself.

Blessed be the Gynarchic Goddess!

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pannaginip · 3 months

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ABS-CBN: Divorce bill reaches House plenary

A bill seeking to legalize divorce in the Philippines has been elevated to the plenary of the House of Representatives.

House Bill 9349, authored by 71 congressmen, was sponsored before the plenary on Tuesday.

Under House Bill 9349, among the grounds for absolute divorce are: physical violence or grossly abusive conduct directed against the petitioner or a child of the petitioner, drug addiction, habitual alcoholism, or chronic gambling, homosexuality, marital infidelity, and abandonment without justifiable cause for more than one year.

"Hindi natin nire-recognize ang quickie divorce… ‘yung Las Vegas-type of divorce at ‘yung no-fault divorce, ito ay hindi natin tinatanggap… Ang ating divorce proceedings ay dadaan sa judicial process, ngunit may mandato ang estado na kailangan ito ay expeditious at affordable," [Albay 1st District Representative Edcel Lagman] said.

[We will not recognize "quickie divorce"... the Las Vegas-type divorce and the no-fault divorce, these we will not accept... And our divorce proceedings will go through the judicial process, but there will be mandates for states to keep these expeditious and affordable.]

When marriage is dissolved, divorced spouses shall have the right to re-marry.

Meanwhile, Senator Risa Hontiveros said she remains hopeful that her penned Dissolution of Marriage Act report or Senate Bill 2443 will be able to pass the upper chamber.

The proposed measure, which has been languishing in the plenary since September 18, 2023, aims to expand the grounds to dissolve a union.

Hontiveros believes, the Senate still has the time to tackle her penned divorce bill, which she stressed, offers easier process for one to be liberated to his or her problematic and unhealthy married life.

"Basically ano to, 'no fault' na dissolution of marriage," [Basically, this is a 'no-fault' dissolution of marriage] Hontiveros, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality said.

Some of the grounds for divorce being pushed in SB 2443 include the separation of couple for five straight years; commission of rape and irreconcilable differences.

2024 Feb. 21

#divorce bill #philippines #translations

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thatstormygeek · 5 months

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Hey, remember when the cops raided that newspaper editor's house and then his mom died the next day?

The number of legal guardrails authorities blew through Aug. 11 in their quest to seize computers and terrorize, intentionally or not, the publishers and staff of the Record should be of concern to anyone who cares about democracy. New reporting by KSHB-TV makes it clear that it wasn’t just local authorities who kicked federal and state protections in considering the execution of a search warrant on a newspaper, but that the state’s highest investigative agency, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, knew about the impending raid — and did nothing to stop it.

Cody had left his role as a captain with the Kansas City, Missouri, police department under a cloud of scrutiny in April and took the job at Marion, a town of fewer than 2,000 in east central Kansas. In early October, after being suspended by the city council, Cody resigned as Marion police chief. Viar, the magistrate judge, was the target of a disciplinary complaint from a Topeka resident who was outraged Viar would sign off on the warrant. On Dec. 6, the Kansas Commission on Judicial Conduct said in a letter it had dismissed the complaint, saying there wasn’t evidence of “incompetence.”

#us politics #kansas #kansas reflector #max mccoy #marion county record #freedom of the press

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mariacallous · 8 months

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It was 4:17 A.M. on February 6th in Antakya, an ancient Turkish city near the Syrian border, when the earth tore open and people’s beds began to shake. On the third floor of an apartment in the Ekinci neighborhood, Anwar Saadeddin, a former brigadier general in the Syrian Army, awoke to the sounds of glass breaking, cupboard doors banging, and jars of tahini and cured eggplant spilling onto the floor. He climbed out of bed, but, for almost thirty seconds, he was unable to keep his footing; the building was moving side to side. When the earthquake subsided, he tried to call his daughter Rula, who lived down the road, but the cellular network was down.

Thirty seconds after the first quake, the building started moving again, this time up and down, with such violence that an exterior wall sheared open, and rain started pouring in. The noise was tremendous—concrete splitting, rebar bending, plates shattering, neighbors screaming. When the shaking stopped, about a minute later, Saadeddin, who is in his late sixties, and his wife walked down three flights of stairs, dressed in pajamas and sandals, and went out into the cold.

“All of Antakya was black—there was no electricity anywhere,” Saadeddin recalled. Thousands of the city’s buildings had collapsed. Survivors spilled into the streets, crowding rubble-strewn alleyways and searching for open ground, as minarets toppled and glass shards fluttered down from tower blocks. The general and his wife set off in the direction of the building where Rula lived, with her husband, Mustafa, and their four children.

A third quake shook the ground. When Saadeddin made it to his daughter’s apartment block, flashes of lighting illuminated what was now a fourteen-story grave. The building—which had been completed less than two years earlier—had twisted as it toppled over, crushing many of the residents. Saadeddin felt his body drained of all emotion, almost as if it didn’t belong to him.

Saadeddin was not the only person searching for Rula and her family. For the past decade, her husband, Mustafa, had quietly served as the deputy chief of Syria investigations for the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, a group that has captured more than a million pages of documents from Syrian military and intelligence facilities. Using these files, lawyers at the CIJA have prepared some of the most comprehensive war-crimes cases since the Nuremberg trials, targeting senior Syrian regime officers—including the President, Bashar al-Assad. After the earthquake, the group directed its investigative focus into a search-and-rescue operation for members of its own Syrian team, many of whom had been displaced to southern Turkey after more than a decade of war. By the end of the third day, nearly everyone was accounted for. Two investigators had lost children; one of them had also lost his wife. But Mustafa was still missing.

For as long as Mustafa had been working for the CIJA, the group had kept his identity secret—even after it captured a Syrian intelligence document that showed that the regime knew about his investigative work and was actively hunting him down. “He was probably my best investigator,” Mustafa’s supervisor, an Australian who goes by Mick, told me, during a recent visit to the Turkish-Syrian border. Documents that Mustafa obtained, and witness interviews that he conducted, have assisted judicial proceedings in the United States, France, Belgium, Germany, and several other European jurisdictions. According to a CIJA estimate, Mustafa “either directly obtained or supported in the acquisition” of more than two hundred thousand pages of internal Syrian regime documents, likely making him—by sheer volume of evidence collected—the most prolific war-crimes investigator in history.

Twelve years into the Syrian war, at least half the population has been displaced, often multiple times, under varied circumstances of individual tragedy. No one knows the actual death toll—not even to the nearest hundred thousand. And yet the Syrian regime’s crimes continue apace. “The prisons are full,” Bill Wiley, the CIJA’s founder and executive director, told me. “All the offenses that started being carried out at scale in 2011 are still being perpetrated. Unlawful detention, physical abuse amounting to torture, extrajudicial killing, sexual offenses—all of that continues. War crimes on the battlefield, particularly in the context of aerial operations. There are still chemical attacks. It all continues. But, as long as there’s the drip, drip, drip of Western prosecutions, pursuant to universal jurisdiction, it’s really difficult to envision the normalization of the regime.”

Before the Syrian revolution, Mustafa was a trial lawyer, living and working in Al-Rastan, a suburb of the central city of Homs. He and his wife, Rula, had three small children, and Rula was pregnant with the fourth. In early 2011, when Syrians took to the streets to protest against the regime—which had ruled for almost half a century—Assad declared that anyone who did not contribute to “burying sedition” was “a part of it.” Suddenly Mustafa was caught in a delicate position, since many of Rula’s male relatives were military officers.

Her father and her uncles had joined the Syrian armed forces as young men, and served Assad’s father for many years before they served him. In the mid-nineties, Assad’s older brother died in a car crash, and he was called back from his studies in London and sent to a military academy in Homs. Eventually, he joined a staff officers’ course, where Anwar Saadeddin—then a colonel and a military engineer—says he spent a year and a half in his class.

Assad became President in 2000, after his father died, and for the next decade Saadeddin carried on with his duties without complaint. In 2003, Saadeddin was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. At the outset of the revolution, his younger son was a lieutenant, and he was two years from retirement.

Mustafa and Rula’s fourth child was born on April 5, 2011. Three days later, security forces shot a number of protesters in the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs, including a disabled man, who was unable to run away. They dragged him from the site and returned his mutilated corpse to his family the following evening. From then on, Homs was the site of some of the largest anti-regime protests—and the most violent crackdown.

On April 19th, thousands of people gathered for a sit-in beneath a clock tower. At about midnight, officers warned that anyone who didn’t leave voluntarily would be removed by force. A couple of hours passed; a thousand people remained. At dawn, the people of Homs awoke to traces of a massacre. A witness later reported that religious leaders who had stayed to treat the wounded and to tend to the dead were summarily executed. Several others recalled that the bodies were removed with dump trucks, and that the blood of the dead and wounded was washed away with hoses.

The day after the massacre, according to documents that were later captured from Assad’s highest-level security committee, the regime decided to embark on a “new phase” in the crackdown, to “demonstrate the power and capacity of the state.” Nine days later, regime forces killed at least nineteen protesters in Al-Rastan, where Mustafa and Rula lived. Mustafa wasn’t involved in politics or human-rights work, beyond discussions of basic democratic reforms, but he was appalled by the overtly criminal manner in which security forces and associated militias carried out their campaign with impunity. Locals formed neighborhood-protection units, and soon took up arms against the state.

A few months later, Mustafa briefly sneaked out of Syria to attend a training session in Turkey, led by Bill Wiley, a Canadian war-crimes investigator who had previously worked for various tribunals and the International Criminal Court. Wiley, and others in his world, had noticed a jurisdictional gap in accountability for Syria and had begun casting about for Syrian lawyers who might be up for a perilous, but worthy, task. Although there was no tribunal set up for Syria, and Russia and China had blocked efforts to refer Syria to the I.C.C., Wiley and his associates had reasoned that the process of collecting evidence is purely a matter of risk tolerance and logistics. The work of criminal investigators is different from that of human-rights N.G.O.s: groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch produce and disseminate reports on horrific violations and abuse, but Wiley trained Mustafa and the other Syrians in attendance to collect the kind of evidence that could allow prosecutors to assign individual criminal responsibility to senior military and intelligence officers. A video showing tanks firing on unarmed protesters might influence public opinion, but a pile of military communications that proved which commanders were in charge of the operation could one day land someone in jail.

“The first task was to ferret out primary-source material—documents, in particular, generated by the regime,” Wiley told me. “We were looking for prima-facie evidence, not intelligence product or information to inform the public.”

Mustafa instantly grasped the urgency of the project. By day, he carried on with his law practice. But, in secret, he started building up sources within the armed opposition. As they captured new territory, he would go into security and intelligence facilities, box up documents, and move them to secret locations, like farmhouses or caves, farther from the confrontation lines.

“By 2012, we had already started to get some structure,” Wiley recalled. He secured funding from Western governments, and eventually the group settled on a name: the Commission for International Justice and Accountability. “We had our guys in Raqqa, Idlib, Aleppo, and so forth—at least one guy in all the key areas,” he said. From there, the CIJA built out each team—between two and four individuals, working under the head of each provincial cell. “And Mustafa was our core guy in Homs.”

Anwar Saadeddin soon found himself wielding his position in order to rescue relatives who were caught up in the conflict. His younger son, an Army lieutenant, was detained by military operatives on the outskirts of Damascus, after another officer in his brigade reported him for watching Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera. According to an internal military communication, which was later captured by the CIJA, Assad believed that foreign reporting on Syria amounted to “psychological warfare aimed at creating a state of internal chaos.”

When Saadeddin’s son was detained, he recalled, “I interfered just to decrease the detention period to thirty days.” Soon afterward, he learned that Mustafa was a target of military intelligence in Homs, where the local facility, Branch 261, was headed by one of Saadeddin’s friends: Mohammed Zamrini.

Mustafa wasn’t calling for an armed rebellion, and, at the time, neither the regime nor his father-in-law knew of his connection to Wiley and the CIJA. But rebel factions were active in Al-Rastan, and Mustafa was known to have urged them not to destroy any public establishments. To hard-liners in the regime, such interaction was considered tantamount to collaboration. “So I went with Mustafa to the branch,” Saadeddin told me. Zamrini agreed to detain him as a formality—for about twelve hours, with light interrogations and no torture or abuse—so that he could essentially cross Mustafa off the list.

In the next few months, the security situation rapidly deteriorated. The Army encircled rebellious neighborhoods near Homs and shelled them to the ground. Saadeddin’s son, who was serving near Damascus, was arrested a second time, and in order to get him released Saadeddin had to supplicate himself in the office of Assef Shawkat, Assad’s brother-in-law and the deputy minister of defense. In Homs, Saadeddin started driving Mustafa to and from work in his light-blue Kia; as a brigadier general, he could move passengers through checkpoints without them being searched or arrested.

But Saadeddin was beginning to find his position untenable. He sensed that the regime’s policy of total violence would lead to the destruction of the country. That spring, he began to share his fears and frustrations with close colleagues and friends, including the commander of his son’s brigade. But it was a perilous game: Assad’s highest-level security committee had instructed the heads of regional security branches to hunt down “security agents who are irresolute or unenthusiastic” in carrying out their duties. According to a U.N. inquiry, some officers were detained and tortured for having “attempted to spare civilians” on whom they had been ordered to fire.

That spring, Saadeddin’s car was stopped at one of the checkpoints that ordinarily waved him through. It was the first time that his position served not as protection against interrogation but as a reason to question his loyalty. The regime was quickly losing territory, and as the conflict spiralled out of control many senior officers found themselves approaching the limits of their willingness to go along. He and his brothers had “reached a point where we would either stand by the regime and have to take part in atrocities, or we would have to defect,” he told me.

That July, Saadeddin gathered his brothers, his sons, two nephews, and several other military officers in front of a small camera, somewhere near the Turkish-Syrian border. Dressed in his uniform, he announced that the army to which he had pledged his allegiance some four decades earlier had “deviated from its mission” and turned on its citizens instead. To honor the Syrian public’s “steadfastness in the face of barbaric assaults by Assad’s bloody gangs, we have decided to defect from the Army,” he said. It was one of the largest mass defections of Syrian officers, and his plan was to take a leading role in the rebellion—to fight for freedom “until martyrdom or victory.” In response, Saadeddin told me, their former colleagues sent troops to destroy their houses and those of their family members. They expropriated their land and killed several of their relatives.

By now, the regime had ceded swaths of Syria’s border with Turkey to various rebel forces. Saadeddin moved his family across the border and into a refugee camp that the Turkish government had set up for military and intelligence officers who defected. Then he went back to Syria, to try to bring some order and unity to the rebel factions that were battling his former colleagues.

But Mustafa and his family stayed behind in Al-Rastan, which was now firmly in rebel hands. The regime’s loss of control at the Turkish border meant that the CIJA could start moving its captured documents out of the country.

“It was complicated, reaching the border, because the confrontation lines were so fluid,” Wiley recalled. “And there were multiple bodies who were overtly hostile to CIJA”—not only the regime but also a growing number of extremist groups who were suspicious of anyone working for a Western N.G.O. During the first document extraction, a courier was shot and injured. During the next, another courier vanished with a suitcase full of documents. “Just fucking disappeared,” Wiley said. “Probably thought he could sell them.” Mustafa recruited a cousin to transport some files to Turkey. But, after the delivery, on the way back to Al-Rastan, the cousin took a minibus, and the vehicle was ambushed by regime troops. “He was shot, but it was unclear if he was wounded or dead when they took him away,” another Syrian CIJA investigator, whom I’ll call Omar, told me. For the next several weeks, regime agents blackmailed Mustafa, saying that for twenty thousand dollars they would release his cousin from custody. But, when Mustafa asked for proof of life, they failed to provide it—suggesting that the cousin had already died in custody.

By now, Wiley had issued new orders for the extraction process. “I said, ‘O.K., there needs to be a plan, and I need to know what the plan is,’ ” he recalled. “ ‘How are you getting from A to B? What risks are there between point A and point B? And how are you going to ameliorate those risks?’ As opposed to just throwing the shit in the car and going, ‘Well, God decides.’ ”

Saadeddin spent much of the next eighteen months trying to organize disparate rebel groups into a unified command. He travelled all over northern Syria, as rebels took new ground, and met with all manner of revolutionaries—from secular defectors to hard-line field commanders. By the summer of 2013, the regime had ceded control of most of northern Syria. But there was little cohesion between the rebel factions, and ISIS and Al Qaeda had come to exploit the power vacuum in rebel territory. At some point, Saadeddin recalled, he scolded a Tunisian ISIS commander for arousing sectarian and ethnic tensions, and imposing extremism onto local communities. “He responded that I was an apostate, and suggested that I should be killed,” Saadeddin told me.

In Al-Rastan, a regime shell penetrated the walls of Mustafa’s house, but it didn’t explode. At that point, Rula and the children moved to Reyhanli, a small Turkish village that is so close to the border that you can eat at a kebab shop there while watching sheep graze in Syria. It was also a short drive from the defected officers’ camp, where Rula’s mother and several other relatives were living. But Mustafa stayed behind, to carry out his investigative work for the CIJA.

“When new areas were liberated, the security branches were raided, and many people took files,” Omar recalled. Some of them didn’t grasp the significance of the files; at least one soldier burned them for warmth. “But most people knew the documents would be useful, someday—they just didn’t know what to do with them. So they just kept them. And the challenge was in identifying who had what, where.”

But, before long, Omar continued, “Mustafa built a wide network of contacts in rebel territory. Word got out that he was collecting documents, and so eventually people would refer others who had taken documents to him.” Sometimes he encountered a reluctance to turn over the originals, until he shared with them the outlines of the CIJA’s objective and paths to accountability. “At that point, they would usually relent, understanding that his use for them was the best use.”

As his profile in rebel territory grew, Mustafa remained highly secretive. But, from time to time, he asked his father-in-law for introductions to other defected military and intelligence officers. By now, Saadeddin recalled, “I knew the nature of his work, but I didn’t discuss it with him.” There was an understanding that it was best to compartmentalize any sensitive information, for the sake of the family. “Sometimes my wife didn’t even know what I was doing,” Saadeddin said. “But I do know that, at a certain point, through his interviews, Mustafa came to know these defected officers even better than I did.”

In 2014, Wiley restructured the CIJA’s Syrian team; as deputy chief of investigations, Mustafa now presided over all the group’s provincial cells. “He was very good at finding documents, and he understood evidence and law,” Wiley said. “But he was also respected by his peers. And he had a natural empathy, which translated into him being a very good interviewer” of victims and perpetrators alike. According to Omar, Mustafa often cut short his appearances at social gatherings, citing family or work. “I know it’s a cliché, but he really was a family guy,” Wiley told me. “But where he excelled in our view—because we don’t need a bunch of good family guys, to be blunt—is that he could execute.”

That July, Assad’s General Intelligence Directorate apparently learned of the CIJA’s activities, long before the group had been named in the press. In a document that was sent to at least ten intelligence branches—and which was later captured by the CIJA—the directorate identified Mustafa as “vice-chairman” of the group, and also listed the names of the leading investigators within each of the CIJA’s governorate cells. At the bottom of the document, the head of the directorate handwrote orders to “arrest them along with their collaborators.”

By now, Western governments, which had pledged to support secular opposition groups, found the situation in northern Syria unpalatable; there was no way to guarantee that weapons given to a secular armed faction would not end up in jihadi hands. Saadeddin had begun to lose hope in the revolution—a sentiment that grew only stronger when Assad’s forces killed more than a thousand civilians with sarin gas, and the Obama Administration backed away from its “red-line” warning of retaliation. “At that point, I lost all faith in the international community,” Saadeddin told me. “I felt that they didn’t want Syria to become liberated—they wanted Syria to stay as it was.” He moved into the defected officers’ camp in southern Turkey, where he remained—feeling “rotten,” consumed by a sense of impotence and frustration—for most of the next decade.

I first came into contact with the CIJA late in the summer of 2015. By that point, the group had smuggled more than six hundred thousand documents out of Syria, and had prepared a legal brief that assigned individual criminal responsibility for the torture and murder of thousands of people in detention centers to senior members of the Syrian security-intelligence apparatus—including Assad himself. In the following years, the CIJA expanded its operations to Iraq, Myanmar, Libya, and Ukraine. But Syria was always at the core.

“In terms of the opposition overrunning regime territory—that effectively ceased in September, 2015, when the Russians came in,” Wiley recalled. In the following years, Russian fighter jets pummelled areas under rebel control, while fighters from Russian mercenary groups, Iranian militias, and Hezbollah reinforced Assad’s troops on the ground. In time, the confrontation lines settled, with the country effectively carved into areas under regime, opposition, Turkish, and Kurdish control. But Mustafa and other investigators continued to identify troves of documents, scattered among various hidden sites. “We’d acquire them from different places, and then concentrate them,” Wiley said. Omar told me that it was best to keep files as close to the border as possible, to limit the chance of their being destroyed in the event that the regime took back ground. “Mustafa would sometimes spend a week or more prepping for document extractions,” Omar said. “He would sleep in tents,” in camps filled with other displaced civilians, “while he waited for the right moment to move the files closer to the border.”

At the CIJA’s headquarters, in Western Europe, the organization built cases against senior intelligence officers, like the double agent Khaled al-Halabi, and provided evidence to European prosecutors who were investigating lesser targets all over the continent. In recent years, Western prosecutors and police agencies have sent hundreds of requests for investigative assistance to the CIJA headquarters; when the answers can’t be found in the existing files, analysts refer the inquiries, via Mick, the Australian in southern Turkey, to the Syrians on the ground. “We wouldn’t tell them who’s asking, or who the suspects are,” Wiley said. “We’d just say, ‘O.K., we’re interested in witnesses to a particular crime base’—a security-intelligence facility, a static killing, an execution, that kind of thing. And then they would identify witnesses and do a screening interview.” When requests came through, Mick told me, “Mustafa was usually the first team member that I went to, because his networks were so good.”

During the peak years of the pandemic, Mustafa identified and collected witness statements against a trio of Syrian ISIS members who had been active in a remote village in the deserts of central Syria and were now scattered across Western Europe. All three men were arrested after his death.

Perhaps Mustafa’s most enduring contribution to the CIJA’s casework is found in one of the group’s most comprehensive, confidential investigative briefs, which I read at the headquarters this spring. It’s a three-hundred-page document, with almost thirteen hundred footnotes, establishing individual criminal responsibility for war crimes carried out during the regime’s 2012 siege of Baba Amr, a neighborhood in the southern part of Mustafa’s home city, Homs. Other cases have centered on torture in detention facilities; this is the first Syrian war-crimes brief that focusses on the conduct of hostilities, and it spells out, in astonishing and historic detail, a litany of crimes, ranging from indiscriminate shelling to mass executions of civilians who were rounded up and killed in warehouses and factories as regime forces swept through. The Homs Brief—for which Mustafa collected much of the underlying evidence—also assigns criminal responsibility to individual commanders within the Syrian Army’s 18th Tank Division, which carried out the assault.

“He thought he was contributing to a better Syria,” Wiley said. “When—and what it would look like—was unsure. But he believed in what he was doing. He could have fucked off years ago. We probably could have gotten him to Canada. We talked about it, because one of his daughters had a congenital heart issue.” Nevertheless, he stayed.

Last year, Mustafa bought an apartment on the eleventh floor of a new tower block in Antakya. Rula’s aunt moved into the same building, a couple of stories below. Her parents left the defected officers’ camp and moved into another apartment block, a short walk up the road. A few months later, Mick recalled, “Mustafa said to me, ‘When I’m at home with my family, it doesn’t matter what’s happening outside—it doesn’t matter if there’s a war. When I’m at home, I’m at peace.’ ”

Last December, Mick was visiting Mustafa’s apartment when the floor began to shake. “It spooked me—it was my first time feeling this kind of tremor,” Mick recalled. Mustafa laughed and said that they happen “all the time.” Then he went to check on Rula and the children, who reported that they hadn’t even felt it.

A couple of months later, Mick awoke to news of the catastrophic earthquake and tried to call members of his Syrian team. But the cellular networks were down in Antakya, and it was impossible for him to travel there, because the local airport’s runway had buckled, along with many local roads.

Saadeddin’s sister was dug out of the complex alive; her husband survived as well, but died in a hospital soon afterward, without anyone in the family knowing where he was. On the fourth day of search-and-rescue operations, Mustafa’s passport was found in the rubble. Then his laptop, then his wife’s handbag. “When they found the bodies,” Omar said, “Mustafa was hugging his daughter, his wife was hugging their son, and the other two children were hugging each other.”

Omar spent the next several days sleeping in his car, along with his wife and six children. Thousands of aftershocks shook the region, and, by the time I met with him, a few hundred metres from the Syrian border, he was so rattled that he reacted to everyday sounds as if they might signal a building’s collapse. His breath was short and his eyes welled with tears; Mustafa had been one of his best friends, and he had also lost eleven relatives to the quake, all of whom had been displaced from the same village in northern Syria. Then his young son walked into the room, and he turned his head. “We try to hide from our children our fear and our grief, so that they don’t feel as if we are weak,” he said.

A few weeks after the earthquake, there was an empty seat at a prestigious international-criminal-investigations course, in the Hague. Mustafa had been scheduled to attend. “We can mitigate the effects of war, except bad luck, but we didn’t factor an earthquake into the plan, institutionally,” Wiley told me. Mick coördinated humanitarian assistance for displaced investigators, and, as Wiley put it, “the operational posture came back really quickly.” Omar has now taken over Mustafa’s leadership duties. “Keep in mind how resilient this cadre is,” Wiley continued. “They’re already all refugees, perhaps with the rare exception. They had already lost their homes, lost all their stuff.”

It was the middle of April, more than two months after the quake. Much of Antakya had been completely flattened, and what still stood was cracked and broken, completely abandoned, and poised to collapse. Mick and I made our way through the old city on foot; the alleys were too narrow for digging equipment to go through, and so we found ourselves climbing over rubble, as if the buildings had fallen the day before. The pets of those entombed in the collapsed buildings followed us, still wearing their collars—bewildered, brand-new strays.

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yeahey · 9 days

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It looks as if ALL of the cases against Trump are hanging by very thin threads. It has been reported that Judge Engoron may be under investigation by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct because of a private conversation that he had with an attorney, but he didn't tell Trump 0r the prosecution. This is what happens when political expediency take precedence over ethics.

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carolinemillerbooks · 16 days

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New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/findidng-the-golden-mean/

Findidng The Golden Mean

My U. S. Senator voted against the Ukrainian-Istreal aid package that Congress passed recently. He said he opposed it because of Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct in the Gaza war. I like my Senator. Nonetheless, I sent him an email that accused him of being long on principle, but short on common sense. The bill he rejected included aid for the people of Gaza, victims forced to live in tents under a barrage of bombs. We live in an imperfect world, so life requires compromises. People with pollen allergies, for example, accept that bees need clover fields to survive. Sometimes, imperfection can be a positive force. Donald Trump’s flawed presidency has taught us that our 235-year-old Constitution may do more than guarantee equality for all. If the Supreme Court upholds Trump’s claim of presidential immunity, it will mean our head of state is a monarch able to commit any crime without fear of consequences. The High Court considered Presidential immunity concerning civil conduct three decards ago. A case in 1982 involving Richard Nixon ended with a decision that gave a sitting President a degree of absolution. The Constitution makes no mention of that, but the judges based their findings on the Speech or Debate section of the document. It grants civil immunity to members of Congress. Trump pushes the envelope when he argues that immunity extends to Presidential crimes. If the integrity of some jurists deciding Trump’s case weren’t also in disrepute, all might be well. But the High Court has been slow to promulgate rules of conduct for itself and members like Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas have shown little inclination to police themselves. A citizen may wonder how these appointed jurists came to hold their sweeping authority over the Executive and Legislative branches of government. Article 111 of the Constitution restricts them to disputes between the states or those arising among ambassadors and other high-ranking ministers. Their expanded authority arose from Maybury v. Madison. In 1801, before leaving office, President John Adams commissioned William Maybury to be a justice of the peace. Adams’s successor, James Madison, refused to deliver the appointment, so Marbury sued. Taking the Federal government to court was novel, so before hearing the argument, the Supreme Court had to determine if it had jurisdiction. Chief Justice John Marshall decided that Maybury’s petition raised a legal question, so the Court could rule. That opinion which was never challenged was far-reaching. The Constitution, being silent on the matter, Marshall and his cohorts chose to reserve for themselves extraordinary power over the two other branches of government. Article 111 does offer a defense against an overreaching judiciary. Court-stripping permits Congress to limit or reduce a state court’s jurisdiction in federal matters except for those originally granted. The remedy poses complications that I’m not qualified to discuss. What matters is that besides Court-stripping, Congress has only one other way to assert its authority. It can write new legislation. If a bill fails, the judicial ruling stands. Because the High Court chooses the cases it hears, its involvement can seem political. For example, when it overturned Roe v. Wade with its almost 50-year-old standing, members of the public were outraged and called for a change in that body’s composition, either by adding to the number of members or imposing term limits Times of social and political upheaval can encourage extremism. Some people become heated enough to demand a scorched earth policy and let democracy be damned. Those of us standing in the middle watch in awe. Fortunately, enough of us exist to enforce the Golden Mean. At once a mathematical and philosophical construct, the Golden Mean, which also exists in nature, calls for a middle way–living without the extremes of excess and deficiency. It teaches that compromise enables inclusion. In ancient thought, it defined a moral life. When my Senator rejected aid for Gaza because the package was imperfect, he abandoned the middle way. He also forgot two important truths. First, he forgot that Israel is our ally and the only democracy in the Middle East. Its citizens deserve our support regardless of Netanyahu’s crimes. He will answer for his conduct in his country’s next election and, eventually, at the International Criminal Court in Haag. Second, my Senator forgot that imperfection attends to every human endeavor. Purity is the posture of angels and those who imagine they are.

#Article 111 of Constitution #Benjamin Netanyahu #Cheif Justice John Marshall #court stripping #Donald Trump #Golden Mean #Justice Clarence Thomas #Justice Neil Gorsuch #Maybury v. Madison #presidential immunity #Roe v Wade #Speech & Debate in U. S. Constitution #Supreme Court code of ethics #Ukrainian-Isreal aid

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dankusner · 21 days

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San Antonio lawyer and judge tangle at Fiesta party; cops called Elizabeth Zavala

Local lawyer Leigh Cutter, left, and Bexar County Court at Law Judge Melanie Lira confront each other during a Fiesta party thrown by the Alamo Area Criminal Defense Group on Wednesday at Mi Tierra. Both women filed police reports.

A Bexar County judge and a lawyer got into an altercation Wednesday night at a Fiesta celebration attended by many who work at the county’s justice center.

Leigh Cutter and Judge Melanie M. Lira, who presides over Bexar County Court at Law No. 7, each reported the incident to San Antonio police and both later disputed what the other told responding officers.

Cutter accused Lira of physically and verbally assaulting her at the party, which was thrown by a defense lawyers group at the Mariachi Bar in the Mi Tierra Cafe at Market Square.

Cutter said she had one of her law office assistants take a video of the encounter on her cellphone, then filed a report with San Antonio police.

“She told my staff, she said, ‘Where’s Leigh? ’ and she comes, grabs me and body checks me,” Cutter said of Lira on Thursday. “I am still a little dumbfounded. … You hold judges in a different regard. It kills me. None of it was OK.”

Cutter added that Lira threatened her and the cases and clients that she has in Lira’s court, which is one of the county’s two misdemeanor family violence courts.

Reached Thursday, Lira said Cutter had been posting “highly inappropriate and unprofessional” things about her on social media.

When she got home from the party Wednesday night and saw a post from Cutter alleging assault, she filed a criminal harassment complaint against Cutter with the San Antonio Police Department.

She said she didn’t think Cutter had any cases in her court, but the possibility that she might in the future prompted her to try to clear the air with her about personal things that Cutter had said about her.

She said she told Cutter to “just leave me alone.”

“I am completely shocked by these allegations.” Lira said. “It wasn’t even an argument. … I saw an opportunity to have a conversation.”

Lira said she did not assault Cutter, noting that she was in 2½-inch heels and that Cutter is much taller than her.

“I had to lean up to talk to her,” she said.

Cutter disputed parts of Lira’s complaint, including an allegation that she told an officer that both she and Lira were intoxicated. Cutter said she only had two drinks.

Lira said she left the Fiesta event and almost immediately began receiving phone calls from people who saw a picture posted on an Alamo Area Criminal Defense Group social media account showing Lira facing Cutter and the words, “This is a sitting judge in Bexar County, TX. She sought me out and assaulted me for no reason. Police reports were made. My heart is shattered — this is-in-no-way- a representation of our benches in Bexar (sic).”

Cutter said she posted it Wednesday night and took it down on Thursday. She said she planned to report the incident to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.

Lira said she and Cutter “barely see each other. We don’t run in the same circles.”

Cutter’s report to police included an allegation that an incident occurred between Lira and an ex-boyfriend of Cutter’s.

Lira denied that anything like Cutter’s “salacious story” had occurred.

Judge Melissa Vara, who presides over County Court at Law No. 15 and handles administrative matters for the misdemeanor judges, said she was at the Fiesta gathering but left before the confrontation.

“The police officers were able to ascertain that no assault took place,” Vara said, adding that if any of Cutter’s cases land in Lira’s court, they would be reassigned to other judges while Lira’s complaint against Cutter is investigated.

Harassment is a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a fine not to exceed $2,000.

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lakelandg · 1 month

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Polk County judge faces suspension, reprimand over election campaign conduct

A Polk County judge could face a 25-day suspension and a public reprimand because of conduct during a 2022 election campaign, according to a revised recommendation filed Wednesday at the Florida Supreme Court. Judge John Flynn and an investigative panel of the state Judicial Qualifications Commission reached an agreement on the proposed discipline after the Supreme Court last month ordered the…

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thehawkseyecn · 2 months

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nadiasindi · 4 months

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Just like our Oregon Criminal Officials such Gov. Brown, Rep. Nathanson, Sen. Floyd Prozanski etc.. with the help of Wells Fargo. who are covering up for the most criminal Official: Late Frohnmayer, late Rep. Bob Ackerman who stole my Fully paid Condo!

My social Security # is BLOCKED at the Employment office, for more than FOUR years NOW. I can't sign in to look for a job! This had happened after my name was cleared from the fabricated criminal record that was done by the criminal late Dave Frohnmayer!

Gov.Kate Brown Appointed 100 Judges.She made sure before she leaves, she appointed TWO more Judges to cover her back!

Arrest Gov. Brown, Rep. Nathanson & the Rest of Oregon Criminal Officials who are complicit with the Most Criminal Officials late Frohnmayer, late Rep. Ackerman!

OR. late A.G. Frohnmayer had deleted all records in L.C. It shows I'd changed my name to Nadia Sindi.Left old name Faika Sindi.Changed letters to Saika Findi! Frohnmayer has trapped me in a criminal record since 1987!

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currenthunt · 4 months

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Justice K.S.Puttaswamy vs. Union of India, 2017 landmark judgment declaring privacy as a fundamental right

The landmark judgment in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy vs Union of India, 2017 declared the fundamental right to privacy. However, concerns have emerged regarding the extra-constitutional powers granted by Section 132 of the Income-Tax Act,1961 in India as they seem to violate the fundamental rights of the citizens. Section 132 of the Income Tax Act,1961 - The section was introduced in 1961, as part of Income Tax Act,1961, to replace the Taxation on Income (Investigation Commission) Act, 1947, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in Suraj Mall Mohta vs A.V. Visvanatha Sastri (1954) on the ground that it treated a certain class of assesses differently from others, thereby violating the guarantee of equal treatment contained in Article 14 of the Constitution. - The original income-tax law in 1922 lacked search and seizure powers. - Section 132 of the Income-Tax Act, 1961, empowers the tax authorities to conduct searches and seizures of persons and properties, without any prior judicial warrant, if they have a “reason to believe” that the person has concealed or evaded income. - It grants authorities the power to search buildings, places, vehicles, or aircraft based on suspicion of hiding financial assets. - It allows for the seizure of books of account, money, bullion, jewellery, or other valuable items discovered during the search. Additionally, tax officials can seize such items found in the possession of any person during a search or survey under the Act. Case Related to Section 132 of the Income Tax Act,1961 Pooran Mal vs Director of Inspection (1973) - The constitutionality of this provision was challenged in the case of Pooran Mal vs Director of Inspection (1973). - The Supreme Court upheld the law, citing its own judgment in M.P. Sharma vs Satish Chandra(1954) by emphasizing that the power of search and seizure is essential for the protection of social security and is regulated by law. - The court also noted that the Constitution does not recognize a fundamental right to privacy similar to the American Fourth Amendment about searches and seizures. - The American Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. - It was concluded that statutory provisions for searches do not defeat the constitutional protection under Article 20(3). - The judgment in M.P. Sharma was concerned with searches under the Code of Criminal Procedure, while searches under the Income-Tax Act do not require a judicial licence. - The Court's reading of the law has since changed, with M.P. Sharma being formally overruled. The right to privacy is now considered intrinsic to the right to personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution. Challenges Regarding Section 132 of the Income Tax Act,1961 Breach of the Proportionality Principle - Section 132 of the Income-Tax Act, despite not being formally challenged, suggests a potential breach of the doctrine of proportionality principle. - The state's power to search and seize is no longer viewed as a simple tool of social security but is subject to the doctrine of proportionality. This means that its use must be intended for a legitimate aim, rationally connected to its objective, with no alternative less intrusive means available, and a balance struck between the means chosen and the right that is violated. - The Supreme Court in the case of Principal Director of Income Tax vs Laljibhai Kanjibhai Mandalia, 2022 revealed a reliance on the "Wednesbury" principle, a standard of administrative review derived from a UK court judgment, treating search opinions as administrative, not judicial. - Wednesbury principle states that if a decision is so unreasonable that no sensible authority could ever take it, such decisions are liable to be quashed through judicial review. - Critics argue that Post-Puttaswamy, there should be no place for the Wednesbury rule, especially when fundamental rights are at stake, and that any executive action must conform to statutory law in the strictest sense possible. Violation of the Right to Privacy - The right to privacy, a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, includes protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as confidentiality of personal information. - Income Tax searches, however, intrude on individuals' privacy without consent, often based on vague grounds, leading to potential abuse. - Additionally, there is a lack of adequate safeguards and oversight mechanisms to prevent misuse and protect the rights of the individuals subjected to I-T searches. - The absence of stringent safeguards exposes individuals to potential misuse of power by tax authorities. Duration and Conditions of Searches - The Gujarat High Court's questioning of a raid where individuals were allegedly kept in virtual detention for days without proper safeguards highlights concerns about the duration and conditions of such searches. Read the full article

#Bank_PO #BPSC #Current_Affairs #DSSSB #Railway #SSC #UPSC #WBPSC

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judiciarys · 5 months

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Can I become SDM through UPPSC?

Achieving the Dream: Becoming an SDM through UPPSC

Introduction:

The Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC) plays a pivotal role in selecting candidates for various administrative positions, including the esteemed role of Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM). For aspirants seeking to don the hat of an SDM and contribute to the administration of the state, the UPPSC examination pathway is a crucial stepping stone.

UPPSC Examination Overview:

The UPPSC conducts the State Civil Services Examination, which is the gateway to prestigious administrative roles, including that of an SDM. The examination process consists of three main stages: the Preliminary Examination, the Main Examination, and the Interview. Each stage is designed to assess candidates on a range of skills, from general knowledge and aptitude to specific subject expertise.

Qualification and Eligibility:

To be eligible for the UPPSC examination, candidates must meet certain educational criteria and age requirements. A bachelor's degree from a recognized university is typically the minimum educational qualification. The specific eligibility criteria may vary, and aspiring candidates are advised to thoroughly review the official UPPSC notifications for the latest and accurate information.

The Path to SDM:

The journey towards becoming an SDM through UPPSC involves diligent preparation and a comprehensive understanding of the examination syllabus. Aspirants need to excel in both the Preliminary and Main Examinations, covering topics ranging from general studies to specific subjects relevant to the administrative services.

Judicial Adda: Best Judiciary Coaching for UPPSC Law:

For those aspiring to specialize in law and seeking the best coaching for UPPSC law exams, Judicial Adda stands out as a reputable institution. With a track record of success and a commitment to providing quality coaching, Judicial Adda equips candidates with the knowledge and skills needed to excel in the legal aspects of the UPPSC examination.

Judicial Adda offers specialized coaching for UPPSC law, ensuring that candidates are well-prepared for the specific legal components of the examination. The coaching institute provides a structured curriculum, experienced faculty, and comprehensive study materials, giving candidates a competitive edge in the UPPSC examination.

Conclusion:

Becoming an SDM through UPPSC is a commendable goal that requires dedication, hard work, and strategic preparation. Aspirants must stay updated with UPPSC notifications, adhere to eligibility criteria, and seek guidance from reputable coaching institutes like Judicial Adda for specialized legal coaching. With the right approach and resources, aspiring candidates can navigate the UPPSC examination successfully and embark on a fulfilling career in administrative services.

#Best Judiciary Coaching for UPPSC Law

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mariacallous · 5 months

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The State Investigation and Protection Agency arrested Osman Mehmedagic Osmica, former chief of the State Intelligence Agency, OSA, and Ranko Debevac, president of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the capital Sarajevo on Monday.

Bosnia’s Security Minister Nenad Nesic confirmed that Mehmedagic and Debevac were arrested on suspicion of abuse of office.

“They were arrested during the day. They were arrested for abuse of office. There are no untouchables,” Nesic said, N1 reported.

“The individuals are suspected of committing criminal offences related to the abuse of their positions, connected with other criminal acts according to the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Bosnia state-level prosecutor’s office stated after the arrests.

“The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina is conducting an investigation in which the suspect, Mehmedagic, is charged with the crime of abuse of position or authority, forgery of a document and money-laundering,” it added.

According to media reports, Mehmedagic and Debevac were arrested for illegally wiretapping politicians. Klix.ba reported that Debevac was arrested in a restaurant in the capital, where he was with the current OSA director, Almir Dzuvo.

In March this year, Mehmedagic was sanctioned by the US Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, OFAC. The OFAC said Mehmedagic abused the state-owned telecommunications company due to the position he held, for “the benefit of Party of Democratic Action, SDA”, the biggest Bosniak party in the country, using cellular data to follow the movements of politicians not affiliated with the SDA.

“Additionally, Mehmedagic has used his position, threats, and connections to sway candidates from ‘Osmorka’ (‘Eight’), a group of Bosniak and civic parties from BiH {Bosnia and Herzegovina], to support the SDA,” OFAC stated.

“There is also credible information that Mehmedagic has collaborated with criminal networks to enrich himself and his political party,” it continued. Mehmedagic was replaced on February 23.

Debevac was elected as president of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in December, 2016.

In August 2015, the disciplinary commission overseeing judges at the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the body that appoints and disciplines judges and prosecutors, issued a public warning to Debevec.

He was accused of “intentionally providing false, misleading, or insufficient information regarding applications for positions, questions of promotion and advancement in service, or any other matters within the Council’s jurisdiction”.

He was also accused of “conduct in and out of court that damages the reputation of the judicial function”.

This included “inappropriate” contact with an individual involved in proceedings before the state court, as well as making “inappropriate” comments while communicating with a prosecutor in a specific case.

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loblawslawblog2323 · 6 months

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A Trip Through Tribunal History in Celebration of the Hundredth Anniversary of Judicial 3000

It is hard to believe that there was a time when humans lived without “Judicial 3000”. “Judicial 3000” is of course an artificial intelligence program which calculates information to the closest degree in order to determine the fairest solution to various legal conflicts. To celebrate the hundredth anniversary of this program, the staff at the “The Bob Loblaw Law Blog” are looking back at a much more complicated and tenacious time in legal history when mere human mortals sat around and decided various legal and fairness issues. To do this we the staff at the ”The Bob Loblaw Law Blog” traveled to planet Westlaw where we were granted access to various different tribunal hearings. Two caught our attention and we decided to share those with our gracious readers today.

Obviously, we have all heard our history teacher bots talk about the issue of policing in the 2000s, all of which culminated in the tense North American Black Lives Matter protests in the year 2020. The relationship between the citizenry and police was tense particularly within marginalized groups in the earth state formally known as Canada. This remains an important time in history and as such we decided to bring you a glimpse into one of the ways in which such issues were handled. Namely, we bring you an October 17th, 2023, hearing from the Ontario Civilian Police Commission (OCPC).

According to its own website, OCPC was among three civilian police oversight agencies in Ontario. The other two are Special Investigation Unit and Office of the Independent Police Review Director. Before politician-bots ran a strictly centralized government and “Judicial 3000” dealt out remedies for injured parties in a variety of fields, certain legislative documents gave power to administrative tribunals to resolve conflicts. The OCPC got its powers and duties from the Police Services Act, section 22(1) which empowered the board members to uphold prescribed standards of police services. While that is the source of its power, the source of the OCPC’s existence is the Adjudicative Tribunals Accountability, Governance and Appointments Act of 2009. This document chronicles the course of conduct expected of tribunals.

Essentially, the narrative the police adhered to was that Mr. Debungee had been drunk and fallen into the Bay. So, what’s the issue here? Well, the issue is that the death was suspicious and the result of murder. The bigger issue? A private investigator hired by the family discovered this and not the police officer in charge of the investigation. This is where complaints against the police officer began to be filed. From the Office of the Independent Police Review Director to our very own OCPC where appeals are sought.

According to the Ontario tribunal website, the OCPC had two divisions, one that is adjudicative and one that is investigative. The former deals with appeals of disciplinary matters, budgetary disputes and other functions while the latter deals with public complaints on the conduct of members within the police force. The hearing our blog had access to was an adjudicative one. The OCPC panel was hearing an appeal from the decision of a police disciplinary hearing for Officer Shawn Harrison. We were only able to recover records until November 2023 and by that point the board had not yet made a decision on this hearing. Bad news for those interested to hear the final verdict, spoiler alert; we do not know.

The mentioned OCPC website explained that the OCPC had the authority to confirm, vary or revoke a decision of the hearing officer. It also has the authority to replace the decision with one of its own or call for a new hearing to take place. Therefore, we can assume that three hundred years ago, the OCPC had decided on one of these options especially considering that the OCPC does not, according to its own website, resort to alternative dispute resolution due to its jurisdiction.

Shawn Harrison v Thunder Bay Police Services – OCPC Hearing:

This hearing began with a little bit of confusion, counsel for Shawn Harrison, the police officer, admitted to neglect on the part of his client but wanted to appeal the issue in order for the neglect charges to remain but in a much more constrained manner. The counsel for Debungee had a hard time with this but finally, they were able to see eye to eye on the matter and move on. David Butt, Mr. Harrison’s lawyer, rested his appeal on four arguments. He first argued that errors were made in the analysis of guilt in the charge of neglect of duty. Then he argued that there was too much reliance on unconscious racial bias. Mr. Butt admitted that there were huge discrepancies in how police officers treat cases involving Indigenous victims and criminals. He went as far as to suggest that systematic changes should be made. He ended this part of his argument by saying that while all that is true, we should not be over-extending this kind of analysis to every case.

On one hand, racism is a rampant issue on the other it has nothing to do with this case. For us at the blog, this was a confusing argument, one that would definitely confuse even our own “Judicial 3000”. Alas, we move on to Mr. Butt’s third argument, he found that the verdicts his client had received were inconsistent. Fourth, he took issue with the penalty.

At some point, Mr. Butt launches into an example to draw comparisons to the events at hand, at which point one of the panel members stops him and tells him that this example is not helpful and that she was not following it. In this way, the panel seemed involved and proactive, even paying attention to small details and arguments. Panel members would chime in when they found holes in the argument or untruths. It was in those moments that this process most resembled how our “Judicial 3000” machine operates, without bias and with an eye only to finding the truth. This was impressive for mere mortals.

Are Human Tribunals Fair?

On the surface, the OCPC seems like a procedurally fair tribunal. Both sides were given the chance to speak, present their arguments and interject where their point of view was needed. As mentioned before, there was no decision made in this hearing that was available to us, but the members seemed to operate without bias, or at least without obvious and determinable bias. Further, 80% of the application and appeals that they receive is scheduled for a hearing within 90 days. Although for the modern reader who is used to the 30-minute turnaround time of the “Judicial 3000” this might seem like an eternity, 90 days was a fair window of time for complaints to be dealt with during the year 2023. Having access to timely decisions for legal problems was one of the hallmarks of a fair legal system in the 21st century.

In terms of internet and media coverage (yes the internet was by 2023 invented and widely used), while Shawn Harrison’s conduct had been widely covered by various online news sources, no information could be found online by our team about this particular hearing. The OCPC itself is mentioned in a few recent news articles chronicling recent officers who have been subject to penalties. In most of the news articles we read the decision of the hearing officer which had been appealed was upheld by the OCPC. Aside from that though, while the time frame in history we are looking at was a period in which there were many calls to hold police officers accountable for racist behaviour, not much attention is given to this administrative board that does just that. Perhaps, one explanation is that administrative remedies are of such a technical legal nature that even their existence is not known by most of the population of the state formally known as Canada.

Tribunal Members:

We at the “Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog” thought it would be interesting for the reader to know more about the members who serve on this tribunal. Lest you forget that the OCPC is not a AI program and was actually operated by human beings who made the ultimate decision. Eleven humans, all with differing backgrounds, served on this tribunal. One Associate Chair, three Vice Chairs, five members, one Executive Chair and finally one alternative Executive Chair. Members are required to comply with procedural fairness, and natural justice requirements and to act impartially. Each member is required to sign a document promising that they will uphold the requirements of fairness. Members are also bound by the OCPC Rules of Practice. The members seem to come from a background of law and some but not all were involved with their community in various ways. For example, Sean Weir, the Executive Chair, was an elected Councillor of the Town of Oakville and a director of the Hospital in the town. Member Laura Hodgson was involved with Ottawa’s Centre for Refugee Action and Tungasuvvingat Inuit. Most of the members have been in their position since 2022 or 2023 and their terms will end within the next two to three years.

But let us move on now to another hearing we were able to get our hands on. Another important and contentious topic in the history of humankind is that of control over decisions made in relation to their own well-being in terms of physical and mental health. After all, the creatures that roamed the planet Earth 300 years ago were mortals who often experienced illnesses of different kinds and had to make decisions for themselves on the recovery path they desired. The issues that arose from disagreements between the individual and a healthcare professional about the capacity of the patient to consent were dealt with by the Consent and Capacity Board (CC Board).

Consent and Capacity Board Overview

The Hearing

In the hearing that the writers at our blog were able to watch there were three members present. While they did not identify whether they were the legal expert, physician or member of the community, by the line of questioning each pursued it would be easy to make a guess. As advised by the rules of the Consent and Capacity Board we are not at liberty to share the names of the those involved. However, we can share with you that the hearing was concerning a patient in a Kingston mental health facility who had refused to take medication despite the fact that this doctor believed he was experiencing a manic episode and should be on medication. This November 6th, 2023, hearing was to determine whether the doctor would be allowed to proceed in prescribing medication to the patient without the patient’s consent. The patient himself was presented along with his legal representative, his doctor and three members of the Consent and Capacity Board. The doctor began the session by speaking about the client’s bi-polar diagnosis and mentioned previous examples of his manic behaviour. The doctor finished by asserting that his patient did not have the capacity to make decisions regarding his treatment.

For his part, the patient’s lawyer tried to make holes in the doctor’s findings by questioning whether or not the doctor had taken the necessary steps to explain to the patient his situation and his required medication. The lawyer argued that the doctor had undermined his duty to fully explain the treatment process under the false assumption that the patient himself was not capable of consenting. The members did not interject during testimonies but then proceeded to ask each side appropriate and clarifying questions. It was obvious that public safety was an important concern for the Board. A lot of the questions they asked were regarding the patient’s past public displays of violence.

Is the CC Board Procedurally Fair?

Then they began questioning the patient himself. This felt like a procedurally fair decision on the part of the tribunal members because it was obvious that the patient was frustrated by the fact that for most of the hearing, others were speaking on his behalf. He seemed happy to be able to speak for himself. Though he often went off-topic the members questioning him were very patient with him and took his words very seriously. The tribunal’s decision to have a doctor, a legal expert and a community member on the panel is also a very important step towards ensuring fairness. This way it is not the opinion and concerns of one professional group that dominates the line of questioning in each hearing.

The CC Board seems to operate in a way that is procedurally fair in terms of access to justice, for example following an involuntary admission or when a patient is found to not have the capacity for decision-making, the patient can get an advisor from the Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office. Advisors from this office help explain the legal recourse available to the patient and they will complete the paperwork for a CC Board hearing. Based on information available to us from 2023 documents and websites it is obvious that the CC Board, more than the OCPC, is concerned about treating individuals who seek guidance through their procedure with fairness. This is important because the population that they help is particularly vulnerable to exploitation and unequal treatment. On average the tribunals determine the limits of the rights of citizens on a larger scale than courts do.[1] Therefore, fairness is a much more important consideration.

In the CC Board, fairness is guaranteed by making sure that conference hearings are available, making sure that patients have access to legal representatives, and that there are interpreters available for those who need it.

How is the CC Board Perceived?

As opposed to the previous tribunal, the Consent and Capacity Board receives a lot of media attention. Based on a few articles we perused, the general population's understanding is that the Consent and Capacity Board deals with really complicated disputes. It seems that a lot of the decisions, unlike the OCPC, are appealed and it falls on the courts to affirm the Board’s decision. Specifically, an appeal of a CC Board decision can be pursued at the Superior Court of Justice based on a question of fact or law.

As mentioned before, the CC Board is very strict about keeping information confidential, so the results of the hearing are not released to the public. However, from the way that the members were interacting with the patient in the hearing we can assume that they might decide that the patient does not have the capacity to make decisions regarding their treatment. The CC Board does not always make a decision themselves. According to the Consent and Capacity Board rules of practice s20.7; if all parties wish to resolve matters by dispute resolution, then the Board can make that order upon request.

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