PLEA CHANGING ABILITY | not guilty -> guilty

[findouticly]

MINECRAFT USERNAME
findouticly
TITLE OF THE SUGGESTION
PLEA CHANGING ABILITY | not guilty -> guilty

THE SUGGESTION
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INTRODUCTION TO THE SUGGESTION

This part of the suggestion will be concentrated an introduction and an explanation as to what I'm addressing.​

The judicial system on SchoolRP is one of the core parts of the role-play experience; it lets wrongfully accused people fight for their freedom in the court, allows the criminals to sit behind bars for the crimes they have committed and also brings immersion into the server itself — letting the players of SchoolRP experience what it is like to be a part of a court case, either as the accused, the judge, the lawyer, etc.

A big part of this system is pleas. They allow a person accused of committing crime(s) to either contest accusations made by peace officers or confess to their crimes. Without it, the whole justice system would be a mess; every case would either have to go to trial or every person would be put to prison, even if they didn't commit a crime.
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PROBLEMS ARISE
This part of the suggestion will be concentrated on a major problem that is currently in the judicial system on SchoolRP
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Currently, the judicial system on SchoolRP does not allow the change of a plea from not guilty to guilty, often leading to players not being able to role-play as their beloved characters for an extended period of time. Of course, I am not blaming anyone for this, as people have lives of their own and don't have time to role-play out a court case, but nonetheless it is still a major problem. As the title says, this suggestion will be aiming towards a small change, but a major problem, in the judicial system on SchoolRP, which is PLEA CHANGING.
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REASONS FOR CHANGE
This part of the suggestion will be concentrated on the reasons as to why this change should take place.

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• LOCKED FROM ROLE-PLAYING AS AN OC
  As I've explained above, some people might take a month or two of not role-playing as a character, but once this time starts to expand to more than 6 months, people might want to give up on trying to fight anything in court and just pay the bail and go on with role-playing as a character.
• FORGETTING / LOSING EVIDENCE
  After a long time, some people might forget crucial details that were important for the trial or they might have just lost them altogether due to various reasons such as formatting a drive that contained said evidence or a broken drive containing them.
• REALIZATION OF GUILT
  Once time passes and people think more about what their OC has done, they might realize that the said character might have actually been guilty all along, but then they realize that they can't change the plea, which would end up wasting everyone's time, and I hope everyone knows that a trial on SchoolRP can take upwards of multiple hours of continuous writing.
• TRIAL TAKING LONGER THAN A SENTENCE WOULD
  Once again, not blaming anyone, but trials can take a LOT OF TIME before they actually happen, and in that time, a character might have been already done with their sentence and could have gotten released.

HOW WILL THIS BENEFIT THE SERVER AND COMMUNITY​

Allowing players to change their plea would not only keep the role-play experience being smooth, but also realistic and immersive; currently, players are often locked from playing certain OCs for an extensive amount of time, but also something like changing a plea from guilty to not guilty happens often in real life.

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tl/dr
For the lazy ones ;)
Players are unable to change their plea from not guilty to guilty, which prevents them from using their character for a long time. Allowing something like changing your plea would get rid of the trials that would only waste time.

If you want to go more in-depth in the responses about this suggestion, or have something against it, read the whole suggestion before writing anything.​

 

[yorkminster]

+

 

[Kayla1511]

-1

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In theory this is a good idea, the issue being that it would be difficult to just change from non guilty -> guilty after say a month, this would result in weeks of time wasted on something. Story short, if you decide to follow a non guilty plea, you should stick with it.

 

[findouticly]

-1

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In theory this is a good idea, the issue being that it would be difficult to just change from non guilty -> guilty after say a month, this would result in weeks of time wasted on something. Story short, if you decide to follow a non guilty plea, you should stick with it.

I don't how "weeks of time wasted" applies here. Preparing a trial, from what I was informed, does not take a long time. Most of the things that happen in a said trial happen on the go, or as one might say, "freestyle". The only preparation for a trial is the beginning action, which opens up a trial, the evidence and maybe a prepared action from the accused. The things that take the longest in a trial is finding people who want to be a part of it and have time for it, and the amount of trials that there are. The change itself might actually make the important ones happen faster.

 

[CakeRPiscool]

-1

 

[Yonio]

I get where this suggestion is coming from. This was a complaint that a few people had a while ago, so it's definitely not unfounded.

However, as @Kayla1511 mentioned, there is a lot of work involved in trials. While I haven’t personally been part of the government faction, I'd assume that some of the steps required to schedule and host a trial likely include:

• Police reviewing the original case and properly documenting it while condensing it as much as possible. This can sometimes be quite tricky, as the officer often has to turn the inmate's one-sided description into an objective report, which takes even longer to write down.
• A judge reviewing the case alongside others that have been submitted, assessing both feasibility and roleplay potential.
• Once the case has been moved to the hands of the gov. faction, higher-ups must coordinate multiple people to:
  • Contact the arresting officer / higher-up who can take over.
  • Contact the inmate to confirm their plea and clarify the details of their arrest.
  • Agree on a specific date for the non-guilty plea trial.

Because of this, it is likely that at least one person involved may be unable to attend (e.g.- a lawyer or client going inactive, server events conflicting with the scheduled trial, etc). On top of that, coordinating this many people, often across different time zones, and getting them online at the same time is a considerable workload, hence why some trials may take longer to host. With all this said, cancelling the process once it’s already WIP can be frustrating for faction workers. However, your points do have some merit, and I'm sure other community members do agree to some extent with your ideas.

Personally, I'd say a reasonable middle ground would be allowing inmates to cancel their non-guilty plea only if the reviewing process has not started yet. This way, no heavy work is wasted, and the inmate can still change their mind early on without major repercussions.

 

[Kayla1511]

Personally, I'd say a reasonable middle ground would be allowing inmates to cancel their non-guilty plea only if the reviewing process has not started yet. This way, no heavy work is wasted, and the inmate can still change their mind early on without major repercussions.

I would agree with this except that the reviewing process typically takes 24 to 48 hours. 60-70% of people get their non guilty plea rejected and the other 40-30% have already passed the reviewal process. Like you typically need over 48 hours to reconsider a guilty plea, and then work has already been put into it.

 

[Joe.exe]

The new government faction leader, Tippie, is trying to change the server's judicial system, and I believe this will improve things. This is included in the draft we received, so please wait a little longer.....

 

[DarkEclipic]

-1
I do agree with yonio in the sense that if a plea hasn't been checked/a few days after said arrest, i do think we should allow people to change their plea. But, overall, the system(Pre-Trial) that we have when it comes to arranging for trials and stuff are perfectly fine and shouldn't be changed. I get that its frustrating when it comes to waiting a long time for trials and stuff to come out, but there is a lot that goes into it.

Contacting the AO for dates, pinging government workers to see WHO can work said date and time(Pray we get enough people for each department), assign workers to the case, alert both parties of the date and time of when the trial will take place. - reading this, it looks simple and easy, but in reality it is not. I have been Deputy Mayor, and arranging trials, for a year now(back on the 4th) and it is hard and draining work as some steps of this could take days or weeks to be able to try to move to the next step. Along with that, we have to think about people who leave the faction for their own reasons which means we are out of government workers, at one point we only have FOUR LAWYERS and all on different timezones, so no trials could had been arranged due to conflicting times.

I get that its frustrating waiting for trials, I do. But, there is a lot of the back-end stuff that goes on. We always tell people it will take awhile before we get to your trial, depending on your placement in our list(Oldest to Newest), but we did just get a new Faction Lead and we are working on many things to bring to the people of Karakura both icly and oocly. But it will take time.

 

[Itz_Nami]

+1

 

[Miamorchito]

Most of the things that happen in a said trial happen on the go, or as one might say, "freestyle".

I have around 8 or 9 documents (each about 10 pages) telling me that lawyers may not freestyle in court.

Though... I do agree that a person can change their plea later. True. We, Government Workers, would have to stop planning for things, but that also means liberating space for the rest of the cases. We literally serve to help people inside and outside the courtroom. If a person wishes to change their plea to guilty and waive their 17th constitutional right, it is their choice. ICly, it wouldn't make much sense for us to force a citizen to follow along if they already want to WILLINGFULLY and WITHOUT COERCION plead guilty to a crime they committed.

From an OOC perspective, as OG mentioned, there are cases where 6 months have passed. For X or Y, it's almost impossible for anyone to have a clear collection of the things that happened inside a MINECRAFT SERVER. If a person wants to plead guilty to a crime, that means there will be FEWER cases to worry about, and hence there would be a much faster way to finish all the pending cases. Plus, the only issue with the review cases is that they don't take long to be reviewed. Considering I had people telling me they were pressured to plea quickly (icly and oocly), I don't think it would be fair for them not have the time to reconsider and realize they were wrong.

It is also true that Tippie is still working on new rules for government. I believe this can be a good proposition for him to review, even if it's rejected by KimiNoUso. Tippie is the one who would be considering it at the end of the day.

The idea, overall, is a +1 from me.