SD v BelugaWhaleMan 2021 Crim 5
SD v BelugaWhaleMan 2021 Crim 5
| Date of judgment | 6th February 2021 |
|---|---|
| Judge | Chief Justice Ivy Cactus |
| Charges | 1 charge of Smut (Article 44b of the Criminal Code) |
| Verdict | Defendant found Not Guilty for the crime of Smut |
| Sentence | |
| Applicable persuasive precedent | A person may not be unbanned to act as a witness, 3 Presenting evidence without any proof is invalid, 4.2 Links to evidence can’t be used to provide priorly absent context, 5 One may not recess on grounds of new information in Summary Trial, 7 “Topic of discussion” in relation to Smut is defined as “what the majority of the channel is discussing at the current time”, 9.1 To “Dominate” conversation in relation to Smut shall be defined as “to continually send messages which interrupt or otherwise prevent discussion about other topics.”, 11.1 Overtly sexual does not mean egregiously sexual, 13 |
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JUDGMENT by Chief Justice Ivy Cactus
Introduction
[1]. The defendant is being charged with 1 count of smut for posting about topics such as “n\pples” and “p\nises” in #general-2. The Prosecution alleges that this conversation dissuaded others from participating in the channel, and therefore dominated the topic of conversation.
Procedural Questions
[2]. This trial was handled in summary, this is due to the recommended sentence of 1 day mute. Despite the fact that it does limit argumentation, with cases this short a full trial is just a waste of time.
[3]. The question also came up if one could use a banned person as a witness. Sadly, the law does not allow for one to be unbanned to act as a witness, although the court would support a mechanism to do such.
3.1 As a work around doing DM questioning and such works fine, although it does unfairly limit questioning to one side.
[4]. In relation to this the defendant attempted to present this aforementioned questioning through quoting the witness directly without screenshots.
4.1 This was thrown out due to being irrelevant, because it was a question of the witnesses memory not the facts at hand, however,
4.2 The court would not accept this evidence anyways, evidence such as his is not really evidence at all, the defendant has no proof of the occurrences or messages being real, and it’s therefore invalid.
[5]. At one point in the trial the prosecution linked to a piece of evidence, and used it to try and prove the fact that there were no similar messages above it. Although links to messages are allowed as interchangeable, the links can not be used to prove context for the screenshot as this would be adding extra evidence during trial.
[6]. For a minor thing, at one point the court asked the defendant to hold a piece of cross until the next piece of evidence was provided. It is the court’s opinion that judges bundling evidence like this is beneficiary and allowed.
[7]. Finally, at one point the defendant attempted to motion for recess on grounds of new information. However, the section that allows for this is under the “Criminal Trial” article, rather than the “Summary Trial” articles. Therefore the recess was not allowed.
7.1 This acts in a similar way to how Civil Hearings don’t allow witnesses under Belugawhaleman v Ministry of Justice 2020 Civ 6\.
Smut
[8]. A lingering topic of contention throughout the trial was what a “conversation” entailed. With the prosecution believing it to be the specific discussion in relation, with the defendant more vaguely believing it to be all messages in a channel at a certain point in time.
[9]. The text of the Article doesn’t actually mention conversation at all, so i’ll focus on what it does first.
9.1 The article specifically mentions the “Topic of Discussion”, which the court believes to mean what the majority of the channel is discussing at the current time, similar to the defendants definition of “Conversation”.
[10]. In relation to this discussion is what it means to “Dominate” the Topic of Discussion.
10.1 The prosecution’s belief is that to dominate means that the “given person's topic is the primary topic discussed at the time.”
10.2 The defendant instead argued that the court should utilize the Oxford Definition which is to “have a commanding influence on; exercise control over.”.
[11]. The court originally stated that their definition would be what "the reasonable person would believe to disrupt, and dissuade others from participating in the conversation"
11.1 While this works in respect to the trial itself, the court will be rewording it a bit to be “to continually send messages which interrupt or otherwise prevent discussion about other topics.”
[12]. So does the defendant’s actions fall under this? Not really, the defendant sent a similar amount of messages to those around him, with others either responding directly to it or talking around it. This is not “Dominating” the topic of discussion, it’s simply talking about a topic for a bit and then stopping, while not stopping others from talking while doing it.
[13]. Were the topics overtly sexual? The court believes that while not egregious sexual, discussion of things such as penis size and tits is overtly sexual. The difference being in that to be overtly sexual one just needs to discuss sexual topics directly, such as “schlong size”.
[14]. The prosecution also argued that the defendant dissuaded others from participating in conversation because of their topic.
14.1 In contrast to this people such as Kelvin did directly participate in the conversation, so this argument is invalid.
Conclusion
[15]. The defendant did in fact speak in an overtly sexual way, however they clearly did not dominate the conversation or dissuade others from participating in the topic. They stopped very quickly and did not continue through others asking them to stop.
Verdict
[16]. The court finds the defendant NOT GUILTY for the crime of Smut.
