Soyuz

March 12, 2025 Police Lieutenant Convicted in Unlawful Shooting Former Lieutenant Maya Valerio Yesterday, the Superior Court returned a guilty verdict against former Lieutenant Maya Valerio of the Los Santos Police Department, convicting her of Voluntary Manslaughter for the fatal shooting of John Doe on January 7, 2025, midnight, in Strawberry, Los Santos. Our office thanks the investigators of the Los Santos Police's Internal Affairs group, Lieutenant Gianfranco Perez and Detective Jennifer Nam, for their diligence and professionalism in preparing this case for prosecution. The Justice System Integrity Division is dedicated to ensuring that even members of government are held accountable for criminal misconduct. Complaints can be filed by members of the public directly through our website. The District Attorney's Office hopes that this verdict will serve as a reminder of the high standards of professionalism and safety our law enforcement officers are expected to uphold. We thank again the Los Santos Police Department for their cooperation and their diligence in reaffirming our office's goal to move justice forward, and our thoughts are with the family of the victim during this difficult time. We hope that this conviction brings them some measure of justice and peace. Read the Court's verdict here. (( There is no way to comment on this press release ))

Username: Joseph Katz Comment: Fantastic initiative

Never staff reported before, never really plan on it, but the concerns here are legitimate and deserve to be listened to. +1

Name: PaletoBoy35 Comment: We gotta move to Leonida ** Traces back to Earl_Hastings’ house **

• December 25, 2024: Fatal Off-Duty Officer-Involved Shooting of Unnamed Adult Subject

This. We played LC with 50 players on and it felt more alive than SA with 500.

In a perfect timeline we’d scrap SA entirely and move to LC. Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect timeline.

Yes, we need a way to dissuade lifers in SADCR from killing people willy-nilly. It should have LFM approval for each request (already the case) It needs to meet the legal requirements to qualify for capital punishment (already the case) The only thing we could add that many jurisdictions have is, when you're convicted of a crime and sentenced to death penalty, it triggers an automatic appeal in the Supreme Court who validates the death penalty against you. But that might be a lot.

It always comes back to the fabled two page motions lol

Can't believe I'm agreeing with Fanden but I'm agreeing with Fanden. Very well said.

Admin court.. The dumbest concept ever on gtaw… even dumber than 100k filing fees

Username: catman Comment: looks like a robot wrote this

Pretty important for us to take inspo from other states at times because usually IRL courts make better/more fair decisions than ours ahah.

Handbook isn't that difficult tbh. Me and sephiken had a civil procedure draft that was coming together p well. Even if it is EXTREMELY long like you fear, there are chapters, and the LSPD/LSSD handbooks spread across all their threads are also extremely long. But I agree the courts need to be more digestible to make them faster and more efficient

Kentucky supreme court precedent does not apply to san andreas anyway. it is only persuasive, i.e. “hey! judge! look how they resolved this similar situation in kentucky!! maybe we should do the same thing?”. I think lfm got confused here.

Wish we all had your optimism!

As for baseless NG pleas, the illegal factions encouraging their members to plead NG to have their case dropped for speedy trial should be penalized by admins. I was told numerous times by an illegal faction member that illegal factions do this constantly.

I’m a professional dancer in real life. Most people think I’m a lawyer and I’m applying my real life knowledge to this game. Nope. I had to adapt. I came from nothing. Zero knowledge. I had to research and figure out how things work outside SA because no one knows how things work inside SA. And when there’s such a disparity, it causes issues. If you look up appellate precedent in GTAW, specifically the word “summary judgment”, you will find about 6 different BINDING rulings with entirely differing opinions on how summary judgment works. Then an OOC directive was drafted up. Now we have to navigate IC concepts by somehow researching them either internally or externally while also remembering OOC directives, and the convincing the judge. Good luck explaining all that in 500 words! Imagine an IC rule in a policybook, like a criminal code, dictating, in detail, summary judgments and how they work. The discussion would end there. We would all be on the same page.

Because of the lack of actual court procedure and rules in San Andreas, the bar is extremely high for new players. You cannot learn how to be a lawyer here using the material you find here and supplementing it with some online material. Impossible. All your knowledge must be taken from other jurisdictions, from federal court, and online resources, and you have to use this knowledge to form some semblance of a structured court scene in SA. In your motions, you have to explain legal concepts and procedures that should exist in SA, but do not, yet they exist in all 49 other states, and federally, and you have to somehow push to explain WHY you should be entitled to get the prosecution’s evidence against your client as part of discovery—in droves of paragraphs—lest the judge say “no” and go against the rules and procedures of 49 other states + federal. The root of the issue is that there is no civil procedure in GTAW. There is no criminal procedure. There are no rules. It is a free-for-all. It is a battle of people who can obtain the most outside knowledge and then pretend that knowledge applies here. I'm guilty of it. Many of us are. There is no other way. There should be a large document explaining what happens in criminal/civil court, what’s allowed and not allowed, what deadlines exist, word counts for briefs, what is expected of what party, and what happens in what stage, so prospective lawyers can learn a lot faster, old lawyers can simplify their research by not relying on outside law at all, and the courts can run more swimmingly with less appeals because we have organized rules and procedure. LSPD has a manual/policy book. LSSD too. LSFD. SAPR. SFM. We do not. Those factions do not need to do extensive out-of-game research to learn how to do their tasks in game. We do. And then we need to write long essays explaining why this particular procedure is right, moral, ethical, fair, and lawful, because if it’s too short, it won’t be understood by anyone who hasn’t also done hours of external research. We slap on more OOC directives to try to correct things we do not like in the courts system without looking at the brunt of the issue—no guidelines. No manual to rely on. No rules of civil procedure or criminal procedure. If there was more structure from the get-go, all these issues could be addressed. Summary judgment could be implemented intelligently rather than multiple OOC directives strewn across several discord servers with a several month gap in their age. We could define when people have standing to sue (no more 500k lawsuits for a cop mistakenly pulling someone over). We could create procedures that expedite the discovery process significantly. Procedures that do away with all the length of these motions that are submitted. We could finally have an explanation of how civil court is supposed to work and do away with arbitrary judgments that so many people report for. Cases could end in a quarter of the time. We could remove unnecessary stages of the criminal process from our game world with sound safeguards. Imagine writing “Pursuant to SA Civ. Code 62(a), we request…” instead of having to write a whole introduction as to what you’re trying to request, why it’s applicable, where it’s from, how the judge should act, etc. Cite a rule instead. Everything is in that rule. Everyone knows how to play—it’s in the guidebook. Attacking the courts by saying briefs are too long, too many motions, cases take too long, is not addressing the elephant in the room: no one knows what the hell they’re doing. It’s an illusion. I don’t know what I’m doing. Nothing is right or wrong. We follow trends. We teach the law that we learned to other players over paragraphs and paragraphs in the hopes that the judge could understand a concept that is missing from here, one he might be seeing for the first time. It’s inevitable. Large motions should happen when there’s a truly unique issue of law, not when you have to explain a fundamental concept that if a search warrant is defective, it should be quashed (which could easily be a rule). The courts system here could be very simple without babifying it and ruining the fun. Convoluted briefs do not have to happen. But for as long as we don’t have a “guidebook”, we will never know what we are doing, and people who have not actively participated in the courts will complain, because they’re late to the trends.

Fisheman, Hopefully you come back to us one day and read through these messages. I can't help but feel that what was once a thread memorializing and showcasing your character is now the same thing but for you as a person. You left a mark on this community and changed us forever, and we will never forget you. I never wanted to find you guilty and sentence you to life imprisonment, Fishe, but your character left me with no other choice. And that, I think, is beautiful portrayal. The ability to succumb to fate and allow to happen what is inevitable, is something arguably many players have difficulty with. But not you. You took it in stride. You had remarkable confidence and clarity. No matter what obstacle Jhon faced, you were there to turn it into love, beauty, poetry. You knew that this was all part of Jhon's story—you were but the mastermind behind his legacy. Love you and miss you, Soyuz

NAME: Joseph Katz Esq. COMMENT: Our firm reached out to multiple media outlets—not just yours—as part of a marketing campaign. We are no longer considering future partnership with you given your inability to do business.

USERNAME: Joseph Katz COMMENT: Great read.

Rebranded.