Bring back not guilty.

[Nerissa]

9 hours ago, Allerion said:

Think you have the wrong perception. You pleading no contest or pleading not guilty is not that different. If you plead not guilty you got locked up for 9999 days and then you had to wait  2-3 weeks, sometimes even way more for a public defender to be assigned and solve the court case for you. With how the system works right now, if you don't agree with the charges so you say that you didn't do the crime, you plea no contest, serve out the 5-10 days (which in 95% cases means you get released earlier than the not guilty plea we had before)  whilst you still battle the court case, however with your own lawyer of course. Someone correct me if I am wrong but this was done due to the fact that public defenders were very overwhelmed and with there being so little few or none of them at all, creating massive backlog of court cases because people opted out for the free option (public defenders).

 

People are always gonna be locked up for crimes they commit, if the cop powergamed, lied or whatever, then take the appropriate measures (Forum Report, Internal Affairs, Court Cases). Maybe you don't know but LEO's breaking server rules also have very harsh reprecussions internally in the faction, not just on server. Moreover corruption perms are so heavily restricted at the moment that there's very few little cops that do corruption roleplay, and if you do get locked up by one with them, you fight them out in the court case/report them to Internal Affairs if you believe you didn't do anything wrong. I understand you're a illegal roleplayer and there's always going to be grrrr cops, I'm not defending or claiming that every LEO is perfect, just like there's bad apples in illegal factions, they're also in legal factions and that's why there's rules and protocols set.

you could have bail and bond if you plead non guilty, neither are available for no contest and you're stuck doing the maximum charge. you also can't go through a trial until 30 days have passed which will end up taking 2-3 weeks anyway to finish. this change entirely favors LEO and the whole logic of having cases dismissed because of speedy trials will still be a thing when they put it back, all those 30 days+ later no contest pleas will need their trials at some point, so it's not like the court has a lesser load, it's just paused.

+1 to the suggestion, i don't think this choice was fair in any way for criminal rpers and i've roleplayed as a lawyer for a long time and it also sucked for us, because it killed a good part of our RP for a long time because of the 30 day wait

[Allerion]

1 minute ago, Nerissa said:

you could have bail and bond if you plead non guilty, neither are available for no contest and you're stuck doing the maximum charge. you also can't go through a trial until 30 days have passed which will end up taking 2-3 weeks anyway to finish. this change entirely favors LEO and the whole logic of having cases dismissed because of speedy trials will still be a thing when they put it back, all those 30 days+ later no contest pleas will need their trials at some point, so it's not like the court has a lesser load, it's just paused.

+1 to the suggestion, i don't think this choice was fair in any way for criminal rpers and i've roleplayed as a lawyer for a long time and it also sucked for us, because it killed a good part of our RP for a long time because of the 30 day wait

bringing back not guilty won't fix anything because there's no public defenders and nobody will handle the court cases, unless we have system run the same way as it is right now but "namechange" no contest to not guilty with addition of bail and bond

[jromjeksin]

1 hour ago, supergremlin said:

What's inconsiderate is locking somebody up for 5/10 days because the 2 days of training camp that they do is enough for them to be judge/jury and executioner  

It takes about a month just to get into the faction and about another month to complete field training and be able to conduct arrests on your own, can be longer depending on which faction you join.

[jromjeksin]

Also yes, part of the reason is because people would shoot someone on camera or blatantly commit some other crime and plead not guilty just because they knew it would be dismissed on a speedy trial violation due to the massive workload and backlog. People would blatantly tell this to faction members in the illegal scene and that's wrong. This type of thing doesn't really happen anymore because you won't be able to plead not guilty if you aren't arrested on a required case. 

[Fanden]

Right, I see there's a lot of concerns here to address so i'll do my best to cover what i've seen thus far.

 

1. NG being disabled: This is only a temporary measure and we're working as diligently as possible to restore it, however, with the current system it's unsustainable to do so which is why it was paused. We are working to make a system that is able to shoulder the burden of all the NG pleas. Let me provide some further insight into the issue at hand at its core. Every year the amount of cases the DA's office prosecutes doubles, the amount of arrests nearly triples, the amount of staff remains the same. Why is this? Well it's a several pronged issue. For starters, as many are aware, it's a forum heavy job with little to no in-game roleplay provided. Most people working a profession on GTA do it for the RP it provides, of which, court RP is nearly exclusive to the forums. The people who are already working in the system are burning out or already have burnt out. This sees both DAO and JSA having a revolving door of employees. New employees come in, get hit with a massive wave of cases, try to take them on, end up working in excess of 20 cases at once sometimes only to then open the Post Arrest Submission again to see 10 more. All the while they still have the original 20 cases locked up in court RP for in excess of 3 months at times meaning they're unable to make the time to take more, they get dismissed for speedy trial and contrary to what people have suggested here, including some members of the faction, the DA's office can't re-arraign someone who's been let go on speedy trial most times as it results in reports and the eventual overturning of the re-arrest and court trial due to fairness. People understandably don't like getting arrested and going to court a second time over a crime that happened 2 months ago. On top of this, even if they could, that doesn't solve the issue as if they went and re-arraigned the 10 cases that got dismissed due to speedy trial, what about the 10 new ones that came in that day? It just pushes the problem further ahead and never actually makes any progress. All of this combined causes players to leave court RP, and then new ones come in which brings me to point 2,

 

2. Staffing: For all the reasons mentioned above maintaining enough staff to prosecute every case is almost impossible. Some suggestions were to only prosecute serious cases but on average there's 3-5 felony charges per day, and several more misdemeanors and then on top of that? The required cases. For an office that maintains a handful of prosecutors hovering around 10, each person would have to take 1-2 cases per day, every day, to keep up with the demand. This in combination with the fact that cases take months means that very quickly those prosecutors and judges wouldn't have enough time in the day to reply to all of their cases let alone do all the research required, petition cops to hand over evidence which sometimes they're reluctant to do or don't respond, which then leads to prosecutors having to dismiss the case they already spent hours working on just to have new evidence come to light that the police didn't turn over which makes it all moot. Punishing police for this also isn't feasible as if we issue a IC punishment such as a brady list addition to the officer, they're often just given a name change and continue on their way.

 

3. Roleplay: Over the years there has been dozens of attempts to generate more roleplay for the factions in court RP. It's impossible to hold trials in game as most players aren't real life lawyers and require time to research responses to effectively handle a case, couple that with time zones for all parties involved as well as the fact that in-game trials take a long time and there'd need to be several court rooms open 24 hours a day to handle it makes this impossible. Even when there are attempts to move special cases in game it's always met with resistance from one side or another so it defaults back to the forums. Both LEO rpers and Server Staff have largely been against allowing DAO to have the tools, roles and authority their IRL counterparts as well so any attempt for prosecutors to make in-game RP from their characters is often met with heavy resistance or shut down entirely. Admittedly in recent years this has begun to improve but even still, it's nowhere near accommodating for prosecutors which again, feeds into the staffing issue.

 

4. OOC Concerns: As a member for JSA for many years, and leadership for years as well, there's a general animosity toward people who play in court factions which, although it shouldn't be happening, leads to discrimination toward their other characters or feeling unwelcome roleplaying places due to the hate they get for their affiliation with the courts. People disagree with rulings, dismissals or whatever and then take it out OOCly on prosecutors. It's something that happens time and time again and has never improved. This AGAIN contributes to the burnout and short retention of DAO.

 

Now with the points above mentioned, i'll go a bit further into how all this combines into the issue we have. With all that in mind, we have to make a system that despite the issues above can still make an attempt to function. The issues above have been tackled by dozens of leaders, server staff and management and they all still exist to this day. We will continue to work on them as always, but given the slow progress a system has to be created that can work around them. That's what this NG pause is designed to do, to give the factions time to come up with a system, troubleshoot it, implement it and then return NG to its state. I seen a few people mentioning that this is unfair, and, in some ways it is sure. We apologize for that. However the courts crumbling would be far worse as then it'd revert to a system where you're arrested, serve your time and then apply to have the record removed with no legal arguments, no trials, and no safeguard against any bias. I understand this isn't ideal either, the pause, but it's only here to try and make a system that works for the players in court RP, the players being arrested, and the officers that are putting effort into making these arrests.

 

Most if not all of the players in JSA or DAO will tell you that a lot of the time this isn't fun, and feels like a job. Why is that? Well the lack of rp and the massive case load that they're expected to handle, all the while being hated by members of the community for doing it. We are working on it, and we are doing so as fast as we can. 

 

If anybody has concerns they can reach out and we'll try to answer timely. I'll continue to monitor the thread here and respond where I can, including anything I might have missed in this reply. 

[Soyuz]

3 minutes ago, Fanden said:

-

 

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

[vally]

+1 many times i got arrested and pled not guilty my charges dropped because they arrested me without evidences so there's not just people abusing the speedy trial, maybe do something only about that

[Pengu]

It didn't work, and the cases were taking too long. It's fine for the time being until a proper solution is found.

[SgtMilot]

I agree with Fanden on this one.

[Revolter]

I'm a member of JSA for more than 3 years now. Speaking of JSA, I can't but agree with @Fanden here. JSA is currently pushing the envelope with the fairly realistic RP, at least to the degree that needs some knowledge and learning. Hell, I've been a Judge in JSA for almost 2,5 years and I'm learning new things about U.S. laws, caselaw and so much more on daily basis. 

 

Firstly, it take some time and practice to do this kinda of RP. Therefore,  you can't pull someone from the crowd and expect them to be on a decent level to prosecute the case on their own after a day or two being in faction! It's even worse with Public Defenders. If you (as defendant)  get a Public Defender who's new to /LAW RP/, well... Some of our senior prosecutors will have a field day. Therefore, you'll complain as a defendant! Happened to all of us! 

We are currently lacking folks who want to be part of this glorious RP niche. Which, obviously, leads to a lack of manpower to fuel RP. 

 

Secondly,  most of the folks who get into law RP quit at some point. Simply, they run out of steam, and I can't blame them. If you take a case,  you have to get familiar with the case itself, you have to study caselaws surrounding it, and you have to argue the case in a fairly decent and well-versed manner. For example, some "motions" take a page or two of text... Verdicts too! 

 

Therefore, it takes time. focus, effort. And yes, it feels sometimes like a chore.

 

Thirdly! Fairly often it happens that DA brings charges against someone. Makes a nice arrangement, all nine yards, yeah! However, the person decides to just say before the Judge "Oh, I plea guilty to all the charges"... And, of course, after some back and forth Judge will accept it. Other times, they just don't respond to the case at all! Thirty minutes to an hour of active and focused typing - GONE. 

 

I don't even want to get started about the massive caseload that JSA/DAO/PDO is receiving. Fanden wrote all about it. 

 

All in all, I'm here speaking from the heart. Wrote this so y'all have a bit of insight.  I believe we have some of the most amazing RP'ers in DAO, PDO, and JSA. Some of the most passionate, original RP'ers of them all!  If "Not Guilty" plea should be closed for some more time to give them a breather, we should really respect that.