Bring back not guilty.

[Soyuz]

It always comes back to the fabled two page motions lol

 

[MxnSterx]

The main problem is that this is a very good example of curing evil with another evil. 

In my opinion, safeguards should have been taken before publicating these rules. Are the issues that are alleged here enough to warrant the temporary removal of NG without safety measures behind it? I don't think so. Since this is almost the only reply in support of the current rules that have merit, I think it deserves a proper response from my POV, and even if I haven't been for the faction for that long, I've engaged recently and actively with a judge, prosecutor, and attorney, and even if I tend to be more biased for the third, I still believe that insight from all ends should be helpful.
 

Spoiler

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,

As for 1: No remedy by disabling NG pleas is going to cure the fact that many innocent people are going to have to sit through jail time, have their character development trashed while unable to contest it, be banned from applying to factions, or be fired from their job. Back then in 2019, the Court faction opened a way to have charges appealed where the burden fell on them. Now after this decision, the faction has taken a large step down to an archaic system, we've gone worse than in 2019, back to 2017, since NC does not give one the ability to contest the charges. NC is not going to be forever. OK. But for how long? The damage and the impact on the characters and players that are going to suffer because of it is unbearable if no exemptions have been allowed (despite mandatory cases) or measures to veil the interest of the defendants. 

The main reason why the staff didn't have a renewal was because, as stated earlier, of incompetent leadership and lack of encouragement. Now that the new leadership is doing stuff to change and fight against these new rules (that IMHO are arbitrary) and overall people who can take criticism and move for changes. I myself have refilled charges that have been dismissed /without/ prejudice and never had a formal complaint to me for it. There's no arrest needed, only an order of summons. 
 

Spoiler

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.

If arrests are the issue, maybe upholding actual sanctions, both OOCly and ICly, to LEO players who issue faulty arrests, and /rest assured/ that they will try better to make them work. Right now? Any reasonable unbiased person can agree that the system is biased in their favor and that's not good when illegal and legal non-LEO players weigh over the other playerbase. Punishing LEO players /is/ feasible and should be the mandatory rule to avoid awkward cases going to Court. Arrests that are done according to the law are hardly contested and the cases that reach to Court come from them end up on a plea deal at a 99% rate. Many people have accused lawyer characters of stalling the process which is wrong. 

Most of the cases that go unprosecuted are because the charges are bogus, let's be honest on this one, mistakes and some cases being dropped because of workload happen, but it's not as common as it's painted. At any rate, the understaffing is an actual issue, then the burden is on faction leaders to enhance attraction to this type of roleplay and create a selection process, exemptions, and guidelines on what cases should be good to prosecute and what others aren't.

 

Spoiler

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.

A very valid point, however, this affects equally to lawyers, prosecutors, and judges, since their work is based on the same stuff. Their roleplay orbitates around forum work but from a different perspective, I'd say that it's a bit harsh for judges only but judges are not the cause of stagnation so I don't see why it's a relevant point to uphold NC pleas. I see many lawyer characters IG for example.

 

Spoiler

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.

I'm a player focusing only on Court roleplay at the moment having left an official illegal faction in the process because I wanted to focus more on forum work, due to commodity, time, timezone, and accessibility, and haven't seen this type of 'hate'. In fact, the only 'hate' I've suffered was against my defense attorney character, coming from LEO factions where some of these players have mocked me as a roleplayer as a whole only for doing my job, haven't seen any of it as a prosecutor or judge, but mainly, from the end of the player base in general, I haven't felt it like an issue and in fact, it has opened doors for me to meet people around and make friends among a wide range of factions despite not being able to get IG and roleplay that much. 

The burden of the attacks, again from my perspective, has come from LEOs and only for doing their character's job, which is the core of the issue, the 'hate' of everything that is against them, and so on. The only hate that goes to DAO is when they move to dismiss one of their cases, refuse to take a case, or simply because they prosecute or investigate a peace officer, which has led to a previous District Attorney getting murdered and CK'ed and other having a massive wave of bullshit thrown at because of refusing to prosecute a case. I think that the culprits of the issue speak for themselves, but I cannot even refer to it as such, there's no big drama. Clarifying once more, these are very isolated cases, I don't think there's generalized OOC phobia against Court rp'ers. 

Why there /could/be generalized hate towards Court RP'ers or leadership is because of how restrictive they've grown against the player base, and lets not forget, the ones who suffer outcomes from Court RP, defendants (mostly illegal rp'ers), and they're totally OK to protest and make this thread, but a generalized hate? I think that's a bit too far.

Now in summary, in fact, the situation has been unfair for all ends. It's a good moment on the faction, there's a lot of the old guard returning and a good couple of good faces joining, so I believe that it's a good moment for reconciliation. That reconciliation should come with a speedy return of NG pleas once proper solutions are added to couple the interest of illegal/legal non-leo rp'ers with the rest. 

 

[Power]

4 hours ago, MxnSterx said:

The main problem is that this is a very good example of curing evil with another evil. 
 

One of my favorite quotes by a Gentlemen named Thomas Sewell is "There are no solutions, just trade offs. There was no magic bullet solution to it. And people seem to forget some of the issues when we had less restrictions on Not Guilty pleas and the outcome when things were understaffed. All that happened was people were allowed to plead not guilty and were stuck in jail for days because there was a huge backlog of arraignments needing to be processed by the DAO. I will reach out privately to get some more feedback from you but trust me. I wasn't involved in the conversation when these rules were implemented but I promise you it wasn't a step that was taken lightly. The whole court system was on the brink of the collapse. 

Edited January 8 by Power

[can]

+1 very needed

[JulieArt]

Please bring back not guilty, LFM said it was a temporary measure.

 

With no end in sight that temporary measure look a lot more permanent every day that passes.

[CupcakeCow]

Neither side of the fence should limit people’s time for roleplaying in anyway. Be it the people doing paperwork or someone stuck in jail with nobody to roleplay with. A compromise on the entire system needs reworking honestly. Sure crims do the crime they should do some time but if there is absolutely no other prisoners to rp with then it’s just as good as locking you out of roleplay entirely for x time because who wants to stare at a wall typing emotes to themselves?

 

If workload becomes so much of an issue when everyone is trying ti have fun could even go so far as to put in npc system for each plea including not guilty have a forced bail (even if it puts someone into minus, and don’t charge stupid amounts so that people can’t pay back) so that people can get on with their day and the cases can happen when they happen. 

[Milton]

6 hours ago, MxnSterx said:

The main problem is that this is a very good example of curing evil with another evil. 

In my opinion, safeguards should have been taken before publicating these rules. Are the issues that are alleged here enough to warrant the temporary removal of NG without safety measures behind it? I don't think so. Since this is almost the only reply in support of the current rules that have merit, I think it deserves a proper response from my POV, and even if I haven't been for the faction for that long, I've engaged recently and actively with a judge, prosecutor, and attorney, and even if I tend to be more biased for the third, I still believe that insight from all ends should be helpful.
 

  Reveal hidden contents

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,

As for 1: No remedy by disabling NG pleas is going to cure the fact that many innocent people are going to have to sit through jail time, have their character development trashed while unable to contest it, be banned from applying to factions, or be fired from their job. Back then in 2019, the Court faction opened a way to have charges appealed where the burden fell on them. Now after this decision, the faction has taken a large step down to an archaic system, we've gone worse than in 2019, back to 2017, since NC does not give one the ability to contest the charges. NC is not going to be forever. OK. But for how long? The damage and the impact on the characters and players that are going to suffer because of it is unbearable if no exemptions have been allowed (despite mandatory cases) or measures to veil the interest of the defendants. 

The main reason why the staff didn't have a renewal was because, as stated earlier, of incompetent leadership and lack of encouragement. Now that the new leadership is doing stuff to change and fight against these new rules (that IMHO are arbitrary) and overall people who can take criticism and move for changes. I myself have refilled charges that have been dismissed /without/ prejudice and never had a formal complaint to me for it. There's no arrest needed, only an order of summons. 
 

  Reveal hidden contents

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.

If arrests are the issue, maybe upholding actual sanctions, both OOCly and ICly, to LEO players who issue faulty arrests, and /rest assured/ that they will try better to make them work. Right now? Any reasonable unbiased person can agree that the system is biased in their favor and that's not good when illegal and legal non-LEO players weigh over the other playerbase. Punishing LEO players /is/ feasible and should be the mandatory rule to avoid awkward cases going to Court. Arrests that are done according to the law are hardly contested and the cases that reach to Court come from them end up on a plea deal at a 99% rate. Many people have accused lawyer characters of stalling the process which is wrong. 

Most of the cases that go unprosecuted are because the charges are bogus, let's be honest on this one, mistakes and some cases being dropped because of workload happen, but it's not as common as it's painted. At any rate, the understaffing is an actual issue, then the burden is on faction leaders to enhance attraction to this type of roleplay and create a selection process, exemptions, and guidelines on what cases should be good to prosecute and what others aren't.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

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.

A very valid point, however, this affects equally to lawyers, prosecutors, and judges, since their work is based on the same stuff. Their roleplay orbitates around forum work but from a different perspective, I'd say that it's a bit harsh for judges only but judges are not the cause of stagnation so I don't see why it's a relevant point to uphold NC pleas. I see many lawyer characters IG for example.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

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.

I'm a player focusing only on Court roleplay at the moment having left an official illegal faction in the process because I wanted to focus more on forum work, due to commodity, time, timezone, and accessibility, and haven't seen this type of 'hate'. In fact, the only 'hate' I've suffered was against my defense attorney character, coming from LEO factions where some of these players have mocked me as a roleplayer as a whole only for doing my job, haven't seen any of it as a prosecutor or judge, but mainly, from the end of the player base in general, I haven't felt it like an issue and in fact, it has opened doors for me to meet people around and make friends among a wide range of factions despite not being able to get IG and roleplay that much. 

The burden of the attacks, again from my perspective, has come from LEOs and only for doing their character's job, which is the core of the issue, the 'hate' of everything that is against them, and so on. The only hate that goes to DAO is when they move to dismiss one of their cases, refuse to take a case, or simply because they prosecute or investigate a peace officer, which has led to a previous District Attorney getting murdered and CK'ed and other having a massive wave of bullshit thrown at because of refusing to prosecute a case. I think that the culprits of the issue speak for themselves, but I cannot even refer to it as such, there's no big drama. Clarifying once more, these are very isolated cases, I don't think there's generalized OOC phobia against Court rp'ers. 

Why there /could/be generalized hate towards Court RP'ers or leadership is because of how restrictive they've grown against the player base, and lets not forget, the ones who suffer outcomes from Court RP, defendants (mostly illegal rp'ers), and they're totally OK to protest and make this thread, but a generalized hate? I think that's a bit too far.

Now in summary, in fact, the situation has been unfair for all ends. It's a good moment on the faction, there's a lot of the old guard returning and a good couple of good faces joining, so I believe that it's a good moment for reconciliation. That reconciliation should come with a speedy return of NG pleas once proper solutions are added to couple the interest of illegal/legal non-leo rp'ers with the rest. 

 

 

I can see you’ve put a lot of thought into addressing the core issues with the current system. I'll provide my perspctive, especially regarding some of the points you’ve raised about fairness, safeguards, and the broader implications for roleplay across the server.

 

I fully agree that “curing evil with another evil” is not the ideal approach, and any rule change should prioritize balance. However, the removal of NG pleas without appropriate safety measures has created more harm than good. As you pointed out, innocent characters are being forced to endure significant consequences, loss of faction opportunities, even character progression, without any viable means of recourse. I agree that detracts from the fairness of the system but discourages engagement with legal roleplay overall. Regarding arrests, I think you’re absolutely right that enforcing sanctions against LEOs for faulty or unlawful arrests should be considered. If the intention is to create a fair and balanced system, this type of OOC and IC should be a mandatory consideration.

[سُبْحَانَ ٱللهِ]

You could literally see they way cops talk to you IG has changed, like they know you'd have to wait 10 days even if you're some-what innocent. A cop doing "ic training" for a month does not give them the right to take away someone's roleplay for 10 days.

[Jeroen]

On 1/7/2025 at 11:26 AM, 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).

 

22 hours ago, Allerion said:

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

Public Defender's office losing long-time members, which leads to a brain-drain and a loss of institutional knowledge, can absolutely be attributed to LFM's own actions. Not necessarily due to the removal of Not Guilty pleas, but their actions happened around the same timeframe.

 

I still have to experience the current PDO leadership, so I cannot say much about that. Previous PDO leadership kept the workload on Public Defenders manageable by prioritizing the poorest players. If the workload was high, the case distribution would get selective. And if the workload was low, we'd loosen the requirements for representation.

 

It is mostly the judge and District Attorney's office that gets overwhelmed by the amount of cases.

[padinni]

You have the option to address the problem yourselves by joining JSA and contributing to staffing.

However, it seems some people prefer to complain rather than take action to resolve their own concerns.