I was surprised when this hit the floor. Rereading reading it over the last half-hour, it says:
arbitrarily expiring Division certification after only one year even if there have been no material changes to the case record
Certification does not expire. It cannot be made to expire. In fact, there are no mechanisms in the target resolution to expire certification, regardless of any change or non-change in the case record. To say that certification expires is false. To borrow from something I wrote before,
Objectively false statements are not permitted in repeals. See [2018] GAS 6, available here viewtopic.php?p=34338285#p34338285; see also [2018] GAS 8, available at viewtopic.php?p=34583513#p34583513. In both cases, the mere existence of incorrect statements is found to constitute an Honest Mistake. This is especially so in the case of [2018] GAS 6, where the incorrect statement had little to no impact on the claims or impacts in the illegal repeal.
Text of target resolution: (Sourced from viewtopic.php?p=34697401#p34697401)
Preventing The Execution Of Innocents
A resolution to improve worldwide human and civil rights.
Category: Civil Rights
Strength: Mild
Proposed by: Imperium Anglorum
Description: Whereas there is considerable disagreement in the Assembly about the merits of banning capital punishment:
And whereas it is best to set a compromise, where the Assembly does its best efforts to permit, with effective regulations, capital punishment so to best reduce the chance of it falling upon those who have not committed the crime they are accused of:
Be it enacted by the World Assembly, as follows :
- Subject to World Assembly legislation, member nations are permitted to sentence and carry out capital punishment within their jurisdictions.
- There shall be created a Capital Cases division in the Judicial Committee of the Compliance Commission, here referred to as the Division, staffed with competent jurists and forensic scientists, to review submitted cases. To prevent the Division from being overwhelmed by requests for review, any one jurisdiction shall submit no more than than one capital case per million inhabitants per year. For the purposes of avoiding confirmation bias in assessments, the Division shall not keep records of capital punishment procedures.
- Member nations shall not attempt to pervert justice by unduly influencing the defendant or defence counsel. Nor shall member nations require or coerce the defendant or defence counsel to make decisions which may damage their defence or, in the case of counsel, the welfare of their client.
- Member nations, when prosecuting capital cases, shall:
- establish an office of a solicitor, specialised in the prosecution of capital cases, who shall conduct the prosecution of all capital cases within their jurisdiction,
- provide the defendant with adequate representation at the state's expense, barring concurrent representation, if the defendant is unable to pay for such counsel,
- provide the defence with all evidence collected in the process of investigation,
- provide the defence ample time, no less than one year, to review and examine that evidence,
- prohibit evidentiary barriers from barring the defence admission of evidence,
- prove, such that there could not arise evidence (foreseeable at the time of trial) that would cast doubt on the guilt of the defendant for any charge which could carry a capital sentence, and
- submit for review, to the Division, all facts of the case and conclusions reached at trial, at which time the Division shall decide whether to certify that all burdens of proof are met, there has been due process, and all conclusions on evidence are justifiable. If certification is withheld, the Division may dismiss or remand the case.
- In all cases where a capital sentence is issued, before it is carried out,
- member nations shall serially provide the Division and all counsel assigned or associated with a case, six months to discover, examine, and verify exculpatory evidence which could exonerate the defendant,
- permit the defendant full access to the national appellate system and appeal to the Division upon discovery of possibly exonerating evidence or admissible evidence which casts into doubt the narrative put forth by the prosecution at the time of trial, and
- provide to the defendant, in any legal proceedings related to their capital conviction, the same privileges afforded to defendant during and after the original trial.
- Member nations shall not issue a capital sentence on any mentally incompetent person, as punishment for any non-violent crime, or as punishment for any crime not directly affecting more than one person. All capital sentences shall be carried out via a method which is, upon review demanded by any party to a capital case, proven beyond any reasonable doubt not to cause pain or suffering.
- Member nations shall not extradite, except to World Assembly judicial institutions or jurisdictions without capital punishment, any person charged or likely to be charged with a capital offence. Nor shall any person be extradited to a place likely to commence judicial proceedings, which would contravene World Assembly legislation, against that person.
- No member nation shall carry out a capital sentence on any person which has not had their case record certified by the Division within the last year. Nor shall member nations carry out such a sentence before the Division has certified that there exist no irregularities in the case record, the defendant has exhausted all available appeals, or the Division has certified that all procedures involved with carrying out that capital sentence comply with provisions set forth in World Assembly legislation.
- All individuals currently sentenced to capital punishment or charged of a capital crime shall be afforded the protections of this resolution.
Votes For: 9 244 (52.2%)
Votes Against: 8 475 (47.8%)
Implemented Mon Sep 17 2018
[443 GA on NS] [Official Debate Topic]
Text of repeal: (Sourced from quotation of forum text)
Repeal "Preventing the Execution of Innocents"
Category: Repeal | Resolution: GAR #443
Affirming that member states should take all reasonable steps to avoid executing an innocent person;
Regretting that GAR #443, "Preventing the Execution of Innocents", sought to accomplish this goal by establishing an international judicial mechanism for reviewing capital convictions (herein referred to as the "Division") that is grossly unfair, absurdly complex, full of ambiguities, and seems designed to ban capital punishment in all but name;
Criticizing the target resolution in particular for:Supporting the passage of true and lasting compromise legislation on the issue of capital punishment;
- demonstrating a fundamental lack of respect for the judicial systems of member states by subjecting every capital case to invasive World Assembly oversight, even when there is zero evidence of negilgence or malpractice,
- engaging in unjust discrimination on the basis of member state population by requiring member states to submit "no more than than one capital case per million inhabitants per year" to the Division, rendering it difficult or impossible for smaller nations of fewer than one million people to use capital punishment,
- contributing to violations of the basic principles of justice by forcing member states to treat similarly situated convicts differently with respect to their eligibility for capital punishment, depending on whether the member state happened to exceed the aforementioned quota,
- blocking valid limits to discovery, such as personally identifying information that is not material to the case, by requiring that the defense be provided with "all evidence collected in the process of investigation" without exception,
- blocking valid limits to the admission of evidence, such as proof of fabrication, by requiring member states to "prohibit evidentiary barriers from barring the defence admission of evidence" without exception,
- requiring member states to meet the effectively impossible standard of proving that "there could not arise evidence (foreseeable at the time of trial) that would cast doubt on the guilt of the defendant" rather than the more common standard of proving guilt beyond reasonable doubt,
- creating needless delay by requiring an additional post-sentencing discovery period of six months each by the Division and the defense, and by arbitrarily requiring these periods to occur serially rather than concurrently,
- arbitrarily prohibiting the execution of those who have brutally tortured and killed only one person as opposed to several,
- arbitrarily prohibiting member states from extraditing individuals to other member states with capital punishment if said individuals are likely to be charged with capital offenses, even if said member states agree to abide by the protections of the target resolution,
- seemingly permitting a defendant to avoid capital punishment by simply not "exhaust[ing] all available appeals", and
- arbitrarily expiring Division certification after only one year even if there have been no material changes to the case record, and providing no clear mechanism for certification to be renewed;
The General Assembly,
Repeals GAR #443, "Preventing the Execution of Innocents".
