Draft: Establish Uniform Rules of Criminal Procedure

[New Luciannova]

This is a resolution I proposed earlier, it failed to get passed the proposal stage. I am submitting it here first in order to restart the procedure, ideally to get feedback and advice from other esteemed member states of the World Assembly. It did come somewhat close during its earlier attempt and hopefully will carry upon its next suggestion. Thank you.


Establish Uniformed Rules of Criminal Procedure
This resolution, in summary, establishes the legal need for all member nations to issue clear and coherent uniform rules governing criminal proceedings. These rules are to be compiled, established, published, and made publicly available to all citizens in the effected member-nation.
These rules are intended to make navigating the judicial system more standard, efficient, and predictable for all participants including defendants, jurors, prosecutors, defense counsels, judges, magistrates, witnesses, and other participants in the legal system.
This resolution will define criminal procedure as the laws that govern the series of proceedings under which a member-state enforces, investigates, and tries criminal offenses.
The resolution will define uniformity by stating that these laws will be generalized and apply to all applicable handling of criminal offenses.
Terms used in this resolution for purposes of definition include
(1) A member-nation is any nation in the World Assembly
(2) A criminal defendant is any person being charged with a criminal offense.
(3) An officer of the court is any person who has a professional legal functioning in the judicial system, this includes prosecutors, other attorneys, magistrates, and judges. It does not apply to standard law enforcement personnel, including those who work or provide security for the judicial branch.
(4) A criminal proceeding is any action in which a defendant is facing investigation, arrest, detention, indictment, conviction, or punishment, for any criminal offense or is seeking appeal for a potentially wrongful conviction.

This rule recognizes the following truths:
(1) It is a compelling interest for all nations to have coherent, consistent, and uniform management of criminal legal proceedings.
(2) It is a compelling interest for all nations to provide a fair trial so as only guilty defendants can be held to face criminal sanctions for criminal offenses.
(3) It is a compelling interest for all nations to have a judicial system in which all participants are aware of the rules they must follow during criminal proceedings.
(4) Nations understand trial proceedings differently on a highly individualized basis and such proceedings may vary in standards based on local jurisdictions. Nations are sovereign and may pursue their own destiny by deciding, within boundaries of previously established World Assembly Resolutions, to decide what is included in uniformed rules and how individual jurisdictions may impose local variants provided they follow rules established by the World Assembly.
(5) Nations may have classes and groupings of their populace who due to circumstances may be different from traditional defendants and if needed may be subject to alternate rules of criminal proceedings which follow all the rules established by this resolution.

This rule mandates that all member-nations do the following:
(1) Member nations must publish uniformed rules that govern the handling of all criminal proceedings.
(2) Member nations must establish and apply these rules uniformly to all criminal proceedings.
(3) Member nations must make the publication of these rules available to any citizen who requests them.
(4) This resolution mandates that all officers of the court must familiarize themselves with these rules and be tested on them before being allowed to pursue such a career.
(5) These rules of criminal procedure must include a method for the pursuance of sanctions against any officer of the court who knowingly and deliberately violates criminal procedure to an extensive level that adversely impacts the outcome of a trial or results in any miscarriage of justice.
(6) These rules must impose additional procedures for which a defendant who has been harmed by any violation of the aforementioned rules can seek relief.
(7) The uniformed rules will govern jurisdiction, investigation, the issuance of warrants, interrogation, summons, arrest, pleas, arraignment, bail, trial, legal motions, evidence, testimony, conduct of officers of the court, conviction, acquittal, and appeals where applicable.

Amendments
(1) This resolution does not impose any specific guidelines toward what the rules of criminal procedure must include, except as already established in other World Assembly Resolutions or as explicitly mentioned above.
(2) This resolution does not require procedure be nationally uniformed in member-nations, noting that some nations have considerable level of devolution, cultural and local differences.
(3) Exceptions for certain classes of persons can be made to the uniform rules, so long as unique uniform rules are issued that follow the same guidelines as the standard set of rules and both the standard rules and unique rules clarify their differences. Persons subject to unique rules may include—but are not limited to-- military personnel, nobility, clergy, the head of state or other sovereign, law enforcement, minors, resident aliens, or other person with unique political authority governed by the member-nation’s statutory rules.

[Sierra Lyricalia]

OOC: Welcome to the World Assembly! There will be a number of things you'll want to change in order to give yourself the best possible chance to pass this. I'll start by noting that this is very long - be aware of the 5000-character limit for proposals. You'll want to cut most of the preamble (the "This proposal will..." paragraphs up top), as it's unnecessary and you'll want to repurpose some.of the space to tell the Assembly why they should want to pass this. I haven't had a chance yet to run through this in depth, but I or others will undoubtedly have suggestions to improve it. Listen to these, adopt the ones that fit with your vision, and in some weeks or days at minimum, you'll have something ready to submit.

Good luck!

[Separatist Peoples]

"Most of this, despite it's length, is mostly covered elsewhere. All this does is require nations have and keep public criminal procedure and apply it uniformly. It asks for a fair trial with little explanation for what that is. As it stands, the WA has equal protection and fair justice resolutions. Removing those sections that duplicate existing resolutions leave you solely with a resolution that mandates publication. Even that is questionably covered by extant law.

"I see little likelihood of success as currently written, and little chance of modifying it without changing the draft's fundamental premise."

[New Luciannova]

So I received a few areas of concern.
(1) The proposal is too long. This can be reduced.
(2) The proposal is redundant with other previously passed resolutions.
(3) The proposal mandates nothing of significance that is new, it only mandates publication.

1- This should not be a significant challenge, the length can be trimmed.
2- The resolution was tailored as such to make it clear it would be consistent with other previous resolutions. It was proposed before and came close to making it to the floor. It was not declared illegal.
3- I strongly disagree with this conclusion.
Looking at the previous laws that claim equal protection and a fair trial, they do not cover procedure. The current policies do not mandate procedure. Mandating its publication and enforcement is necessary to make any of the previous resolutions meaningful. Manuals on criminal procedure are generally very lengthy and detailed.
I do not feel I need to define a fair trial beyond the scope of the proposal.
Procedure is not even discussed by extant law as it is not even mentioned. What is covered does not mandate uniformity in procedure, just in justice--which may or may not touch on my resolution, but is nebulous on it at best. Procedure is a long and detailed system of rules. This is a narrowly tailored resolution mandating that procedural rules be published, accessible, and enforced and that all officers of the court must be required to be familiar of the subject matter. If previous resolutions mandate those things, please let me know, they must have eluded me.

Thank you for your feedback, but I do not agree with the latter critique. If my third feedback could be responded to, to ensure we understand oneanother, that would be much appreciated.

[Kenmoria]

“The combination of ‘Member nations must establish and apply these rules uniformly to all criminal proceedings.’ and the two amendments about this clause make little sense. If these rules do not have to be applied uniformly geographically, nor from person to person, what exactly are they uniform to? This one of the most impactful clauses, and its effectiveness has been greatly reduced.

Although this proposal does tread some new ground, none of it is particularly incredible or necessary. What exactly are you hoping to achieve? Seeing as you will have to cut a lot of the proposal due to length, it will be a good idea to try and streamline the legislation more closely to your aim, whatever that may be.”

[Bears Armed]

OOC
Would this mean that member nations whose legal systems protect the anonymity of people who are [or, at least, are claiming to be] victims of rape must also protect the anonymity of people who are [or, at least, are claiming to be] victims of all other types of crime as well?
Would this mean that member nations whose legal systems do not allow bail in cases where the potential sentences exceed some potential threshold must forbid the use of bail for all "lesser" charges as well?

[New Luciannova]

“The combination of ‘Member nations must establish and apply these rules uniformly to all criminal proceedings.’ and the two amendments about this clause make little sense. If these rules do not have to be applied uniformly geographically, nor from person to person, what exactly are they uniform to? This one of the most impactful clauses, and its effectiveness has been greatly reduced.

Although this proposal does tread some new ground, none of it is particularly incredible or necessary. What exactly are you hoping to achieve? Seeing as you will have to cut a lot of the proposal due to length, it will be a good idea to try and streamline the legislation more closely to your aim, whatever that may be.”

Actually, this is really helpful.
In the United States we have considerable devolved powers (typically known as "state's rights" or "Tenth Amendment Issues") while we have federal rules of criminal procedure, we also have state rules of criminal procedure. This would be to say that rules of criminal procedure would have differences based on jurisdiction. This is more common with civil law, but many states have different sentencing guidelines. There is no death penalty in Kansas, but in Oklahoma lethal injection remains quite popular. Utah will allow you to opt-in for firing squad, Arizona won't. Rules for prosecutors, judges, and public defenders also differ. In New York judges and district attorneys are elected, in Connecticut, they are not. In some states public defense is like jury duty for lawyers, in some you get called up, other times you can choose to volunteer, in many states public defenders are simply state employees who work there full-time. Hence the purpose of one amendment is that in any country that leaves hands in more immediate authorities may have different laws related to procedure. So I was simply allowing details and nuances to be left up to more local authorities where the member state views appropriate.

The rules are not perfectly established from person to person. A minor or non-resident alien may have their case handled in different courts and under different rules, as is common in many jurisdictions in the real world. It is possible that in certain countries certain people may be eligible to certain hearings (i.e. military tribunals) or in an autocracy with divine right it is likely the sovereign may be excluded from standard prosecution. It is also possible that some procedural rules may grant certain procedural privileges to certain people (i.e. a Catholic priest hearing confession or HIPAA).

The goal of this is to create procedural standards for criminal court cases, it would create a degree of predictability, stability, and efficiency for all members of a criminal court.

I technically don't HAVE to cut it down, it meets the requirements, it was just a suggestion I'm going to do my best to uphold.

[New Luciannova]

OOC
Would this mean that member nations whose legal systems protect the anonymity of people who are [or, at least, are claiming to be] victims of rape must also protect the anonymity of people who are [or, at least, are claiming to be] victims of all other types of crime as well?
Would this mean that member nations whose legal systems do not allow bail in cases where the potential sentences exceed some potential threshold must forbid the use of bail for all "lesser" charges as well?

This rule is narrowly tailored. If you've ever held a procedure manual in your hand you'd find it to be lengthy and detailed and addresses most issues which may arise and is routinely updated as courts work out new problems that may arise. The nations are allowed considerable leeway so long as they are in compliance with all world assembly resolutions. This is really just a fundamental tool that nations ought to have for a functioning criminal justice system and for better practice for attorneys and other members of a criminal trial.

[The New Nordic Union]

OOC: I know that 'uniformed' in this proposal means '(having undergone transformation) to be in uniformity'... but every single time while reading it, I still have to stop and ponder what rules wearing uniforms look like. Maybe use 'uniform', the adjective, as opposed to the participle 'uniformed'?

[Great Nortend]

I still don't really see the purpose of the legislation. It may not even be possible to entirely codify criminal procedures such that a prisoner may be able to understand matters without legal assistance without fundamentally altering the nature of the legal system in a particular nation. It may even lead to prisoners foregoing legal advice, if they feel they understand the system, when in fact they do not.