Jury Trials
Arrest
If you committed a crime, you will need to be ‘arrested’ for those crimes.
At Knight HQ (in KOS) and at the Prison (in Venexia) there is an Auto-Arrest Item.
When you get captured by Knightsl, you may be asked to click on the ‘Auto-Arrest’
When you are formally arrested, your meter will become ‘Property of: Knights’ or ‘Property of: XXXX’
Also a trial will open for you. While in this stage, you won’t be able to use the bank. Your funds will be locked.
You won’t be able to fight.
Preparation for Trial
We strongly advice you to hire a defense lawyer before going to trial and work on a line of defense for you. All crime reports and investigation reports are public records and you can review them. You can also call some character witnesses or other witnesses to support with your defense (your temporary insanity, your lack of prior convictions, etc). Whatever you do, go to trial prepared. A defense lawyer, besides having legal experience, will make sure that your legal fee will be reduced with an extra discount.
You can also decide to represent yourself if you are up to it, but you will not benefit of the extra fee discount.
Trial
If you start a trial and you are defendant, but you haven’t been ‘arrested’ yet, no worries. You will be automatically arrested and a new trial will be added for you.
Go to the Court Room/Area. Click on the Machine/Jar to start your trial.
Only the defendant can do that.
If you wish to avoid the Jury Trial, you can simply plead GUILTY, and the full legal fee will be deducted from your account and you will sentenced to jail (technically you won’t be released right away – but you will have to wait 15 more minutes).
If you wish to proceed with Jury Trial, an announcement in the SIM will be made for Jury Selection. Willing jurors should approach and come closer to the Court Room to have best chances to be picked as Jurors.
5 Jurors will be selected randomly from the players in the SIM (but excluding defendant, lawyer and prosecutor).
Jurors will be asked to accept or decline the invite to be part of the Jury.
If they accept, a seat will be reserved with their name on it. Their participation will be rewarded with 50G$ transfered directly to their bank account after the trial.
If they decline, a new juror will be randomly selected.
The system will try to fill out all 5 seats of the jury. A minimum of 3 jurors is required, or the trial will be canceled and will have to be restarted at another time.
The first choice will be given to Clan Leaders, because they carry more authority IC. If they are not available, other random players will be chosen.
In our trial prosecutors or witnesses may be present, but not a requirement.
For the current law, you are GUILTY until you are proven NOT GUILTY.
All the burden to prove your innocence is on your defense lawyer. (or yourself if you decided to represent yourself). Defendant should spend time with his lawyer to prepare for the defense (if possible).
When the lawyer has completed his in-character closing argument, then he will click on the trial machine, and the jurors will vote GUILTY or NOT GUILTY.
If all jurors vote the defendant NOT GUILTY, the defendant will be released without fee and an apology.
If all jurors vote the defendant GUILTY, the defendant will pay full fee (and a lawyer discount will apply) and will be sentenced with a short detention in jail (practically you won’t be released right away, but you will be kept ‘property of ‘ status for 15 more minutes). Hopefully you will roleplay your short detention in jail. Anyway you will have to go to jail to be released for good. Go and find a’Release Form’ to ‘sign’.
If some jurors will find defendant guilty and others not guilty, you will be found GUILTY with extenuating circumstances and will pay an amount of legal fee based on your ‘Guilt Rate’ and your Lawyer Skill Level. The math behind these calculations is quite complex, so don’t worry for now.
In the Jury with Trial, all your previous crimes will be cleared up and paid, and you will never get processed for the same crime twice.
If you wish to become a Lawyer, please sign up for Skill Training at the Lawyer office.
Lawyers can only be accepted if they have 1 law item available in their inventory. If not, they will have to wait until they signup again for job.
Prosecutors also must signup as such and receive prosecutor items or they won’t be able to signup in a trial.
Feel free to start to use the Jury Trial and report bugs to Kora Zenovka.More Links:
More Links:
Last modified: May 2, 2012