NameIess

"Well of course they'd bounce off each other without harming each other. Brandon's philosophy about lightsabers and whatnot seems to be: 'generic magic sword from one universe = generic magic sword from another universe.' Also, if you don't want it, could you give my hand back?"

Nameless groaned, sitting up. "Sure." He gave Frustration a hand.

Nameless ran into Doomslug at full force, looking over his shoulder at the horde of ravenous chickens that was pursuing him.

Nameless sighed in relief. Then he gasped in horror. “NoooOOOOOOOO!!! My INVITATIONS!”

Nameless gasped in horror as the Ghanderflaffle empire loomed over him. Was someone burning one of his invitations?

Meanwhile, The Ghanderflaffle empire was rising.

Can you give me some backstory on Jared?

Well, the difference between 99% and 99.9% is the difference between convicting one in a thousand people wrongly and one in a hundred. (According to a quick google, between 2-10% of convictions in the US are wrongful, so it looks like 90-98% is considered 'beyond reasonable doubt'. Unless the statistic is wrong, which it very well might be.)

I know. I was just pointing out that 'reasonable doubt' is never defined, so far as I know. Do you have to be 99% certain that someone committed a crime? Or 90%? Maybe you have to be 99.9%. You have to figure out what 'reasonable doubt' means.

The consultants took one look at the burning factory and decided to remember that they had a pressing appointment elsewhere.

Yep. You could have hallucinated the whole thing. Or there could be some completely unreasonable explanation. 100% certainty is impossible. You can get really close, but never actually reach it.

Nameless gulped. "Come on Tani, he was just about to disappear! Why'd you have to acknowledge him and pressure our delicate psyches to also accept him as real?"

Or it should have been. Too bad magic liked to ignore pesky things like the laws of physics.

The DNA could have been planted. The camera could have been faked. You can be 99.99% certain, but never 100% certain. That is true. And a big reason why one person shouldn't be making the decision over the lives of his subjects. Juries and whatnot are a better option. That shouldn't stop the ruler from doing his job. Yep. You can't prove anything. You can show that something is almost certain, so much so that assuming it is a 100% certainty isn't going to cause any harm, but actually proving something 100%? Impossible. Okay, in that case, it should be based on preventing suffering caused by other people as much as possible. Protect society from itself. And from you, of course. In general, I'd say no cameras in people's homes. I'm not familiar with that dilemma. Could you extrapolate?

I disagree. The justice system is made to protect people. So protecting the people should be their primary concern. That does include protecting the people from the justice system itself. That's not proven. Innocents can lie. Confessions can be false, or forced. DNA evidence can be faked, or simply wrong. You can never be 100% certain that someone is guilty. Oh, definitely. The first question should be 'how can we minimize the amount of suffering'. I was just pointing out that in punishing those you believe to be evil, you have to accept that you will punish good by accident, and decide how certain you have to be that someone is evil before you punish them. In America, we decided 'guilty beyond reasonable doubt', but 'beyond reasonable doubt' isn't really defined. Is it 99%? 99.99999999%? That's up to the jury to decide. I'm going to say no* because the risk of that sort of power getting into the wrong hands would be catastrophic. *Depends on the scale of the surveillance.

"Well, I could do that. Or I could read all of TLPW."

Nameless caught it. "Oh, I have an even better idea! I should read all of the TLT-related rp threads!"

See, now we're getting into actual long-term solutions. Like I said, releasing the suspects on probation is something that would potentially be viable. The first priority of a lord is to prevent further murders, but preventing the unjust punishment of an innocent should be the second priority. Now, my opinions on this say nothing about my opinions as to the viability of a feudal system of rulership. One person should probably not be making this decision in the first place, and if they are, they definitely need some kind of oversight to ensure they continue to prioritize the safety of the people over all else and do not turn into a tyrant. As for 'If a single man suffers unjustly the lord has made the wrong choice and has lost his right to rule', well, if that's the case, then I can guarantee that no ruler in history has ever held the right to rule. (not for very long after the beginning of their rule, at least). Finally, no one can be 'proved' guilty. If you hold that one who is not proved guilty cannot be punished, then you cannot punish anyone. It is up to the makers of the justice system to decide how many innocents they are willing to wrongfully punish in exchange for punishing the wrongdoers. Where do you draw the line? One in ten? One in a hundred? One in a thousand? That's the question. My line is at the point that I am harming the least innocents in exchange for preventing the most harm to them.

"Ah, perfect! I haven't watched the spiderman movies yet. I can read a summary!"

"Read it. And read it."

In this case, the largest threat to his people is actually the three murderers whom he just let loose to go kill again. If a single citizen dies when they wouldn't have if he had imprisoned all the hogmen, then he made the wrong choice. I believe the likelihood of one or more innocents dying is enough to justify the (possibly temporary) imprisonment of one innocent.

Nameless sighed. "I already read that like a million times."

A king who refuses to protect his people is not a good king.

Nameless shrugged. "I have other books to read. I just want some good ones to reread."

"Hm. I guess I could give those a read."