things

let's cover some shit off real quick

the judge's legal name is judge. he is referred to as justice judge. i think his given name, also judge.

carla pritt = culprit. falcon kai = fall guy.

this takes place somewhere in the 3d game era.

what is the real case

so, i'm not going to link to it because it is real crime and contains potentially upsetting content. (i'm also not talking about the facts of the crime itself, only the grounds for appeal.) suffice it to say it's an australian case which dealt with the issue of "is it fine if your lawyer is boning the prosecution".

a disclaimer: im australian. im pretty sure this is different in the US and i have no idea about any other jurisdiction. i think in the US the answer is closer to "no, dude?"

a second disclaimer: none of anything i have said or am about to say should be taken as reliable information about the law, in any jurisdiction, or circumstance, ever, forever. this is pure entertainment, it's nonsense, and even the stuff im presenting as information could be wrong because im pretty dumb, very tired, did not do my due diligence on this because it's fanfiction not my job, and also have a lot of gin in me at time of writing this.

stop making disclaimers and tell us about the case

ok

a person was convicted of doing a crime. they then found out the prosecutor and their lawyer had been in, like, a de facto relationship for a bunch of time before the trial, then they broke up. while the trial was ongoing, they were broken up and not together. previously, when they'd run trials while they were a couple, they'd disclosed their relationship to all relevant parties. however, since they were NOT a couple at the time, they didn't disclose anything to the defendant in this case.

the main problem is that during that trial period, and while they were broken up, the prosecutor and defence shared a hotel room. both swore up and down that "nothing happened". the main problem with THAT is that after the trial ENDED, they got BACK TOGETHER. the judgment was like, "respectfully, even if you didn't actively fuck in that hotel room, the fact that you guys WERE together and then got BACK together kind of implies that you were into each other while you were doing the hotel room thing, which is kind of different from other lawyers who have never fucked, even if you were not actively fucking at the time." < paraphrased

anyway the defendant was like "what the fuck dude" and appealed on the basis that if their lawyer had just told them he was boning the prosecution then they maybe could've gotten over it but he didn't so they couldn't.

the outcome

the fucking in and of itself wasn't the issue, whether or not it's a problem depends on the conduct of the lawyers. the judges in this case basically agree that there was no actual miscarriage of justice and that the lawyers did a professional job despite the alleged fucking; however there was arguably a perceived miscarriage of justice and concerns about whether the defendant had a fair trial in that light, so they went for the retrial. the lord hewart quote in the fic is real and is cited in this case although i think they got his name wrong.

rook why did you write this

read that story and tell me that isn't the most narumitsu thing that's ever happened.

can you translate any of the legalese in this fic

i actually tried not to put legalese in this fic but god, i can't always spot it anymore. i DID make it deliberately kind of shittily written with lots of long pretentious sentences out of faithfulness to all the judgments i have ever had to read. so yes i wrote like 2k+ of something that's hard to read on purpose, although im still hoping it's like, theoretically more readable than the billion pages of bullshit i had to slog through at school. anyway tell me if you want me to translate something and i'll do it for you.

ok but rook WHY. did you write this.

ive been sick all week and didn't want to be useful at work. i decided the way to cope with that would be to write an unreadable lump of pseudo legal nonsense, on my phone, at my desk, in increments of several minutes between tasks, for my own amusement only?

what is this work