His next witness is one of Her Majesty's security wizards, Josselin Cuvier, who is inconveniently not the security wizard who first found the defendant - they haven't been told who that was - but who was able to replicate the result. 

"Do you swear before the gods of Good and Law, and before this court, and before your Queen, that every word of your testimony is true, and that your integrity as a man of the law may be verified by magic, should any call it into question?"

          "I do."

"Explain to me, when an illegal pamphlet is written, how the copyist is identified."

        "In a case like this where it is of great importance to the state to find the guilty party swiftly, instead of ordinary police work Her Majesty's wizards scry using the pamphlet as a focus, which finds the author or else fails entirely. If it fails it can be repeated until it finds the author."

"Can such magic misidentify the author?" 

        "It cannot identify wrongly some party other than the one whose hand copied that pamphlet. It cannot say whether that person was the original writer or just a copyist, though of course both are guilty, and anyway once you've arrested them that's easy enough to sort out."

"And you scried this "Friend of the True People" pamphlet?"

          "I did."

"And who did you see?"

         "That man, right over there."

"Could it have been someone else in disguise?"

         "That could be a concern if we got a picture from the scry, went to make an arrest, and did not verify further that we'd picked up the right man and not just one who resembled him; but I conducted my scry to verify the identification after the man was in custody."

"Is there any means you know of by which a man could put out treasonous pamphlets and escape identification by Her Majesty?" Not directly relevant to the case but a useful point to make to would-be traitors in the audience.

          "Were he an archmage himself, sire, he'd have the means to foil this; but no lesser wizard would."

"How many such identifications have you conducted over the course of your career?"

           "At least three hundred."

"Were any of them in error?"

         "No."

Why are they asking so many questions about how magic works. That's not exciting at all. Apparently trials are way less interesting then executions.

It's actually pretty useful to know that if you write an illegal pamphlet you should make sure you're ready to die for it and not just count on them not catching you, the way you can do with a lot of crimes. (Of course, some things are worth dying for.)

Are they really giving away their techniques for finding people?  Maybe they think it’s worth the intimidation of potential pamphleteers?  But for all the pamphleteers it intimidates it will make the more committed that much more capable with clever workarounds.  Dia herself has already thought of the obvious cheap way around it (hire and manipulate someone else to copy your pamphlet), and has a few guesses at higher effort ones (do summons making copies get you the summoner or the summons?  What about dominated people or at least charmed people?  And magic offers even more esoteric options!). 

Dia is actually kind of disappointed in the prosecutors for making such a dumb tradeoff.  Maybe they have a few more secret methods in reserve?

A teenage pamphlet-hawker, too old to be a proper pamphlet-urchin anymore, is nervously paying very close attention to this part. 

Were he an archmage himself, sire, he'd have the means to foil this; but no lesser wizard would."

Alexandre gets the point of this, which is terrorizing the populace into submission, but he still wants to stand up and yell "FALSE!" because it's false! He is refraining from doing this only because he has been bribed not to. He's opposed to populaces being terrified into submission, and in favor of people knowing true, correct facts. (This is probably why he has a cleric of Nethys following him around.)

"The prosecution submits this witness to the court, Your Honor, should you have any further questions for him."

"How did you determine that the accused was the original author of the pamphlet, and not just a copyist?" Both are illegal, of course, but the penalties are very different.

"We just ask them, Your Honor, and read their minds while we ask. This one admitted it."

"The court has no further questions. You are dismissed."

"Your Honor, the defendant wrote and copied the vile and treasonous pamphlets, a fact which he openly admits and which is established further by the work of wizards in Her Majesty's service. The pamphlets illegally called for violence against Her Majesty's subjects in Westcrown. In response to the pamphlets, people went out and did violence, with two hundred forty two deaths confirmed so far. There is no defense, and he's offered none; the Crown rests its case."

"Does the accused wish to present any argument besides his confession?"

"Magistrate, my fellow Citizens, I will now read excerpts from the collected speeches of Julien Élie Camille Cotonnet, the collected works of Hosseter, and Varga's Acts of Iomedae and Commentaries Thereon, all texts known to be sacred to the new regime, which will establish without a doubt that whatever mere mortal law may say, I acted only in accordance with True Justice."

Antoni is deeply confused about why the Queen's magistrate is giving this man so many additional opportunities for further incitement. As the Queen is wise and Lawful, she must of course have a good reason that is simply not apparent to him, but it seems dangerous not to understand what that reason is.

There are commentaries thereon? Like, available in bookstores in Westcrown that he could have gone to? He should have gotten a commentary thereon! Maybe it would have covered something important!

"This court is interested in the queen's justice, not the revolutionary justice of the accused's heart. These texts are irrelevant to the law of Cheliax and irrelevant to this case; they may not be entered into evidence. Does the accused have any case that he is innocent under the queen's law?"

"No. Only under the higher law, of which the queen's law is a hollow mockery -"

The baliff casts a silent table.

"In the absence of a defense, the court finds the accused guilty on all counts. By law, the sentence is death, and repeated execution should the criminal ever be returned to life, or unlife, and enter again Chelish jurisdiction. Bernat Vidal-Espinosa, do you desire the Mercy of the Final Blade? You may nod or shake your head."

He shakes his head. He'd rather Elysium.

"Then you are sentenced to hang by the neck until dead. Baliff, remove him."

Oh, that explains it. The decision to permit him to make an opening statement full of incitement is still a little — confusing, but of course the Queen's magistrates aren't going to allow him to keep doing it. 

They're not even going to do the execution on the spot? Let the crowd have a little fun, come on!!

Hanging????? That's boring, the most that happens during a hanging is that the executionee flails around a little!

He bows to the magistrate and leaves to work on the next case. Thanks to this pack of roving traitors there are a lot of murderers to prosecute in Westcrown this week.