"Do you have specific ideas in mind for how to implement that protection?"

"The spell that some of the delegates are using to conceal themselves might serve, but I don't know its limitations or whether it's normally available from casters other than the President's people. As a legal matter it would probably be straightforward to indemnify witnesses who provide essential testimony about a substantial crime against prosecution for any lesser offense they imply of themselves in the process."

"This presupposes an Ordering of Severity though one could perhaps be Formulated here. For clarity, do you mean to protect the Information itself, or to provide as a matter of Law some Immunity?"

"I meant the latter; I expect a typical witness to be unsatisfied with more limited measures and feel lied to if they were prosecuted due to another line of evidence, even though in principle that could be perfectly Lawful."

"I do worry about a rash of people committing crimes in the knowledge they can get immunity for them if they report a more severe one."

"If the report itself implicates them. I'd expect that to usually cover - accomplices, minions, cultists, blackmail victims - not opportunists, but if you have an example situation in mind of course I'd be willing to revise."

"I worry that it is Easy to Mislead even a Dutiful Subject who has read the Law as to the meaning of the Law, that having read the Law they will assume it a Trap, and no Investigation will thus be Aided, the Witnesses all refusing to Speak even promised Immunity. I would consider it an Incomplete Measure without first the Provision that any Immunity Offered must be True; then added to this your Proposal that Immunity must be Offered for Lesser Related Offenses."

If... they're not doing this already? Lluïsa is unclear on what happened with Victòria, but trust a lawyer as far as you can throw him (meaning a full-sized lawyer, not one as small and easily hurled into rivers as herself).

"- yes, true reports only, that was my oversight."

He nods to Goés. "A man might believe — correctly or not — that one of his neighbors was committing a severe crime, and take advantage of this law to break into his neighbor's house, steal his possessions, and incidentally gather evidence of this crime. If his suspicions were in fact correct, reporting the evidence he discovered would certainly implicate him, but I don't want to encourage people to steal from their neighbors, no matter what their neighbors have done."

"I think most civilized places give the judge discretion to have mercy on co-conspirators, particularly if they reported the crime, but do not oblige their non-prosecution, and that seems safer to me and less likely to inspire anyone to creative exploitation of the law."

"...True Offers of Immunity, not False Offers made as a Trick. Though you are correct that the Testimony being False must Invalidate," she clarifies to Goés.

"You have a point and I withdraw my proposal until such time as it can be amended to account for that neatly in a way readily comprehensible to the average citizen," Elorri says to Jonatan.

"With that matter withdrawn for further contemplation, I have another piece of business. One of the frequent complaints I received from the peasantry during my tour of Fraga is that the Chosen of Asmodeus could not be accused of wrongdoing, except to an ecclesiastical court, and none I asked had ever heard of such a court siding with a layperson against the Chosen, and as a result they were encouraged to misbehavior most severe. We have already had trials of clerics in the regular criminal courts, as is done in many countries around the world, and I propose we explicitly lay out this policy in the constitution, that the jurisdiction of Her Majesty's courts not be inferior to any private ones."

"The Principle is Sound. Though I would first consult with my Colleagues of the Committee on Virtuous Churches &c. as to what forms Ecclesiastical Courts might possibly take. But that the Sense of the Committee on the Judiciary is that the Courts of the Crown have Original Jurisdiction over all Crimes under her Majesty's Law, I would support; the Precise Legalities to be Later Determined."

"My understanding is that the purpose of ecclesiastical courts is essentially one of specialization. Paladins are under a set of very specific obligations, and have the vouchsafe of the gods in a respect no others do; there are things that they are prohibited from doing that we could never prohibit the ordinary citizens from doing, but also things they ought to be permitted to do because they can be trusted to do it. We may not have the means to reestablish the ecclesiastical courts yet but I certainly want them to exist eventually, and would not desire any clarification that might delay their swift establishment."

"I don't think the Crown has the power to establish an ecclesiastical court, merely to authorize and recognize it."

"I know little of the negotiations that produced the ecclesiastical courts of Taldor, only that they struck me as a beneficial institution."

Marit is not sure they should be modelling anything after Taldor's justice system, personally.

"Indeed, I do not mean to prevent private organizations from enforcing their own standards of discipline on their members. What I hope to prevent is Her Majesty's courts ceding their jurisdiction to those courts, and thus allowing them to run rampant. If being a paladin is a mitigating factor in the commission of a crime, either the law should have been written to exempt them, or a magistrate should be convinced of their argument."

"Of course being a paladin shouldn't be a mitigating factor in the commission of a crime. It might be a signifier of some other problem if you wind up with paladins committing crimes - the law might be unclear, or contradictory, or Evil - but it's not a mitigating factor."

"Is there anyone present who believes that Valia Wain would not be long dead, were she not a priest of Iomedae? To my mind there is absolutely no question, and every person I have spoken to in the city reached the same interpretation. It would have been utter madness for Her Majesty to order a priest of Iomedae convicted and executed while the Reclamation kept order in the city, and so it did not happen. Is there someone present who wishes to assure me the Church did not petition the Queen for mercy on her behalf?"

"I don't know whether the Church petitioned the Queen for mercy or not, but we wouldn't have stopped keeping order if she'd been convicted!" He sounds faintly horrified at the prospect.

"If the Church made such a Petition, or indeed took Any Action in respect of its Priest beyond Brief Conversation, I was certainly Not Informed," says the lawyer who would presumably have been informed unless it was some state secret.

Cheliax is terrible!

"And why would you have been informed? Ser Cansellarion is a personal friend of the Queen. They would have spoken, and certainly did!

I assure you, I am not implying that the Reclamation would under any circumstances fail to do their duty to our country and our queen. Nonetheless the fact of which army is occupying a city is relevant to a Queen when making decisions like her decision not to charge Wain on the treason charges she was uncontroversially guilty of.

No society executes a prominent priest of an allied Lawful Good god at the same provocation which inspires them to execute a random peasant girl. I am not complaining of this. I am simply observing that it is obviously true, and that everybody knows that it is true, and that this committee does not have the power either to make it false, or to convince people that it is false. And if we did convince them, we would be lying. Given that, it makes sense to have a judicial process which reflects reality, and not one which has to awkwardly contort itself around reality every time it faces it."