Oh, this one's tough. On the one hand Laia loves spectacle, and also kind of thinks you could do blood opera in a Good way if you were very careful. On the other hand, that... is almost certainly not what is on the table here. What's on the table here is an opportunity to indulge petty sadism. Which... is an impulse people won't stop having just because they can't watch executions, they're going to torture pigeons or piss on sleeping beggars or beat their children, and that's worse than just watching a death that was going to happen anyway! But will having executions to watch quell or stoke that vice? She doesn't know. She still doesn't know after asking Shelyn. Abstain.

Do it in public. Whether you're doing something needful or you're making a martyr, either way, do it in public. In favor.

Everyone knows Lastwall's way only works because they have a god at the head of it. In favor.

It seems sensible enough. Killing soldiers in front of their fellows is a good way to get them to break and run, it stands to reason that killing criminals publicly discourages the rest. In favor.

He abstains! He doesn't actually know.

So this means it's illegal to admit anyone who was executed privately was executed? Not being able to talk about things is inconvenient. On the other hand, talking is illegal anyway. Probably not that important. Abstain.

Well, everyone seems to agree Asmodeus is in favor of public executions.

For.

Against, because the church is. Honestly he thinks that public long-drop has been good for Menador, and requiring private executions sounds logistically complicated (and likely to trade off against being able to do long-drop hanging properly), but he's not under the impression that the status quo currently requires private executions anyway.

This is not one of the important battles, in the end.

Cerdanya said a bunch of fancy words about being careful but in the end he still called for abolishing slavery.

On the other hand, so did a lot of the people who spoke against this. And Fraga was against abolishing slavery.

It's a tough decision. In the end he abstains.

In favor.  It’s overall a good idea, especially with the amendment she asked for.  Hopefully the momentum here won’t help them with their other proposals, but Thea isn’t so ruthlessly strategic to vote down a proposal she agrees with out of factionalism.

He doesn’t want to oppose Iomedae’s church (and thereby be responsible for the Evil of the proposal)… but no Paladin actually spoke against this proposal.  He says a quick prayer to Iomedae.  Hopefully people each choose what is best for themselves. In Favor.

In favor, but this doesn’t really help that much.  It doesn’t say the trial can’t be in secret.

In favor. The people should see justice to crave mercy.

In favor. Anything that will keep the mob under control.

In favor. If later in the convention someone brings out an amendment giving nobles and priests of the righteous gods the privilege of a private execution, he won't begrudge it, but the law is worthwhile even in its current form to remind people of what reward awaits criminals.

In favor. In the long run it will radicalize the people.

Against. It really doesn't matter, but it seems... gauche.

She cannot possibly communicate how little she cares. Abstain.

Bringing back public executions is one step closer on the path to reopening the arenas and throwing the condemned to be eaten by wild beasts. Mattin votes yes.

“In favor” 

Passes overwhelmingly, 281-99.

That's a larger margin than he was expecting! Hopefully it bodes well for the next proposal, which was always going to be the more controversial one. He spent much of yesterday evening doing research, and he's confident the truth is on his side here, but he's not especially good at predicting the whims of the Convention.

"Thank you. Our next proposal relates to allowable forms of punishment.

Two days ago, a man named Vícenç Bardera was executed for his role in the riots. He had been part of a mob that murdered a tiefling woman, leaving her children as orphans. When the rain began, he demanded entry into a local merchant's house at knifepoint. While taking refuge from the rain, he forced himself on the man's adolescent daughters. For these crimes he received the Final Blade.

I do not know if the prospect of a harsher sentence would have deterred him from his crimes. But I do know that, having murdered an innocent woman and thereby earned a death sentence, our laws provided no further incentive for him to refrain from heinous crimes.

In the time of Aroden, there were fourteen standardized punishments, and it is those punishments we seek to restore. 

In light of the diversity and severity of punishments under Infernal Rule, Cheliax shall in matters of criminal law only perform the following fourteen punishments on civilians:

1. Whipping, with a horsewhip, no more than 80 times, ceasing before the point of risk to life.
2. Fine, with any amount unpaid collected via indenture as an agricultural worker or domestic laborer, for a maximum term of 1 year per ten crowns left unpaid.
3. Imprisonment.
4. Pillory, not to exceed one month.
5. Branding.
6. Civil Death.*
7. Banishment.
8. Maiming, only in situations where it will inhibit commission of the same crime and will not pose a risk to life.
9. Hard labor, not to exceed ten years.
10. Death, by hanging, garroting, or beheading, with an eye to swiftness.
11. Confiscation, or death and seizure of inheritance.
12. Burning at the Stake.
13. Breaking upon the Wheel.
14. Turning to Parts, reserved solely for the punishment of High Treason.

Writers of criminal laws shall identify which punishments from this set are appropriate for violations of that law, and may not invent new punishments. It shall be standard, in the case of repeat offenses, to increase the quantitative penalty or to increase the grade of the punishment. Punishments 1-3 may be referred to as "corrective" punishments. Punishments 4-7 may be referred to as "humiliating" punishments. Punishments 8-11 may be referred to as "afflictive" punishments. Punishments 12-14 may be referred to as "torturous" punishments. The military shall determine its own punishments under a separate law.

* Civil death is the loss of all civil rights, and all property is considered to pass on as though the individual had died.

In those regions of Cheliax which practiced trial by ordeal before the Asmodean regime came to power, this statute shall additionally permit those who have been accused of crimes for which the ordinary sentence is afflictive or torturous to undergo trial by ordeal, in accordance with their Arodenite traditions. However, if the accused requests an ordinary trial instead of trial by ordeal, this request must be granted.

Do not take me as saying that the torturous punishments should be common. They were used sparingly in Arodenite Cheliax, and they should be used sparingly now. It is enough that they be possible — that an Evildoer, having committed a crime that bears a sentence of death, still has reason to fear what the law will do if he continues.

I have no doubt that this law's opponents will rise in a moment to tell you that Lastwall makes do with swift and painless executions. This is true, and I place no fault with Her Majesty for hoping that we might imitate Lastwall's model. But Lastwall's model works because it is suited to Lastwall, where nearly every man is virtuous and Lawful, and where Iomedae Herself stands ready to correct them if they should fall into error. 

In the whole of Lastwall, seventeen people were executed last year. In Westcrown alone, more people have been executed in the last week.

With that being said, I do not wish to restore the barbarity of the Thrunes either. I seek, rather, to carve a moderate path between the leniency that preceded the Third and the cruelty of Asmodean Cheliax. The Thrunes were concerned not with what was necessary, but with cruelty for cruelty's sake. That was wrong, and this law condemns it. There are men in this room who would seek to return us to the days when men were boiled alive, but I am not one of them. This law rightly forbids such punishments and ensures that no magistrate further from our capital will mistakenly believe such punishments permissible, whether it is someone in this room who stands trial or any other subject of Cheliax.

It is too late to protect Vícenç Bardera's victims. But it is not too late to protect our subjects from those men who will come after him, and I hope you will join me in doing so."

"Punishment serves many different purposes. One purpose of punishment is to send a message: the state does not countenance this. But a message must be sent in the language that the people speak, or it will fail utterly. I believe that the current system of punishments has failed utterly to send a coherent message in the language that the people of Cheliax speak. When a man who encouraged thousands of people in bloodthirsty violence and who crows proudly that he means to start a revolution is put swiftly to death and sent on, he believes, to Elysium, what message does that send to the people of Cheliax? That his crimes were not very serious; that we do not mind them; that his wellbeing is far more important to us than the wellbeing of his victims.

I do not think that our noble Queen means to send that message. I think, as the good count Cerdanya says, that she hoped that we could do as Lastwall does, with lenient punishments. In Lastwall if a man did such a thing it would suffice to hang him, because in Lastwall that is understood as how serious matters are settled. But we are not Lastwall. That is not understood as settling a serious matter, but as condoning it. And this policy of condoning crime has led to an extraordinary explosion of it, which leads to far, far more death and suffering than would come to pass if we simply took crimes seriously in the first place.

The calculus of Arodenite Cheliax was simple: if you just need a man dead, just kill him. But if you need to send a message, send it. Do not send it with unnecessary cruelty, but do not embrace the false compassion of condoning serious crimes. Do not accidentally communicate to the people that even the gravest atrocities do not really give you any pause. Do not lead men to believe that no matter what they do they have nothing to fear, or their countrymen will have far more to fear from them."

"I support having a list of punishments which are the same the country over. Under the old regime, the important thing was to show off your creativity. Men were spending half their time coming up with complicated ways to have other men die. That's barbarism, and this is a good rule to say that we won't be doing any of that. 

I suppose a lot of people are going to get up here and argue about torture. I'll just say this: sometimes it needs doing. If you ban it, it'll still happen, just outside the law, because men know it needs doing. The best you can do is say, it's only worth doing for the really serious cases, like treason, and it shouldn't be allowed every time a man gets on the wrong side of the law. A country that bans torture for treason is just a country lying to itself. But a country that limits torture to the most serious cases might actually mean it."

Most of those punishments sound fine, but she kind of thought they weren't supposed to burn people to death anymore? Burning people to death is just copying Hell. They're supposed to be Good now, which means they're supposed to be like Heaven, which means... killing people with earthquakes? She's not really sure how you would make a tiny earthquake for executing someone. Probably Heaven has some other way of torturing people that she just doesn't know about.