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.

Good thing the previous proposal got an amendment so he doesn’t have to watch any of that!  Most of it is way tamer and gentler than anything under the Thrunes, but he can’t afford to waste any Goodness or pick up any extra Evilness.

Victòria is pretty sure that list of punishments left some important punishments out but she isn't quite managing to follow the speech. Whoever Bardera is, it feels wrong for him to do things like that and just — practically get away with it — he's dead, that's better than nothing, but he's still in a Final Blade and she wants to make him hurt—

—her chest is burning, it feels like the anger is pressing up against the side of her head—

—she should probably be thinking through what sort of punishment he deserved instead, but she doesn't want to carefully think it through, she wants to go back before his execution and make him pay herself, and it's too late, the world is just always going to be a little broken—

"When men commit murders and arson and treason, they are destined for the Abyss unless they receive the mercy of the final blade. But the judgment of Pharasma is not seen by their fellows, and particularly within Cheliax a great many believe themselves already damned and do not fear committing more evil - and why should they, when a long drop is all that they know awaits them? A torturous execution must be harsh enough to discourage their fellows, both to save both their souls and the lives of their future victims, without lying at the discretion of magistrates and so risk their own souls; by its own cruelty, it ensures it need not be overused. The punishments of old Cheliax have withstood the test of time to solve both goals, and I agree that they should be restored."

...her chest is still burning and she is not entirely sure she caught that whole speech but she's pretty sure he just compared arson to murder? Arson really seems very different from murdering innocent people, at least if you're careful about it and pick the right — well, she didn't exactly pick the right target, it's going to be harder to investigate the Asmodean cult now, but it was just stupid, not Evil. 

"The text of this bill is mostly about what is allowed, but in judging it I turn your attention to everything else, which it disallows. Those punishments are right to ban. We will not compete with each other to develop the art of cruelty.

Cheliax is in a state of chaos, with laws in flux and rulers changing. The people need to know what to expect, and this list is short and memorable. Standardized, predictable punishments will weigh on the mind of the criminal and reassure the law-abiding. Judges and servants of the crown, many used to the rule of the Thrunes and the others unused to Cheliax and its people, bringing with them the traditions from a hundred homelands--let them all have the same list.

Note as well that permitting a punishment does not require that it be used. This bill does not create a new set of crimes--in adding branding to the list, we had forgers in mind, but a separate bill will be required to make the punishment for forgery branding, and that bill can specify the range of appropriate punishments. Even the Turning to Parts, which we have allowed in the case of high treason, is not yet required as the punishment for high treason; that is the province of another law."

"Make no mistake, this list of punishments is Evil. They are bad for the country, bad for the judges, bad for the lords and bad for the commons. Banning unnecessary torture was one of the first things the committee on Rights considered, and we agreed to it almost immediately, on the second day, before the riots; all we left for yesterday was how to decide what is unnecessary torture and what is reasonable punishment. The Queen has banned torture, and for the same reason: Because we must reject Asmodeus's ways. Forcefully. He inflicted it on us, and so we reject it; not just to a standard other nations meet, but further, so that we may, in trying, meet the standard other good countries show us."

"I would have preferred to bring all the rights of the accused and the condemned together, but a group of bad men who think themselves Good brought this to the committee on 'Urban Order'. The committee on doing Evil things in the name of Good and patting each other on the back for how virtuous that evil was, even as it destroys the lives and souls of Cheliax and protects no one at all. Some of them were in Heaven two years ago; I doubt any of them but the Lord Marshal and Archduke Narikopolous will be on their next death, unless they change their course soon."

"They give a story of a hardened criminal who killed and then did worse, and claim torture would have stopped him. This is a lie, and an utterly transparent one that reveals total ignorance of their people. I could give you five similar stories from Kintargo since the coronation, yes, but I could give you five a year while under the Thrunes. Men who rape and kill are not rational, and not dissuaded by the prospect of a painful death any more than they are by the prospect of a painful afterlife. We had harsh punishments and spectacle made of them every week; they could hardly have failed to know the price. They were no more dissuaded than this Bardera. The only effect those harsh punishments had was to harden the hearts and souls of those who saw them and more fully damn those who played a part in inflicting them."

"Arodenite Cheliax had punishments with torture. But as my city's returned heroes have told me, Arodenite Cheliax was not Good and did not try. It was, more often than not, composed of Evil lords and Evil judges doing 'what was necessary', when they were men, not gods, and so had not a clue in Hell of what was actually necessary. That was a fine enough way to run a country of decent people waiting for the Age of Glory to arrive, to fix all ills and replace all flawed mortal judges with divine perfection. We have neither. We have a country of confused men and women, most of them trying to be Good, like most of the delegates in this hall, but most with very little idea of what that is, likewise. We have judges who are either scarce paladins courting flaming-out of the soul, or trained by Mephistopheles. We have no one standing ready to show us what is Good, and a committee ready to throw a flurry of proposals which are not, and hold up as an ideal a path that cannot take us out of Hell and does not try, and did not, ever, make up a virtuous way to run a country, not without a god to correct it."

"Aroden corrected it, in the past, but He is dead. Let His Inheritor take up the reins. Iomedae has shown us what is necessary for public order and public safety in Lastwall, and if Her punishments there are insufficient here, we should ask Her, not a god and king who died and failed. There should be a list, and it should be set by the Queen for the whole nation; on this I agree with the Duke of Valldaura. But they should be allowed only with the agreement of both Church and Crown, and not include any torture those do not consider strictly necessary for safety and order. Here is the text of my committee's proposal; let us reject the foolish one from the Urban Order committee and choose a virtuous path instead."

All citizens of Cheliax have the right, if convicted of a crime, to be punished only by means which are no more torturous than necessary for public safety and public order.
Therefore, no judge may assign to anyone any sentence not permitted by Iomedae's nation of Lastwall at the time of adoption of this right, unless that sentence is added to the list of those punishments permitted, through confirmation from the Church of Iomedae in consultation with the Crown. The convicted may accept other punishments if the court offers one and the criminal prefers it.
This right shall take effect with the adoption of the constitution, and the convention and Queen will, before that time, specifically seek out consultation with the Church for the punishments of lashing with a scourge rather than horsewhip, imprisonment, beheading, and the Final Blade, to confirm the proper methods by which these traditional punishments may be permitted.
The civilian punishments permitted by their present use in Lastwall are long-drop hanging, permanent exile from Cheliax, maiming, sentences to hard labor for a specified term which may be year-round or exclude the harvest and planting season, fines and confiscation of property (with appropriate methods of seizure), and whipping. Military punishments include being stripped of rank, punishing an entire unit for the crimes of a single member, and being consigned to a penal battalion.

"And let me remind you again, delegates; you are voting on what can be done to you. To your parents, and your children. Your brothers and your sisters. Your husbands and your wives. To everyone you care about, and to yourself. Do not think you are safe from the judge and will never be the convict; even great nobles can run afoul of the law, and face no more mercy than it requires. If our country is just, we will face that lack of mercy, when we offend, and there is no one here but the paladins and perhaps hellknights who can say truly that they will never break the laws of Cheliax."

Women are so evidently unqualified for power. It's not a matter he'd ever had cause to contemplate before, and he'd started out open-minded about it, but the Archduchess is just awful in all the ways you'd expect a woman to be awful. She's reactive, she's emotional, she overreacts to everything, she's incapable of perspective, she's two-faced, she walked out of their committee and ran off to her other one to race them to the floor... he really hopes they can get a rule through against women participating in parliament, but probably the Queen would take it entirely wrong. 

Okay these races between committees are getting ridiculous. The first time was funny, but Jordi doesn't want to live in a country where every law is made in a rush. 

Took a while to have that realization, making the laws you want to live under being the whole point of this, but better late than never.