Legal Punishments and Court sessions

[Bromley20]

I need help finding ways to run a court session. My party is friendly with an npc who was framed for several crimes (working with necromancers to overthrow the local government, 22 counts of murder, breaking and entering, theft, and kidnapping) and he just turned himself over to the guards to go to trial and clear his name. I vaguely remember there being rules in a book that discussed how to handle legal stuff but I'm having trouble finding it. Does anyone know where to find them? Does anyone have suggested punishments for all the crimes that the party could try to reduce or save him from during the trial?

[Zanos]

Not sure about normal courts, but FC2 says that the rules of adjudicating a diabolic court is to have a representative from each side average their rolls for Diplomacy, Profession(Law), and Knowledge(Planes), and the higher of the two wins. You would probably want to replace Kn(Planes) with Local or Nobility, depending on how your courtrooms operate.

And of course since just rolling skill checks is boring, you'd probably want to give the players the opportunity to hunt down someone who is good at niche skills, and pieces of evidence that could grant a bonus to the check, etc. Frankly if the court is anywhere near fair it should be very difficult for falsely accused to be convincted, since, ya'know, the charges are false.

[aimlessPolymath]

The DMG 2 has some rules on pages 101-106, but they basically come down to 'add up a bunch of modifiers, then roll a d20 against DC 10 to determine if the case will go to the 'right' side'- but that's not necessarily useful. One thing it does go into that could be useful is writs of outlawry- basically, if a location doesn't have the ability to hold and try a high-level criminal, a bounty is posted to 'bring them in', letting adventurers do their work for them.

[Zanos]

The DMG 2 has some rules on pages 101-106, but they basically come down to 'add up a bunch of modifiers, then roll a d20 against DC 10 to determine if the case will go to the 'right' side'- but that's not necessarily useful. One thing it does go into that could be useful is writs of outlawry- basically, if a location doesn't have the ability to hold and try a high-level criminal, a bounty is posted to 'bring them in', letting adventurers do their work for them.
Wasn't aware of this, but these rules are weird. Apparently an area with a legal system that is neither corrupt nor reliable is just a total 50/50 die roll to see if it gets it's court decisions right? Particularly corrupt areas will always go with the "wrong" party, which doesn't really make any sense; it's not as though tremendously corrupt legal systems are in the business of putting away innocent people 100% of the time. I mean, the example city with these rules has a +5 "law modifier" and is described as a "fairly just and fair" place to live, which will convict innocent people of crimes 25% of the time? Especially in a setting where if you're convicted of a violent crime, you will probably be executed.

[Saintheart]

In terms of medieval punishments for various crimes, the third party (and excellent) book A Magic Medieval Society: Western Europe by Expeditious Retreat Press has a big table of different crimes and the range of punishments that applied.

[Darg]

Wasn't aware of this, but these rules are weird. Apparently an area with a legal system that is neither corrupt nor reliable is just a total 50/50 die roll to see if it gets it's court decisions right? Particularly corrupt areas will always go with the "wrong" party, which doesn't really make any sense; it's not as though tremendously corrupt legal systems are in the business of putting away innocent people 100% of the time. I mean, the example city with these rules has a +5 "law modifier" and is described as a "fairly just and fair" place to live, which will convict innocent people of crimes 25% of the time? Especially in a setting where if you're convicted of a violent crime, you will probably be executed.

To be fair, more often than not in the not too distant past judgements came down to how reputable and reliable each party is at the end of a trial rather than our slightly more evidence based system. Even now there are many times the evidence is portrayed in a way that plays on a juror's or judge's psyche rather than a preponderance of the evidence. It's proven time and again that the presumption of innocence is very often ignored. It's just a fact that cases that make it to court are by design more likely to convict than to exonerate. If 4% of trials are with innocent defendents and 25% of the time they get it wrong, then only 1 in 100 are wrongfully convicted at any one time. Estimates of the wrongfully committed in the US put them at 2-10% of total convictions. Even the lowball figure of 2% is still staggering considering most of the time innocent people simply don't go to court. Numbers seem to be relatively similar in outcome.

[rel]

D&D 3.5 is focused on tactical combat and dungeon escapades, focus on that.

The easiest option is to ignore the actual court room and focus on legwork; Quests to find evidence, protect key witnesses, convince people to come forward and so on.

If you insist on things in the courtroom I recommend flashbacks. Whenever the PC's give testimony or cross examine a witness, play out a scene to determine what actually happened.

Or skip all the boring legal stuff and move straight to the dramatic prison escape.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Bromley20
Does anyone have suggested punishments for all the crimes that the party could try to reduce or save him from during the trial?

Trial by combat. This was a mainstay of some justice systems, and often involved accuser and accused facing off in public.

This combines elements of actual period justice with an opportunity for your PCs to do something more physical and proactive. It was common for hired fighters to represent one or both sides in a trial by combat, and there were even professionals (in the loosest sense) who made a living representing people who couldn’t or didn’t want to fight for themselves.

If you go this route, and one of the PCs offers to fight on behalf of their friend, it would be natural for the court system to find a professional of equal ability to face off against your PC. Action, drama, and a very real chance of losing the fight.

[RexDart]

Something that might be interesting to bring in is that there were multiple medieval courts, with the most basic division being civil courts (powers derived from the monarch) and ecclesiastical courts (powers derived from the Church).

Generally, the division was that the ecclesiastical courts dealt with "moral" issues - ‘causes which concern the cure of souls’ such as matrimonial and testamentary matters as well as cases against the clergy, while the civil courts would deal with ordinary crimes and other issues.

But the line wasn't always completely clear, and sometimes one court might assert jurisdiction over crimes that would normally be handled by the other. Or alternatively, one court might want to avoid handling a particular case, and try to punt it over to the other one. For this example, the various crimes would normally be handled by the secular courts. BUT necromancy and murder suggest "moral crimes" that could be interpreted to fall under ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Depending on the personalities involved, getting one court or the other to hear the case might be beneficial for the wrongly accused NPC.

Still another angle that might be fun is figuring out how an ecclesiastical court would work in a polytheistic culture.

As far as sentencing, the crimes of treason and murder would pretty invariably warrant death, so plea-bargaining to get the prosecution to drop those charges in exchange for a guilty plea on the theft charges would be an option to pursue if proving total innocence looks unlikely.