had magistrate collins for the hearing on the 6th of february, which is apparently a good draw, here’s the super exciting recording:

 

the recording messed up for the first two parts of hearing, so i was only given the recording for the after lunch session, when i was convicted and sentenced to a $400 fine and ordered to pay around $90 in restitution to adshel.

the first five minutes of the recording is an enthralling discussion as to whether the old defence of necessity, or the new “sudden or extraordinary emergency” defence applied to this case, even though they are both much the same — i tune out every time i hear it and still don’t know what was decided, it didn’t matter anyway.

then the prosecutor tries to get me to pay appearance fees for the informant and adshel rep who came to the hearing, like i’m some sort of booking agent, but he didn’t get that up, i’m a bit sad for him really, he loves winning and doing a good job — he also tried to make sure the restitution fee was ordered in a way that i could be held in jail if i didn’t pay, don’t know or care if that happened or not, but nice to know he’s going to extra effort to make sure i can spend an extra day in jail, if the sheriff ever catches up with me that is.

the defence was knocked down because the necessity defence can only be invoked where there is “nothing else you can do at that time”, and “no reasonable opportunity for an alternative course of action which did not involve a breach of the law” — for the last ten years i have felt there is nothing else i can do in this precise historical period, and that there is no reasonable alternative course of action to respond to our political crisis of gross democratic deficit, but we all know it’s unreasonable to perceive any political problem, and i’m talking about windows of time that span decades rather than seconds, which makes all the legal difference for some reason.

basically the necessity/emergency defence is supposed to only apply legally to immediate vicinities, within short time frames, with clearly identifiable people in need of protection —  such as person A had to assualt person B to stop person B from attacking person C with a deadly weapon, let’s say a world war one bayonet.

i’m sure if someone defended an assualt charge on the grounds of necessity/emergency to prevent someone putting a known delayed-onset and randomly effective neuro-toxin into a water supply, they would expand the short time frame requirement and need for clearly identifiable victims — or if someone was preventing a deliberate nuclear waste contamination that could potentially harm someone in the future over the long term — any number of situations could get around the seeming requirements of immediate vicinity, short time-frame, and identifiable victims — just as long as the emergency has absolutely nothing to do with politics, because our political system is perfectly perfect you flapper-mouth lefties!!

i also made the mistake i my hastily constructed written submissions of talking about the threat of climate change as something that will cost millions of lives at some point in the near future, which was pointed out by the magistrate as not being an immediate enough threat — i shall make sure next time to talk about the increased number of extreme weather events and the increased death toll already being caused by climate change (as if that will make a difference).

basically the emergency of climate change and the only method of dealing with it that i find reasonable is far too complex. and has far too much political content, to ever be recognised legally, but i’ll be making the argument as well as i can anyway.

i will try to get some expert witnesses to legitimise my arguments in the future, and i think i could also run a parallel argument that this activism is the only thing that has elevated me out of a suicidal depression (even though it’s only been partially effective), that sounds like something to do, yippee :)

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