Country Justice

[Jonathan Buhacoff]

Proposal:
A country justice handbook must be prepared and distributed to every household located in a rural area and to every outpost located in the wilderness.

The country justice handbook must contain the full text of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the rights, the principles of justice, and the essential elements of a fair trial and due process.

Laws governing the justice system and defining due process must include an amendment to the country justice handbook if they are to be applicable to country justice. Such amendments shall be distributed to every household located in a rural area and to every outpost located in the wilderness, for people to affix to their handbook. Such amendments shall also be incorporated into the text of the handbook for future distributions and the edition number shall be incremented each time. The names and effective dates of laws causing amendments to be incorporated into the text of the handbook shall be listed in an appendix. The edition number and publication date shall be prominently displayed on the cover and in the header or footer of every page inside the handbook.

When a misdemeanor or felony is alleged in a rural area or the wilderness, the people must apply and uphold the essentials outlined and described in the most recent edition of the country justice handbook.

If an appeal is made to a higher court located in an urban area, that court must apply the facts and evidence to the procedures outlined in the most recent country justice handbook to determine whether the appeal has merit. An appeal should focus on whether the country justice was done in accordance with the handbook, and not on whether a different outcome would have happened in an urban area.

Intent:

It is important to recognize that conditions are different in rural and wild areas and to provide guidance for people who need to uphold justice in those areas. Even full-time law enforcement professionals with sizeable training and operations budgets in the largest urban areas sometimes get things wrong, so it’s unreasonable to expect that people in the country with small or nonexistent training and operations budgets be able to know and follow all the same procedures without mistakes.

Both the people charged with implementing justice and the people observing it need to know the essentials in order to do it appropriately and to object and protest when it is not done appropriately.

An urban appeals court must apply the standards and procedures in the country justice handbook to the appeal so it does not undermine the country justice. A verdict should only be overturned or remanded on appeal if the country justice did not implement the standards and procedures outlined in the country justice handbook.

Discussion:

A sparsely populated area may not have enough people present to have a full-time judge and court staff, evidence room, and so on. This proposal recognizes that people want to do the right thing and with limited resources they do the best they can.

People in living in rural areas or the wilderness are trying to survive, and implementing a functional justice system to process alleged criminal activity is a significant effort. It may not be possible to implement law enforcement the same way it is done in an urban area. The handbook should contain the essentials of justice and due process so that when it is followed the people will accept the results.

The government should not fault people living in rural areas or the wilderness for having less resources to implement a justice system. The state government needs to support the local government. If there’s a need to do something differently, the state government should send the people and the money to do it differently. In this proposal, part of that is to prepare and distribute the country justice handbook.

The handbook should contain the Declaration of Independence (applicable in any country that has one), the Constitution, the rights, the principles of justice, and the essential elements of a fair trial and due process.

An appeal should focus on whether those essentials were implemented as described in the handbook, and not on whether a different outcome would have happened in an urban area. Criminals who want the full system of justice and law enforcement as implemented in urban areas should commit their crimes in urban areas and not in rural areas or the wilderness.

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