Laws
Every great society has had a social contract that those living within the society implicity agree upon. These social contracts have evolved into governments and laws, and it should be no surpsise that the setting of Dorado, at its heart a Western will have lawmen, judges, marshals and of course those would break those laws for profit and gain, and even just a good time.
Period of Law
It is a common mistake to base the system of law in RedM RP Servers on modern law and criminal justice. These ideas while very familiar and often just automatically attuned to do not reflect the state of law in the late 1800's when Red Skies is set. Through careful research and access to documents from the region and period we are able to embrace the type of law that would have been seen by a criminal or citizen in the time period. One key take away is that law was not very organized, and anyone could be a lawyer or judge with little and often absolutely no training or study of law. This created a chaotic and often wild form of law that lead to just and injustice in equal parts.
While our intent is not to just throw everything up in the air and let it land where it may, we do want to capture the feel and technical shape of law for the period, as such there is no particular profession or skill for those who would be lawyers or judges, and members of law enforcement only have use of a job as a way to control access to abilities and tools we dont want everyone to easily get.
Much of our reference for laws comes from this historical document.
Jurisdiction and Structure
Dorado is a big place, downright huge if you actually placed it on a map (though travel distance and speed are a bit wibbly wobbly in the game for the sake fun) and as such requires several teirs of law enforcemment to keep the peace across the lands of Dorado.
Sheriff - County
Each town will have a sheriff that is elected by those who have made that county their residence. The sheriff will be
empowered to hire and fire deputies and or constables from the population and is responsible for the training and the
actions of those deputies. The sheriff and his subordinates powers are limited to that county and they do not have
jurisdiction in any other county.
Marshal - Territory
Due to the fact that crimes take place across multiple counties and jurisdiction can be tricky, the government of
Dorado has created a position of Marshal that represents the territory and has jurisdiction on major crimes and
across counties. Sheriffs do not report to them, but they will often work together and if the crime is a felony,
marshals may become involved. Marshals are also responsible for the operation of Sisika and the transport of
prisoners to and from the prison.
Creation of Laws
In order to avoid confusion and too much chaos the laws of Dorado will be consistent between counties. New laws or changed laws may be passed by the government in session for the territory. At the town level the sheriff will have the power to create and enforce local ordinances that do not conflict with the territories' laws, and do not infringe on any rights granted to citizens of Dorado. Ordinances may not be used to jail people but may result in fines and or ejection from the town.
Trial
Misdemeaner crimes will have a bench trial either before the sheriff or if a judge is available before the judge at the location the prisoner is being held, it does not involve lawyers or other court officers. This is to provide expediency and acknowledge that most crime was handled by the sheriff, deciding who was guilty of what and giving them a sentence if they were convinced of the evidence.
Felony crimes will be tried before a judge, with a lawyer present for the accused if they desire one. If the judge finds there is evidence to require a jury trial (eg. not a clear case of guilt or innocence) Trials before juries are the exception and special situations, the law in this period was not organized and as Dorado is not a state subject to U.S. Federal law but an independent territory these rights are not enshrined and will be up to the government of Dorado to create and or grant these rights.
Punishment
This can be a challenging topic in RP as we want to ensure that crimes have actual tangible punishments, but at the same time everything should encourage RP. That said since Red Skies RP is focused on creating a thriving world for civilians and focusing on their stories, and not becoming a cops vs robbers server, punishment for crimes may be more serious and hopefully this will deter those who are not willing to accept the risks.
To avoid confusion we will not be conflating days of prison time with other time measurements. We will just use the actual real world time for punishments and those who are RPing can work with that how ever makes sense, this will result in less discordance with characters talking about going to prison for a month but being out 24 hours later.