Grand Juries
Posted by Apostate on 08/10/17
Important thematic question, that will be relevant when +crime comes in:
Q:Does the Inquisition have grand juries when they're trumping people up on witchcraft?
A: Technically, yes. What Shreve did is just never even informed the courts that someone had been arrested before they were submitted to ordeal, which the grand juries are explicitly designed to prevent (the medieval sense of 'spare someone the ordeal of a trial', where there was trial BY ordeal, as in torture). Alaric IV never really knew what was going on, and Shreve very intentionally never did this to anyone important- ie, no nobles, no one with patrons, because then it would have been very clear that they weren't having the crown oversight of a grand jury deciding if they should be spared an ordeal or not. Shreve was just having them sent right to an ordeal, where they would inevitably confess, and therefore there was no need for an actual trial after the fact, as their guilty was already admitted to.
In other words
Q:Does the Inquisition have grand juries when they're trumping people up on witchcraft?
A: Technically, yes. What Shreve did is just never even informed the courts that someone had been arrested before they were submitted to ordeal, which the grand juries are explicitly designed to prevent (the medieval sense of 'spare someone the ordeal of a trial', where there was trial BY ordeal, as in torture). Alaric IV never really knew what was going on, and Shreve very intentionally never did this to anyone important- ie, no nobles, no one with patrons, because then it would have been very clear that they weren't having the crown oversight of a grand jury deciding if they should be spared an ordeal or not. Shreve was just having them sent right to an ordeal, where they would inevitably confess, and therefore there was no need for an actual trial after the fact, as their guilty was already admitted to.
In other words