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If Necromancy suddenly became possible, can the undead be called as a witness during court proceedings?

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Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨counselwolf@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

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  • Nemo@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Only by gov’t-licensed necromancers, otherwise there’s a risk of witness tampering.

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    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Only by gov’t-licensed necromancers, otherwise there’s a risk of witness tampering.

      Somewhere in Tokyo there’s a manga author furiously taking notes on this as the plot line. Three months from now a new manga will hit store shelves:

      “I got killed and now I’m the key witness at my own murder trial”

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      • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I think that’s already a video game.

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  • Fondots@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Going sci-fi, but I think I remember there being a thing in the altered carbon books that kind of relates to this.

    In that series most people have a device implanted that can store their consciousness, it can be backed up, etc. if you die your consciousness can be uploaded to a new body, maybe a clone of your own, maybe another spare body no one was using. They get around long space flights by just sending the stored consciousness into a new body at the destination, prisoners can be uploaded to storage and their bodies used elsewhere, etc. and the only way to reliably kill someone is to destroy that device, and if they’re rich enough they may have a remote backup so even that isn’t a guarantee.

    So murder victims are routinely uploaded into new bodies to testify at their own murder trials.

    Catholics oppose this though, they believe that your soul is separate from your consciousness and can’t be stored in that device, backed up, etc. and so to respect their religious rights they can’t be popped into a new body to testify.

    I imagine that necromancy would have the same and probably stronger opposition from a lot of religious people and we’d run into the same kind of legal issues.

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    • db2@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I came here to mention Alerted Carbon. Glad to see someone else had the same thought!

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  • Mediocre_Bard@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. I’d imagine that it would only get worse without the eyes.

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    • YoFrodo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      More importantly the reanimated would be unquestionably under the influence of magic. Who’s to say how honest and reliable such testimony could even be.

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    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      What do you call a deer with no eyes? No eye deer. What do you call a deer with no eyes and legs? Still no eye deer.

      That said, I would hope that “was it your spouse that bashed your face in with a shovel?” Might hold gravity in a witness testimony. “Yes, we were alone in the bedroom and I asked them why they had a shovel in the house, to which they responded, listen to this”. “The sound was spectacular, THONK! just as you would expect, but then I realized this is exactly how their ex was found, I’m not looking forward to spending an eternity listening to their retelling, always went on for ages”

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  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If Necromancy became possible, Micheal Jackson would do a shot for shot remake of the thriller video, without makeup.

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    • yeather@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      And he’s still white!

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  • Toes@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The undead listen to a much higher authority than any mortal court. But that doesn’t stop the court from trying to summon them, but they might need a warrant wielding warlock to make it happen.

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    • SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      “You are in contempt!”

      “Of the laws of nature, yes.” the rotting old woman says as her eyes go blank and her body collapses.

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    • Sabata11792@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      A power greater than the gods, A warrant.

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    • KittenBiscuits@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Hellboy animated a corpse to get info out of it. I don’t think he subscribes to modern jurisprudence though. I don’t recall him being concerned in the least with handing the corpse a subpoena first.

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    • andyortlieb@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You can’t possibly know that

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      • Toes@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        sad dungeon master noises

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  • HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It depends on the necromancy.

    Most forms of necromancy create a being under the control of their necromancer. In that case, the dead’s testimony would be worthless as the dead would be under the complete control of another.

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  • litchralee@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’m not a lawyer, but let’s have some fun with this.

    To start, I’m going to have to assume a jurisdiction. I’ll go with California, because Hollywood films have depicted a lot of walking dead, zombies, and whatnot. And also because that’s the jurisdiction I’m most familiar with. I think that such a case where the undead might be a witness would mostly arise in California state courts, since zombies rarely walk/jump/crawl quickly enough to cross state lines from the major population centers of California, which wokld invoke federal jurisdiction.

    Now, we need to hone in on the type of case. A murder case where the victim is called as a witness would certainly be very juicy. But the same legal intrigue would arise from a less-interesting inheritance or family law case. We could also go into contracts and see whether or not the presence of an undead counts as an “act of God” but maybe that’s a bit too niche and law-school theoretical.

    To really showcase the problems this would pose to the court, we will focus on the undead being witness in a criminal trial, as the standard of proof to convict the defendant would be proof “beyond a reasonable doubt”. As the most stringent category of proof, it necessarily follows that the court must err on the side of the defendant in matters of impartiality. This is because the court is technically an arm of the state, and the prosecution wields all the resources of the state against an individual who stands accused of some criminal act.

    As such, for criminal trials, there are certain constitutional rights of the defendant that the court must uphold. The foremost is the right to due process, guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. One of the results from applying due process is that evidence introduced in a criminal trial must not be “unduly prejudicial”. That is, no evidence can be admitted which so irresponsibly causes the jury to render a verdict based on anything but the law.

    Often, this rule is invoked to set aside irrelevant evidence which has no bearing on the charges, except maybe to impune the reputation of the defendant so that the jury thinks they’re a terrible person. Other times, it can be used to exclude relevant but really-bad evidence. The US courts have been through cycles where novel science is used in a prosecution but which later turns out to be bunk and lacking any foundation in reality. It certainly is “evidence” but because it purports to be science when it’s really not, it must be excluded. Psychics are certainly not going to be welcomed witnesses as a subject matter of expert.

    Finally, the other category for evidence being unduly prejudicial is when the jury – through no fault of their own – would weigh that evidence as being the primary factor, above all else, whether it’s DNA or video evidence. This is more a matter of testimony evidence rather than physical evidence. Imagine a small, devoutly religious town where the local pastor is called to testify about whether the defendant could have committed hit-and-run.

    Having a respected community authority figure testify about someone’s potential to commit a crime might be something the jury members would be open to hearing, but the judge might have to weigh whether the fact the fact that the lay witness is a pastor will cause the jury to put too much weight on that testimony. If there are other ways to obtain the same evidence – such as bringing in the defendant’s mother or employer – the judge should not allow the pastor to testify, because it could jeopardize the soundness of the trial and lead to an appeal.

    So now we come back to zombies. Would a jury be able to set aside their shock, horror, and awe about a zombie in court that they could focus on being the finder of fact? If a zombie says they’re an eye-witness to a mugging, would their lack of actual eyeballs confuse the jury? Even more confusing would be a zombie that is testifying as an expert witness. Does their subject matter need to be recent? What if the case needs an expert on 17th Century Parisian fashion and the undead is from that era? Are there no fashion historians who could provide similar expert opinions?

    But supposing we did overcome all that, there might be one form of testimony which – even though very prejudicial – might be allowable for a lay-witness (ie not expert) zombie witness could testify about, and I already mentioned it earlier.

    In most jurisdictions and in California, a dying person’s last act which might point to their killer will not necessarily be excluded for being irrelevant or being circumstantial. It is a rebuttable presumption that someone dying has no incentive to lie, and will likely have been the final witness to their own murder.

    To that end, it’s entirely plausible that a zombie who died by murder could come to court to testify against their killer. Of course, how long does it take for the dead to become undead? If this takes longer than the statue of limitations allows, the defendant would walk. Likewise, if the zombie’s testimony is the only shred of evidence for the murder, that’s not likely to convince the jury. Not unless, of course, the details of the testimony match the circumstances of the crime so well that it wasn’t a fluke.

    TL;DR: rules of evidence would still apply to the undead, and judges must take care to balance the probative value of evidence with any prejudicial quality it may carry.

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    • Dipbeneaththelasers@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      This is my kind of thread pulling. I like your style.

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    • explore_broaden@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I think there isn’t usually a statute of limitations for murder.

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    • counselwolf@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      you’ve thought about this a lot more than I have. I was mostly thinking about being a witness to their own murder, and how the opposing lawyer would down play the testimony due to the process of necromancy or something. Or how the courts would dismiss or not allow the testimony due to the uncertainty of the necromancy.

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  • Squorlple@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What recourse would there be against perjury?

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    • iltoroargento@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Oh, there are far worse things than death.

      Lol seriously, though, I’m sure we’d come up with something. Humanity is remarkably inventive when it comes to punishments. Thankfully, now, some of us are at least talking about better ways to make them fit the crime.

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      • SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        You will testify or you will be condemned to repeated resurrection until you rot and the last vestiges of what was your soul fade away in rotting corpse you’re bound to.

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  • ephrin@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Depends how long they’ve been dead. After a while it’s pretty impossible to tell one corpse from another, it would be easy to fake the identity of the witness.

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    • iltoroargento@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I hope someone is writing this novel already, but there’s definitely some gold in a story featuring witness tampering and faking DNA signatures for recently deceased witnesses to take the stand.

      I’m out of Dresden Files novels, so this would definitely scratch my urban fantasy/magipunk itch.

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  • HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Going with D&D’s version of necromancy… probably not. Undead have a strong and innate anti-life bias. Some intelligent undead are likely to be able to mask it, but without exceptionally strong wills will likely still act in a way that will cause the most death.

    Non-undead ressurected individuals would likely be able to testify, however.

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    • Etterra@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      So you’re saying we should use the undead to replace the police? I mean sure they might more people, but at least they won’t be discriminatory about it.

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      • HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Hey, so long as someone with more ethics than the average patrol officer is in charge of the Command Undead spell, skeleton cops might even be safer and more humane for everyone…

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    • cordlesslamp@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      How about the magic spell that gives you ability to ask the dead 5 questions and they must answer it truthfully?

      (I saw it in the D&D movie, never actually played the game, I don’t have any friends)

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      • HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        You know, come to think of it, I did play in a game where this exact scenario played out, we got some state-sanctioned necromancers to get an actual corpse as a witness to a crime with that exact spell.

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    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I know it isn’t canon, but in several games we shoved most of the healing and harming clerical magic into Necromancy, since that is the school that deals with life magic.

      Resurrected or raised dead should be living, and therefore able to testify. Possibly even a lich or vampire, but I would agree that a recent, mummy, zombie, weight, skeleton, or ghost would be inadmissible.

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  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Heh, this is a question addressed in fiction some.

    There’s a qri, Laurell K Hamilton, that has a character that’s a necromancer that raises zombies for legal issues as part of her job.

    And, while it may seem derivative (and I admit it is to a degree), My urban fantasy series is based around a forensic necromancer, who raises spirits, zombies, and otherwise applies his magic to legal issues.

    Back in the day, I spent a couple years talking to cops, lawyers, and a few medical examiners in preparation for doing writing. I used that to address their objections to the idea in my stuff.

    But, yeah, if certain barriers could be overcome, courts could accept testimony from an undead entity. It would likely end up appealed and chained challenged up to the top court in any given country, bit it’s possible

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  • sparky@lemmy.federate.cc ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I call the corpse of John Smith to the stand.

    Mr Smith, where were you on the night of October the fourth?

    ……ungh……hiss…… BRAINS….

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  • hardcoreufo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    No necromancy spells require too much glitter. Think of the environmental impact.

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    • Etterra@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      No dude, you’re thinking of transmutation. Necromancy requires blood and that’s a renewable resource.

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  • BlucifersVeinyAnus@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Nobody knows more about dying than dead people

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  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Judging from the movie Rashomon, it wouldn’t actually resolve anything.

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  • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I mean, maybe but what will you do if they fail to appear before court? I don’t think the undead are super concerned with prison sentences

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    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      30 days in prison? Better than stuck down their with my in laws

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  • VelvetStorm@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What type of necromancy is being used. If it’s from Dungeons & Dragons Fifth edition, you only get to ask them like 5 questions, and they don’t have to answer you. They can also potentially lie.

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  • Makeitstop@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think the most reasonable interpretation is that the law doesn’t currently recognize the undead as being people, let alone being the same person they were in life. It would need to be shown to be a reliable source of evidence, similar to any new technology that claims to offer insight into a case. A random judge might allow it, but it would be easy grounds for an appeal if it can’t be shown to do exactly what it claims to do.

    DNA evidence was new once, but so was the polygraph. Only one of these is admissible, and for good reason.

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  • Etterra@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    GURPS Technomancer is a modern setting with magic, including necromancy, ever since 1945. In some (red) States you can be sentenced to life in prison/death plus years of hard labor. Even your undead corpse is put to use clearing trash off the side of the road for 20 years.

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  • AceQuorthon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    youtu.be/N6hVmn9FM7o

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  • RedStrider@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    imagine dying, and not even being able to enjoy death because you just keep being brought back to life to do stupid paperwork. i’d kill myself right there, again.

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  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It would depend on the type of necromancy, but at the end of the day, I think it would still be a conflict of interest since the person bringing them back would have great say, unless they are considered some type of expert witness necromancer.

    Necromancy is the practice of magic involving communication with the dead by summoning their spirits as apparitions or visions for the purpose of divination; imparting the means to foretell future events and discover hidden knowledge.

    The necromancer’s capacity to create minions and command them to fight for him or her is generally enough to satisfy even the most critical of viewers. As necromancers might easily be termed one-person armies, they are usually compelling and feared. The fact that they dabble in magic and the supernatural does not help their image as upstanding citizens.

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