Well, this is my first thread in a long time, I used to post here some years ago but I’ve lost that email. So now I’m an old and new member at the same time. Also, I’m mexican, and my native language is spanish, so please forgive any mistakes in my grammar (but please be kind and point if any). Please move the thread to another section if it does not go here.
Given that short introduction, I’ll move to my request.
I’m working in a fiction story and I need a latin legal term that can be used something like:
YOU HAVE NOT THE RIGHT TO AN ATTORNEY BECAUSE THIS CRIME IS latin term here
This has to mean: “the crime is beyond any reasonable doubt and it does not need a trial or jury, it goes directly to the punishment”.
Remember this is a work of fiction, it is suppose to happen in a world with a different criminal justice system, for example: a guy who wears a black hat is a criminal by the only fact of using it, no attorney, no trial, no jury, not evidences or proofs needed.
Also remember that I’m not a legal worker or expert, so this latin expression may be invented for this or may already exist in some point of history. You get the idea (I think).
I have avoided the use of “in flagrante delicto” or “smoking gun”, because I believe that even if you are catched in that condition, you have right to a trial and everything. But this justice system in my fiction is completely arbitrary, and unfair.
I guess you could stretch the definition of Ex Juris. Also, you could call it Ex Habeas Corpus.
If the act is particularly heinous, you could say that the act is Hostis Humanis Generi, or “hostile to all mankind”. and that those cases don’t require trial in your universe, by Lex Non Scripta.
Slightly different situation, but “trials by God” were justified by saying that the situation was ultra vires, bad Latin for “beyond the ken of man”. The good Latin would have been ultra homines. Vir means male-human and homo means human (not to be confused with its Greek homophone, which means “the same” ;)).
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