[Resolved] United States of Argonath vs. Cofiliano_Gvardia

[Salmonella]

Your Honour, I'd like to once again point out that it wasn't possible for our raid team to ascertain whether or not each and every collected weapon and its ammunation would be illegal or not. Therefore the raid team was ordered by Chief Inspector Klaus to take everything the moment it became known there were considerable amounts of illegal weaponry stashed at the warehouse. Determining whether or not a weapon is illegal takes time and experts and those are two things you do not have in a raid such as this.

The seizure of all possessions regardless of their legal status or use is an overreach that threatens the liberties of suspects in criminal cases and make them second-class citizens.

Your Honour, not any and all possessions were seized. The raid team has been limited and has limited itself to only confiscating weaponry, drugs and other illegal items. Possessions such as lawnmowers, shovels and chairs have not been seized.

Any outright illegal weapons will remain admissible, but the State must demonstrate that the other seized assets were probably and reasonably being used as a means to facilitate the crimes the defendants are being charged for, for every other asset seized. Being that the only charges filed are for possession, the scope of this evidence would be limited to demonstrating that the Desert Eagle was being used to acquire the M60.

The State indeed did only press charges for possession of illegal weaponry. In this case and in any of the other cases the primary and sole charge is in fact possession of illegal weaponry, with the exception of the case against Mr. Monty Singh, the owner of the warehouse. I would once again like to point at the first paragraph of this filing to give the Court an explanation as to why weapons that in hindsight turned out not to have been illegal were seized.

However, the State very much agrees with the Honourable Judge when His Honour points out that the other seized weapon, being the Desert Eagle and its accommodating 1100 bullets, would have had to be used in acquiring the illegal weaponry. The State however does not have any evidence to back this assumption up except for what has already been exhibited.

As a side note, the State would like to point out that this Desert Eagle and its 1100 bullets found in Locker 4, of which Mr. Gvardia has claimed possession, will perhaps save Mr. Gvardia from being charged for possession of illegal weaponry. As said in the State its previous filing, forensic experts of the Federal Investigation Bureau will conduct a thorough investigation to determine whether or not the fingerprints found in the evidence room's crate dedicated to Mr. Gvardia's raid outcome match with those of the Desert Eagle of which he has now claimed possession. We believe claiming ownership of the Desert Eagle alone is enough to assume Locker 4 belonged to Mr. Gvardia.

[Klaus]

the raid team was ordered by Chief Inspector Klaus to take everything the moment it became known there were considerable amounts of illegal weaponry stashed at the warehouse.

I did give such orders to FBI Director Hynek Pershing who was in charge of the investigation. If anyone was to be found with illegal weapons, all weapons are to be confiscated. I believe that if we have strong evidence that the defendant is in possession of illegal weaponry that their rights to own a firearm are to be revoked entirely until the investigation is over. This is simply a safety measure.

[Cofiliano]

[2] Regarding point 4 of the Court's previous filing, we recognize that the Court does not consider the currently submitted evidence to be sufficient in proving the weapons belonged to Mr. Gvardia. Because of this, we have already started a large-scale investigation, seeking the help of our forensic experts at the Federal Investigation Bureau, to determine whether or not the M60 machine gun has traces of Mr. Gvardia's DNA or fingerprints on it. We are delighted to hear Mr. Gvardia recognizes and claims ownership of the Desert Eagle and its 1100 bullets that were also found in Locker 4, assigned to Mr. Gvardia. This will certainly help our forensic experts in determining whether or not one of the three M60 machine guns we've found, has the same traces of Mr. Gvardia on it as said Desert Eagle must have.

In other words you got nothing, and you're yet to start a new investigation, making this case pointless.

This investigation will be thorough and will be conducted by the Federal Investigation Bureau, meaning it may take a few days, especially given the temporary absence of FBI Director Hynek Lydell Pershing. We ask the Court to bear with us as we try to get to the bottom of this and perhaps even put the case on hold until possible new evidence sees the light of day.

It doesn't work that way in the legal system.

You do not open a court case against someone, and then ask a delay for a further investigation because of lacks in the investigation you did previously. Your case gets dissmised, and then you got all the time in the world to do any further investigation, and submit a new case.

Specially not, because the reason you're asking for a delay, isn't some new circumstances, yet the fact that the Defendant side caught your evidence to be not only invalid, with flaws and errors, or suspicious, yet actually fake.

[3] For now, we will however address the Court's inquiry about the incongruency in the currently submitted evidence. We assume that the Court refers to the fact that the previously submitted evidence room storage count does not seem to add up with other counts, such as Mr. Gvardia's, Mr. Singh's and the other Mr. Singh's counts, made at the time of the raid. Your honour, we were just as flabbergasted as you might have been about this, so we've decided to re-count all the evidence in the evidence room.

As seen in previous evidence submissions, we've concluded that an M60 with 216 rounds was found in Mr. Gvardia's locker, 400 in Mr. Monty Singh's locker (of which he has acknowledged ownership) and an M60 with 7214 rounds in Mr. Shady Singh's locker in the warehouse. This would add up to a total of 7830 rounds and three M60 machine guns. So, as said, we have checked our evidence room once again, and in all the 3 crates dedicated to these three gentlemen, we've found these same amount of weapons and accommodating munition. This raises the question of why exactly the amount we found in Mr. Gvardia's locker was missing from the total evidence room count. The answer to that your honour, is that we simply do not know. We assume that in executing our previous count, we have simply overlooked the M60 machine gun and its rounds in Mr. Gvardia's evidence crate, in all haste. We apologize for the untidiness and wish to submit the results from our newly conducted count, which -does- add up with all the other counts.

Thank you for confiming once again to the public, and to the Honorable Judge, that you do not have a clue about the wearabouts of the "evidences" you presented to the public here, nor can you find them, nor can they add up comparing to the other evidence.

Numbers don't lie your Honor, its simple math, and  its obvious that the Prosecutor attempted to forge evidence, or else the numbers would add up, which isn't the case as everyone can see.

[4] The prosecution wishes to address Mr. Gvardia's statement, by saying we are absolutely riddled. We do not see where these demands stem from, nor do we see why Mr. Gvardia is accusing Sergeant Monella of anything at all, let alone crime. Nothing in any presented evidence, whether presented by us or Mr. Gvardia shows anything that could possibly reveal any truth in the slandering and accusations of Mr. Gvardia. We ask the judge to dismiss all of the demands for being completely baseless and not being backed up by any (roleplay) evidence.

You Gents can be riddled as much as you want, you got caught red handed, and you were foolish enough to go public with those forge evidence, thinking it would pass, and it woldn't be noticed.

Instead of an apology for it, not only to me, yet to the public, and to this court of law,
the Prosecuter believes he can out 'out talk' the facts, with a lot of demagogy, yet this is a court of law, not a political campaign, and the only thing that matters here are facts and proofs.


Demends are based on undoubtful facts, that the Prosecuter himself shown to the public.

Demands made by the Defendant are not only valid your Honor, yet they represent the minimum  consequences, after a large scale scandal, that the representatives of the Government commited here, your Honor.

Your honor, because of the horrible slappy answer that the Goverment officials, in this case the Prosecutors gave, and because they didn't accept any responsibility after this scandal,  which they owe not only to me, yet toward the citizens of Vice City, the general public, and toward this court of law, I, as the Defendant, have decided to modify the demands:

I want not only for this case to be dismiseed, yet I want a public apology from Monella, and the entire FBI/SWAT task unit, and punishment to be braught on Monella, by being fired from all Government's institutions, including VCPD, SWAT,FBI, for at least 20 years(7 days) without being able to reach high ranks until the rest of his carrier.[/s]

I request a fee from the Task Unit(FBI/SWAT/VCPD), for public damage to my reputation, and the stress me and my Family went trough because of all of this, in a amount not less then 200,000$, and additional 100,000$ that would be given to charity organisation, decided by the Defendant.

I also expect from the judge, to press criminal chargers vs Monella, for forging evidance, which is an outstanding criminal act made by a offical high rank'd representative of the Government, and should not get away with it, without facing justice.

I also want my legally bought deagles to be returned and given to Monty Sing.

Thank you.

Cofiliano Gvardia.

OOC: I'm glad you managed to get 3 photoshop experts, I guess they were hired from Craigslist and I like the work they've done. You however don't need a photoshop expert, let alone three, to point out the simple fact that a chatlog is one pixel apart from another. It's true, the picture is edited not to include radio chatter.

OOC:
No one was hired, no one was even asked to check the proofs, 3 random people sent me the same/similiar pictures, and I haven't even talk to some of those people in months.

And the fun fact, none of them are in Gvardia, nor connected in anyway to Gvardia, in fact you would be surprise that among those people is someone from your cyrcle, who doesn't really think you're a good friend as much as he been to you.

I didn't really wanna bring this up, but since you've asked for it, there you go.

2 more people did the same in the mind time, since they didn't saw that I already posted it here.

Next time don't try the same trick you tried with Emre, because forging proofs and editing logs,  is sooo 2009.

[Salmonella]

In other words you got nothing, and you're yet to start a new investigation, making this case pointless.

The State believed the evidence to be sufficient and has been asked by the Court to submit further evidence, so we believe it is hardly pointless.

It doesn't work that way in the legal system.

You do not open a court case against someone, and then ask a delay for a further investigation because of lacks in the investigation you did previously. Your case gets dissmised, and then you got all the time in the world to do any further investigation, and submit a new case.

Specially not, because the reason you're asking for a delay, isn't some new circumstances, yet the fact that the Defendant side caught your evidence to be not only invalid, with flaws and errors, or suspicious, yet actually fake.

The State did not believe the presented evidence to be insufficient. This investigation will be conducted merely to strenghten the case we believe we have.

The State asks the Defendant to, rather than to go on and on about flaws, errors and 'fake evidence', actually make some sense out of this to the State and the Court. We do not see why the Defendant is saying any of this, because as pointed out in one of our previous filings, there is nothing in neither the State's presented exhibits nor the Defendant's presented evidence that indicate the evidence against Mr. Gvardia to be forged. All we're dealing with here is an incongruency in the initial total evidence room count when compared to the M60 counts of Mr. Gvardia, Mr. Shady Singh and Mr. Monty Singh. Nothing more, nothing less. The State does not see how this incongruency somehow leads the Defendant to believe the charges are based on 'fake evidence'.

Thank you for confiming once again to the public, and to the Honorable Judge, that you do not have a clue about the wearabouts of the "evidences" you presented to the public here, nor can you find them, nor can they add up comparing to the other evidence.

Numbers don't lie your Honor, its simple math, and  its obvious that the Prosecutor attempted to forge evidence, or else the numbers would add up, which isn't the case as everyone can see.

This rephrasal of the State's previous filing is entirely incorrect. Nowhere was it said that we don't know where the evidence is. Nowhere was it said that we cannot find said evidence. What has been said and ascertained by the VCPD and FBI however, is the following:

[3] For now, we will however address the Court's inquiry about the incongruency in the currently submitted evidence. We assume that the Court refers to the fact that the previously submitted evidence room storage count does not seem to add up with other counts, such as Mr. Gvardia's, Mr. Singh's and the other Mr. Singh's counts, made at the time of the raid. Your honour, we were just as flabbergasted as you might have been about this, so we've decided to re-count all the evidence in the evidence room.

As seen in previous evidence submissions, we've concluded that an M60 with 216 rounds was found in Mr. Gvardia's locker, 400 in Mr. Monty Singh's locker (of which he has acknowledged ownership) and an M60 with 7214 rounds in Mr. Shady Singh's locker in the warehouse. This would add up to a total of 7830 rounds and three M60 machine guns. So, as said, we have checked our evidence room once again, and in all the 3 crates dedicated to these three gentlemen, we've found these same amount of weapons and accommodating munition. This raises the question of why exactly the amount we found in Mr. Gvardia's locker was missing from the total evidence room count. The answer to that your honour, is that we simply do not know. We assume that in executing our previous count, we have simply overlooked the M60 machine gun and its rounds in Mr. Gvardia's evidence crate, in all haste. We apologize for the untidiness and wish to submit the results from our newly conducted count, which -does- add up with all the other counts.

The prosecution now presents the newly reviewed total count of the VCPD evidence room:

What we're dealing with here is a mere total count of the evidence. The incongruency which the Defendant seems to use as his sole argument for all his demands and accusations has been cleared up long ago and we fail to see why the Defendant is still using the old, incorrect count for his simple math. Anyone able to do the simplest of math is able to see that the numbers do add up in this new, valid count.

You Gents can be riddled as much as you want, you got caught red handed, and you were foolish enough to go public with those forge evidence, thinking it would pass, and it woldn't be noticed.

Instead of an apology for it, not only to me, yet to the public, and to this court of law,
the Prosecuter believes he can out 'out talk' the facts, with a lot of demagogy, yet this is a court of law, not a political campaign, and the only thing that matters here are facts and proofs.


Demends are based on undoubtful facts, that the Prosecuter himself shown to the public.

Demands made by the Defendant are not only valid your Honor, yet they represent the minimum  consequences, after a large scale scandal, that the representatives of the Government commited here, your Honor.

Your honor, because of the horrible slappy answer that the Goverment officials, in this case the Prosecutors gave, and because they didn't accept any responsibility after this scandal,  which they owe not only to me, yet toward the citizens of Vice City, the general public, and toward this court of law, I, as the Defendant, have decided to modify the demands:

Thank you.

Cofiliano Gvardia.

The State wishes to once again point out that all we would've been ''caught red-handed'' on is an incongruency in the counts. Now that this has been cleared up the State does not see where Mr. Gvardia's fit of rage stems from and would appreciate him to elaborate.

The Defendant names ''undoubtful facts'' as reason for his demands, yet fails to address what these ''undoubtful facts'' are.

We do not appreciate the Defendant going out of his way to refer to his prosecution as a ''scandal'' as there is literally nothing that points to this case being invalid, let alone being able to result in a scandal.

Your Honour, we would once again ask for the Court to dismiss these counter-demands for being nothing but entirely baseless. The latest filing of the Defendant only demonstrates this more and more as the Defendant fails to submit any evidence to back up his huge allegations.

OOC:
No one was hired, no one was even asked to check the proofs, 3 random people sent me the same/similiar pictures, and I haven't even talk to some of those people in months.

And the fun fact, none of them are in Gvardia, nor connected in anyway to Gvardia, in fact you would be surprise that among those people is someone from your cyrcle, who doesn't really think you're a good friend as much as he been to you.

I didn't really wanna bring this up, but since you've asked for it, there you go.

OOC: wehn u hit teh Carl too hard

Next time don't try the same trick you tried with Emre, because forging proofs and editing logs,  is sooo 2009.

OOC: What are you talking about?

[stormeus]

The Court dismisses the demands made by the Defendant as this is a criminal case and his demands are better suited for a separate civil trial. The Court also declines to hear such a civil trial until this case has been closed.

[stormeus]

Argonath Federal Court
for the
State of Florida, Vice City

In the matter of the Case of
State v. Gvardia

COURT RULING

Apologies for the extended delay. After thinking on the procedural questions for some time I've come to the following conclusions:

• The evidence provided by the State that the Desert Eagle and the 1100 bullets of ammunition for it is insufficient to show that it is connected to any criminality or violation of the Constitution. The seizure of all illegal arms stands, but because evidence cannot be removed from the VCPD evidence locker, the State must compensate Mr. Gvardia for the improper seizure of his property instead.
  
  The VCPD and cooperating agencies must be more deliberate in inspecting the property of raid targets in the future to ensure that seized materials are either illegal by themselves or can be connected to other crimes beyond a reasonable doubt.
  
  
• The Court also recognizes the corrected count in the evidence locker and likewise asks for more thorough inspection of evidence submitted.
  
  
• The Court rejects the submission of evidence collected after August 2 in this case. The investigation into the charges submitted against Mr. Gvardia specifically should have been considered complete with the filing of this case.
  
  
• The Court partially accepts and partially rejects the argument that evidence submitted is invalid due to the roleplay basis for its collection being unestablished.
  
  Specifically:
  
  • Exhibit 1 is simply an image of the warehouse targeted which simply establishes background.
  • Exhibit 2 showing the contents seized is valid. Explicitly stating that the outcome of the raid was being logged wouldn't make much difference since these would've been apparent from police records (i.e. the evidence locker) anyway.
  • Exhibit 3A is valid as it is established in the screenshots that the evidence was collected from an FBI Wire which is implied to be recorded in a roleplay setting.
  • Exhibit 3B is valid as it is established in the recording that this is being collected from an FBI camera which is implied to be recorded in a roleplay setting.
  • Exhibit 3C is invalid as the phone call is not established as being recorded.
  
  
• All valid evidence withstanding, the Court finds this evidence insufficient to connect the seized weapons to the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. With that, the Court finds the defendant not guilty on the charge of illegal possession of restricted arms.

In summary:

• The charge of illegal possession is dismissed due to insufficient evidence.
• The seizure of a desert eagle and its ammunition is illegal and beyond the scope of the warrant. The defendant must be compensated for the value of these items.
• Even though the defendant has been found not guilty, the arms seized that are illegal (the M60) are not to be returned. Despite not being thoroughly connected to the defendant, the arms are still illegal and the warrant was still valid.

— Stormeus
Chief Justice

[Cofiliano]

Your Honor,

I'm requesting that the compensation for the illegal seizure of my Desert Eagle and 1100 bullets, gets paid in a time period of 72 hours, or any other time frame that you decide its reasonable enough, yet it wont lead to delaying and ignoring by the Government officials.


The compensation value, should be paid to Monty Singh(Axxo), since I'm absent from Vice City.


Thank you for your time,

-Cofiliano Gvardia.