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.
Only by gov’t-licensed necromancers, otherwise there’s a risk of witness tampering.
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”
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.
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.
What recourse would there be against perjury?
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.
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
