If a witness in a trial is appearing via Zoom from another country and is found guilty of being &quot;in contempt&quot; how would the punishment be enforced? So a witness can only appear via Zoom due to being in another country (or refuses to come to the country where the trial is being held). They are found in contempt of court for whatever reason. How would the punishment (in the UK up to 2 years in prison) be enforced? Interested in any jurisdiction not just the UK.
A warrant for the arrest of the person on contempt charges could be issued although this probably wouldn't be a valid basis for extradition and instead would only be enforced if that person came to a place where the court has territorial jurisdiction. The person held in contempt could be fined, with the fine reduced to a money judgment, and the judgment could be enforced against any assets or income of the person held in contempt that are, or are in the future, within the jurisdiction of the court. The money judgment could also be domesticated to a jurisdiction where the witness has assets to enforce the judgment through the local courts there. If the witness is a party to the case, or is in some close relationship with a party to the case such that the party ought to be able to exert some control or influence of the witness, sanctions related to the case itself could be imposed. The testimony of the witness could be disregarded as a sanction if appropriate. If the witness were testifying involuntarily pursuant to letters rogatory (which is basically a subpoena from a jurisdiction where the witness is not located that is domesticated in the jurisdiction where the witness is located by a local court in accordance with local law), the court issuing the letter rogatory could sanction the witness according to domestic law for contempt of court for violating the commands issued in connection with the letters rogatory. A simple declaration that a person was in contempt of court could sometimes have collateral consequences for that person, for example, in loan applications or background checks or violating the term of some contract that was the basis of the obligation of the witness to testify, or in connection with a plea agreement that called for that person's testimony (possibly in anther jurisdiction). Courts have some discretion to fashion custom remedies in unique situations in response to someone's contempt of court.
united-states Witnesses are generally confined to giving testimony from their own personal memory; most of the time, they can't read a statement into the record or just tell the jury to go look at some other piece of evidence. But this creates problems when a witness knows an important fact but doesn't remember it when she takes the stand. Maybe she counted exactly how much money she stuffed in the robber's bag as she was doing it, and she wrote it down as soon as he fled, but a year later, she can't remember that it was $93,736.45. But the prosecutor isn't allowed to just give the witness a stack of evidence and let her go hunting through the documents to answer each question. Instead,he goes through the &quot;Do you remember&quot; colloquy to lay the necessary foundation to refresh the witness's memory, as contemplated by Rule 612, which then also triggers certain rights for the opposing party with respect to the document used to refresh the witness's memory.
The jury would never hear the recording The recording and its provenience would be provided to the prosecution who would, rightly, have issues with its admissibility. The defence and prosecution would make submissions on this to the judge, normally well before the trial date and the empaneling of the jury. If the recording had genuinely emerged during the trial, such submissions would be made without the jury seeing them. The submissions would typically be in writing rather than verbal. If the judge decided the evidence was inadmissible the jury would never see it and never know of its existence. If the jury somehow found out about it anyway, this would be grounds for an immediate mistrial and we would start again with a new jury. Illegally obtained evidence is not automatically inadmissible Hong Kong is not the United States - admitting or excluding illegally obtained evidence is at the discretion of the judge based on where the interests of overall justice are best served. In any event, the absolute prohibition in the US applies only to prosecution evidence - evidence illegally obtained by the defence is subject to the same rules as in Hong Kong; the judge decides.
A witness is not evidence, but what a witness says (their testimony) may be evidence. Or, the body of a person who happened to be a witness is evidence. I suspect that there is a translation problem. It is always physically possible to try pay a person to lie and AFAIK never legal: the person who lies and the person who induces the lie will be punished by law. The witness who testifies will have to swear that their testimony is the truth.
Questions about being barred from entry into the UK 10 years down the road need to be asked some number of years in the future. Current practice is that the Home Secretary does not bar entry because of an unpaid debt, instead you have to do something egregiously bad or antisocial. Given Brexit, future matters of immigration are not set in stone. One consequence of walking away from a lease is that you are likely to be sued (in UK courts) for breach of contract, and the court may find that you owe the rest of the lease money. If that happens, you need to be concerned with whether the judgment can be enforced against you, even when you are in the US. The general answer is, yes, the landlord can petition the US courts to enforce a UK judgment against you. The specific details depend on the law of your state, but most states have a version of the Uniform Foreign Money Judgments Recognition Act. In addition, the landlord could sue you in US courts (maybe not as convenient for him). There is no requirement that you have to be a US citizen to sue a US person, and a landlord can (would almost certainly) sue you via a US attorney who would represent him. An alternative to fleeing your obligation and saying "Go ahead and sue me!" is to negotiate a termination of the lease. The landlord would have a duty to mitigate his losses, so if the remainder of the lease has a value of $2,000 a month for 8 months, the landlord can't just do nothing -- he has to try to rent the unit out, so perhaps his actual losses would be only $4,000. Suing a person is expensive especially when you you are dealing in trans-national disputes, so he may be willing to accept some figure in exchange for terminating the lease. Your (UK) lawyer will give you good advice on how to proceed, if you opt to not get sued.
Prison v. Jail First of all, failure to appear (in the U.S.) would led to incarceration in jail (a local government facility allowing for detention typically up to one year for misdemeanors), rather than prison (which is typically a state or federal government institution incarcerating people for a year or more pursuant to a felony conviction). A jail is typically run by the county sheriff or a city's chief of police. A prison is typically run by a warden appointed by a state department of corrections. A civil court never sends anyone to prison for failure to appear, or for that matter, as a sanction for any purpose. Even a multi-year remedial civil contempt sanction is served in jail rather than prison. When Can One By Jailed For Failure To Appear In A Civil Matter? Second, failure to appear can only lead to incarceration if: (1) the person who fails to appear in either subject to a subpoena requiring that person to appear, at a date and time certain in a particular place, as a witnesses, that is personally served upon them (or where personal service is waived by the person) (this is the same in civil and criminal practice), or (2) the person is served with a judgment creditor's interrogatories to be answered in person (which are the moral equivalent of a subpoena) and must be served in the same manner, or (3) the person fails to deliver a person pursuant to a writ of habeas corpus (which is the moral equivalent of a contempt of court finding and very uncommon) that has been served in the same manner, or (4) the person has been personally served (or has personally waived such personal service) with an order to show cause (at a specific date, time and place) why they should not be held in contempt of court. The precise name of this document can vary and could also be called a "writ" or a "citation", rather than an "order to show cause". Citations for traffic offenses or other ordinance violations or civil offenses are functionally equivalent to (4). Of course, in each of the cases (1) to (4) you obviously aren't incarcerated at the moment that you fail to appear as the whole problem is that you aren't there. Instead, in each of those cases, a warrant for your arrest is issued by the court and you aren't actually incarcerated until law enforcement manages to arrest you before the warrant is vacated because you do appear, or the warrant is vacated by stipulation of the parties approved by the court, or is vacated because the matter you were required to appear for is now moot (e.g. in the case of judgment creditor's interrogatories, the judgment is paid in full). How Long Is One Incarcerated For Failure To Appear? In cases (1)-(4) the duration of incarceration is only from the time of arrest until the person can be brought before the court at the soonest possible time to do whatever they were supposed to have shown up in person to do and failed to appear at, often a matter of a few hours and rarely more than a long weekend. These forms of incarceration are for the purpose of compelling your appearance in court by force, not for punishing someone for not showing up. Other Reasons People Are Incarcerated In U.S. Civil Courts One can also be incarcerated in a civil court because one is found to be in contempt of court after one has appeared and been found by the court in an in person hearing to be in contempt of court, but incarceration for contempt of court itself, as opposed to failure to appear at a contempt of court hearing, is never a sanction imposed for failure to appear. Other Sanctions For Failing To Appear Also, keep in mind that failing to appear can result in other consequences besides incarceration, the most common of which is to be found in default causing you to lose you legal case or whatever other legal matter was pending as a result of your failure to appear. Another common sanction for failure to appear (e.g. at a deposition when you are not under subpoena) is a monetary sanction to compensate others for the attorneys' fees incurred due to your non-attendance, and a determination that facts that could have been established if you had appeared will be deemed to be true regardless of reality. Civil Law Systems Compared In "civil law" countries whose legal systems are not based upon the English common law, judges do not have a generalized contempt of court power and the scheme by which people are sanctioned for failing to appear in civil matters is different.
The decision will be made by whichever country arrests him first (although a minority of countries allow for the trial of people who break their criminal laws in absentia). Needless to say, if nobody manages to arrest him ever, he will not face any criminal consequences except the issuance of an arrest warrant possibly accompanied by a pre-existing conviction in absentia if arrested in countries that allow for such a proceeding. Normally, in these circumstances, either country would have jurisdiction under its own laws to prosecute and punish the criminal, and many extradition treaties would not require the extradition of someone who committed a crime punished domestically in the state in whose custody the criminal is as part of the same course of events. Many countries will not extradite someone if they could face the death penalty in the receiving country. But, sometimes law enforcement in a country with a less serious penalty will intentionally defer to law enforcement in a country with a more serious penalty that is simultaneously trying to arrest him. Ordinarily, law enforcement is not authorized to use deadly force to arrest someone who is simultaneously being arrested by law enforcement from another country against either the arrestee or the law enforcement from the other country. Indeed, using deadly force against another country's law enforcement officers who are carrying out a lawful arrest in their own country would ordinarily be considered an act of war. U.S. double jeopardy provisions of the constitution do not prohibit a second prosecution of an offender in these circumstances because of a first prosecution by another sovereign, but many prosecutors in many countries would decline to prosecute someone a second time for the offense that they have already been convicted of in exercise of their discretion, and many judges would consider time served in another country for the same offense as a factor in setting their own sentence.
What is one supposed to do if they want to take an extended trip somewhere? Or is one basically not allowed to take such trips if they are a US citizen eligible for Jury Duty? In the US you are not required to seek permission to travel, or prove your past whereabouts to the government if you happen to miss some civic duty. They generally call up way more people than they need for this sort of reason. The length of time you are gone or where you choose to travel is irrelevant. In my experience you are given about a month heads up. If you didn't receive the notice until you returned from out of town, and they send a follow up, simply inform them of the fact that you were gone and didn't receive the notice until you returned. Jury duty is an obligation to some extent, but it is also a right and a privilege. It isn't a criminal offence you are liable for if you didn't get the notice. If it were that important to verify your availability ahead of time the notification would be sent registered mail with a signature required.