Did Royal Navy or US Navy courts martial or boards of inquiry ever use a bell as a gavel? In Star Trek (not the best guide to law), a Starfleet Board of Inquiry equivalent is shown with the presiding officer striking a tiny bell to indicate that proceedings were commencing or adjourned (like an American, though not English, civilian judge might use a gavel). Have Boards of Inquiry or courts martial in either the US Navy or the Royal Navy (the inspirations for Starfleet) ever used such bells, and do they use them today? (Also, if these bells are real, do they have a name?)
In the Royal Navy, the current mandated ceremony is: On the day on which a court-martial is to sit, the Union Flag is to be hoisted at the peak or at the yardarm as appropriate and a gun is to be fired when colours are hoisted, or at the time the signal is made if the court is ordered to sit immediately. The Union Flag is to be dipped between each separate court. Should the court sit for more than one day, the Union Flag is to be hoisted and a gun fired each day when colours are hoisted—or at any time previously that the court may resume its sitting. The Union Flag is to be hauled down when the court adjourns for the day. Where local conditions dictate that that the firing of a gun be inappropriate it may be omitted with the permission of the local senior officer. This is paragraph 9143 of Chapter 91, &quot;Standards, flags and colours&quot; in the Queen's Regulations for the Royal Navy, 2017 edition. I conjecture that this comes from the regulation recorded back in the first edition of 1731, which says in its courts-martial chapter: IX. When Sentence of Death is to be executed upon any Criminal, Notice is to be first given from the Ship by a Signal, and firing a Gun; upon which, the Captains of all the Ships present shall summon their companies upon Deck, to be Spectators thereof, and shall make known to them the Crime, for which the Punishment is inflicted. Firing the gun is commonly known as the &quot;rogue's salute&quot;. Capital punishment is no longer used in the armed forces, but perhaps some relic of it has survived in the flag-and-gun ceremonial, translated from sentencing to the start of proceedings. In practice, the gun is unlikely to be used these days, since courts martial typically take place in fixed establishments. The centre in Bulford is right next to housing and so those &quot;local conditions&quot; apply. Royal Navy ships absolutely do have bells, which are used ceremonially. Since former regulations called for courts martial to be held in the most &quot;publick Place of the Ship&quot; (paragraph III of the 1731 text), that could mean on deck near the bell, and one could imagine a ceremonial strike of that bell to get everyone's attention. But I don't know if that was actual practice at the time. The miniature bell in the picture is too small to be a real ship's bell, but perhaps it creates an aura of Navy-ness. Military judges in the UK (Navy or otherwise) do not use gavels, just like in civilian courts. They use their voices when it's time to declare something.
The article is public domain. The pictures aren’t If this was first published in the British Empire (as it then was), then The UK is the place of first publication. What follows is its status under UK law, other jurisdictions may have different results. The original article is public domain because H. C. P. Bell died in 1937 meaning copyright on everything he wrote expired 31 December 2007. If he’d lived until 1951 or later it would still be under copyright (in 2021). However, this isn’t the original article because: Text on this page extracted from an original copy of Annual Report. The photographs were taken when I visited the site in 1991, and again in November 1995. The bits that this unknown author added, including the photographs, are their copyright. Since they were clearly alive in 1995 (due to the well known pirate aphorism “dead men take no photos”) the copyright in those is still current.
An interrogation isn't necessarily a sit-down-in-a-room thing. Miranda v. Arizona clarifies what they mean by "interrogation" for the purposes of that opinion: By custodial interrogation, we mean questioning initiated by law enforcement officers after a person has been taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way. If any post-arrest questioning might happen, it is prudent to inform the defendant of their rights. Miranda also reminds us that: Any statement given freely and voluntarily without any compelling influences is, of course, admissible in evidence. The fundamental import of the privilege while an individual is in custody is not whether he is allowed to talk to the police without the benefit of warnings and counsel, but whether he can be interrogated. [...] Volunteered statements of any kind are not barred by the Fifth Amendment, and their admissibility is not affected by our holding today. The police are not required to give a Miranda warning in order to make use of statements that the defendant volunteers while in custody. But, police generally can't predict when they might ask the defendant a question (or otherwise make the defendant feel compelled to answer).
Warrants You say: &quot;Formerly if a person was NOT apprehended in the commission of a felony, but was merely a suspect, then the authorities had to INDICT the suspect to prove sufficient evidence.&quot; This is not true. What the authorities had to do was issue a warrant which required no prerequisites or even suspicion that the person was involved in the crime. If I had the power, I could issue a warrant any time I felt like it. The abuse of warrants was one of the grievances that led to the American Revolution and is the primary driver for the fourth amendment to the Constitution and the limit that warrants can only be issued on &quot;probable cause&quot;. Needless to say, all Western democracies have similar protections. Statute law In common law jurisdictions, parliament/congress can overrule the common law by passing an act that effectively says &quot;the law is now this&quot;. With the rise of professional Police starting with the Glasgow Police in 1800, the statutes that created (or regulated them) extended the power of arrest without a warrant beyond what the common law allowed. For example, in new-south-wales, the police power of arrest without a warrant is in s99 of the Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2002. The general power of arrest without a warrant is in s100 (which also broadens the common law power to allow arrest where a person has &quot;just committed&quot; an offence or has committed a serious indictable offence for which they have not been tried at any time in the past) and the power to arrest with a warrant is in s101.
While this isn't a simple and direct answer, it should point you in the right direction. There are countries which like the United States have parallel national and subnational court system, including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, and Switzerland. Different rules of procedure for different courts within a larger overall court system for a federal jurisdiction are not that unusual even in nominally unitary court systems. But, the division between them is on something of a continuum with fine shades of differences between them. Only a few are as close to the extreme of power sharing and a &quot;federalist&quot; approach as the United States, however. Also even unitary court systems (in a geographic and federalism sense) often have parallel court systems on subject matter grounds. For example, France has both ordinary civil courts and labor courts whose rulings could overlap, and England historically had courts of law and courts of equity with a complex relationship to each other (and also ecclesiastical courts with jurisdiction of matters now vested in the civil courts of law like inheritance of tangible personal property). Similarly, Northern Ireland has or has had what amount to different parallel legal systems for terrorism and non-terrorism criminal offense. Most countries also have parallel criminal and quasi-criminal legal systems for civilians and soldiers respectively. I've seen this tension between the two systems as a plot point in contemporary English police procedural dramas, for example. On the other hand, systems with a more unitary legal system rarely are so fierce in their defense of protections against double jeopardy as the United States, and the dual sovereignty doctrine in U.S. double jeopardy law can be seen as a safety valve in practice and as applied in cases where the double jeopardy rule as interpreted under the U.S. Constitution is too strong a bar to legitimate second prosecutions. A comparative analysis of double jeopardy concepts can be found here. It is tricky to reduce the subtly differences between the rules in different countries to a clear yes or no kind of answer. A square answer to your question requires detailed examination of a dozen or more court systems that someone felt the need to write a book about to explain. If I can find a more specific answer I will update this one.
In the US at least, there is no mention of &quot;mind reading&quot; in the Constitution. But should such a technology be developed and actually used to read someone's mind and then that information was used against them in court, I can certainly see an appeal on at least 5th Amendment grounds. It's also possible that should such a technology become viable, that state legislatures and even the US Congress passing prohibitions on using it under certain circumstances.
england-and-wales In England, the use of a horn when stationary is restricted solely to advise other road users of your presence &quot;at times of danger&quot;. Not spotting that the light has gone green would certainly not fit that description. Use of audible warning instruments 99.—(1) Subject to the following paragraphs, no person shall sound, or cause or permit to be sounded, any horn, gong, bell or siren fitted to or carried on a vehicle which is— (a) stationary on a road, at any time, other than at times of danger due to another moving vehicle on or near the road... The Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986 The policeman would be well within his rights and duties to provide you with a fixed penalty notice of £30.
The key part of (e) is the National Radio Quiet Zone that covers parts of east-central West Virginia and west-central Virginia. Because of radio telescopes and military intelligence equipment in the area, there are restrictions (increasingly strict as you get closer) on potential radio interference. A radio source that would be no problem in most of the world can be a major problem when you are trying to pick up a radio signal from a few billion light-years away. So if Sally is in the National Radio Quiet Zone, she has to notify the National Radio Astronomy Observatory who will consider the power, location, etc. of the proposed beacon, and determine if it will potentially interfere with the radio telescopes before granting permission. If they grant permission, Sally is fine. Otherwise the FCC will decide what Sally can do. If Sally is outside the National Radio Quiet Zone, then (e) doesn't apply. So more information is needed before we can know if Sally is legal or not, but as a general rule: Outside the National Radio Quiet Zone, probably ok, inside it, will have to ask for permission.