What do you mean by “possible”? Most jurisdictions have a law against interfering with the dead / a corpse, and necromancy, while suddenly possible would therefore remain highly illegal.
Even if legalised, consider how often difficult decisions have to be made about whether to exhume a corpse to seek evidence of some sort. I can’t imagine it would be any easier to decide to have a corpse resurrected.
Habeas corpus takes on an entirely different bent, for sure.
There’s also the state of mind of someone who has been resurrected to take into account as well. There they were in oblivion or eternal rest or whatever it is that the dead experience and suddenly they’re dragged back to this mortal coil with thoughts, feelings and the knowledge they’ve been dead for a long time, and there’s living people who haven’t been through any of that throwing questions at them left, right and centre.
If it happened often enough, advocacy groups for the unwillingly resurrected would be set up. And more people would opt for cremation.
I think the most reasonable interpretation is that the law doesn’t currently recognize the undead as being people, let alone being the same person they were in life. It would need to be shown to be a reliable source of evidence, similar to any new technology that claims to offer insight into a case. A random judge might allow it, but it would be easy grounds for an appeal if it can’t be shown to do exactly what it claims to do.
DNA evidence was new once, but so was the polygraph. Only one of these is admissible, and for good reason.
imagine dying, and not even being able to enjoy death because you just keep being brought back to life to do stupid paperwork.
i’d stab myself and die right there, again.
Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. I’d imagine that it would only get worse without the eyes.
What do you call a deer with no eyes? No eye deer. What do you call a deer with no eyes and legs? Still no eye deer.
That said, I would hope that “was it your spouse that bashed your face in with a shovel?” Might hold gravity in a witness testimony. “Yes, we were alone in the bedroom and I asked them why they had a shovel in the house, to which they responded, listen to this”. “The sound was spectacular, THONK! just as you would expect, but then I realized this is exactly how their ex was found, I’m not looking forward to spending an eternity listening to their retelling, always went on for ages”
More importantly the reanimated would be unquestionably under the influence of magic. Who’s to say how honest and reliable such testimony could even be.
Nobody knows more about dying than dead people
No necromancy spells require too much glitter. Think of the environmental impact.
No dude, you’re thinking of transmutation. Necromancy requires blood and that’s a renewable resource.
What type of necromancy is being used. If it’s from Dungeons & Dragons Fifth edition, you only get to ask them like 5 questions, and they don’t have to answer you. They can also potentially lie.
Going with D&D’s version of necromancy… probably not. Undead have a strong and innate anti-life bias. Some intelligent undead are likely to be able to mask it, but without exceptionally strong wills will likely still act in a way that will cause the most death.
Non-undead ressurected individuals would likely be able to testify, however.
How about the magic spell that gives you ability to ask the dead 5 questions and they must answer it truthfully?
(I saw it in the D&D movie, never actually played the game, I don’t have any friends)
So you’re saying we should use the undead to replace the police? I mean sure they might more people, but at least they won’t be discriminatory about it.
Hey, so long as someone with more ethics than the average patrol officer is in charge of the Command Undead spell, skeleton cops might even be safer and more humane for everyone…
It depends on the necromancy.
Most forms of necromancy create a being under the control of their necromancer. In that case, the dead’s testimony would be worthless as the dead would be under the complete control of another.
I mean, maybe but what will you do if they fail to appear before court? I don’t think the undead are super concerned with prison sentences
30 days in prison? Better than stuck down their with my in laws
/S
GURPS Technomancer is a modern setting with magic, including necromancy, ever since 1945. In some (red) States you can be sentenced to life in prison/death plus years of hard labor. Even your undead corpse is put to use clearing trash off the side of the road for 20 years.
I call the corpse of John Smith to the stand.
Mr Smith, where were you on the night of October the fourth?
……ungh……hiss…… BRAINS….
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”
I think that’s already a video game.
Which game? It doesn’t ring a bell for me
Might be ace attorney, mediums channel spirits of the deceased and I think in one of the later games those spirits are also called as witnesses for their murder.
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.
