Never said they were admissible, just one of the few ways to determine what spells someone knows.

~J

Like all magic, how a signature is experienced might be different to all mages. If so, how can law enforcement officers tell eachothers about it? Can it even be recorded in any way at all?

Doesn't this mean that it's only mages who has personally had contact with a signature that can recognize it again? I imagine all Lone Star mages beeing called in real fast when something big has happened... "just come by and have a look".

Yeah, but if we're talking about being charged with a crime, admissability is a factor. Besides, if a sinless shadowrunner mage has been picked up by Lone Star, whether his spells are verboten is probably the least of his worries.

Not at all. The forensic mage who examined the scene can be the one to testify in court. A police jurisdiction will probably only have one or two forensic mages, who see almost every magical crime scene, and can therefore spot a repeat offender in their area, but I don't know of any way to record an astral signature onto paper, chip, or telephone.
It's still useful to have forensic mages, just not as useful as it would be if they could photograph signatures. But who knows, maybe someday soon...

I think the charge would be more along the lines of operating without a license. A good real-world example of this would be a doctor that loses his license. Although prevented from practicing medicine, he still retains the knowledge and skills of the profession (just like a mage retains the knowledge of how to cast a Fireball). However, every time he attempts to use those skills, he risks being arrested and charged for operating without a license.

If we were to apply your defense scenario, all the ex-doctor would have to worry about was being arrested the first time. After that, it would be business as usual, since being arrested again for using his skills would fall under Double Jeopardy. Obviously, that's just not the case.

Not the same thing at all. He could only be charged once for knowing the spell. He can be charged again and again for using the spell at an unlicensed force on different occasions.

Something I just thought of in regards to communicating information about astral signiatures, etc: Mindlink. Since mindlink allows conveyance of emotions and mental images, it isnt too much of a stretch to allow it to convey information about astral sigs.

I am curious. How can law-enforcement determine what level of spells you know? IIRC they can examine the scene of casting, but how can they determine what you know beyond just the evidence you leave behind?

Same with Phantasm! One could even record an Astral Signature using a simrig and Trid Phantasm!

So what, the majority of armored clothing (stuff the Fashion spell will work on) is legal. [edit]Changed ? to .[/edit]

LOL

Prosecutor: "So you admit to lighting the five Lone Star officers on fire?"

Fire Elemental: "Yes, but he made me do it! I'm only an elemental, it's not my fault! I swear! I didn't want to do it."

Prosecutor: "Can you point out the man who made you do this to the court?"

Fire Elemental: "Yes" *points to the mage*

Mage (under his breath at the defense table): "Fragging Traitor"

Your right. You can't.

MitS, p11, The Law:
"Bills to regulate the Art itself have continually failed to pass or been struck down by the courts as illegal and unconstitutional..."
"A felony commited using magic is always considered a premeditated act."

Not quite.

MitS, p11, The Law:
"...However, reading astral signatures has achieved the same status as fingerprinting or DNA testing in forensic science."

"Many large jurisdictions employ a forensic magician, whose position is analogous to a coroner or medical examiner."

You might as be saying that if someone fired an illegal assult rifle that they could say that they shot a hunting rifle and get lesser charges.
With the advent of the Forensic Magician, a spell that has been casted is just about equal to a bullet that has been fired. The astral can be examined to determine ripples, spikes in mana, disruptions, and even tell you the trajectory of the cast form the caster to their target.
The force of the spell can be determined once the object or person the spell was cast upon is identified just as a Coroner can determine the force of a blow to a body from blunt force trauma.
For mental spells, the victim can be examined and the brain can be studied to determine what type of spell causes this kind of mental trauma and at what force it was applied.

It's science. They measure. You can't just say, "Well, yeah...but it was force 1 man." when the detective is staring at a report that tells him that from the brain trauma in the head it's obviously a force 3.

I think you might be mistaken here.

MitS, p11, The Law:
"Currently, any spell, spirit, focus, or other magical effect of Force 3 or higher is legally regulated within the UCAS and CAS, though permits may be acquired to use such magic."

"Other contries have widely differeing legal viewpoints toward magic. Great Britain, for example, requires all Awakened citizens to register..."

SR3, p174, Street Gear/Local Fines And Punishment (Seattle) [chart]:
"(T)Class E Magic: Possesion, 10,000Y/1 yr"
"Notes: Class E Magic refers to unregistered spells, spirits, and foci."
(this is where you are getting the registered thing)

SR3, p173, Street Gear/Making Legal Purchases:
"For restricted items--gear with a Legality Code--a permit is necessary to get the item legally.
Of course, purchasing gear legally means that there are records of your purchase: credit trails, inventory, perhaps even video surveillance footage, depending on where you shop."

SR3, p174, Street Gear/Permits:
"If an item's Legality Code features a "P", a permit for the object is available. To apply for a permit, the character must approach the proper government (or corporate) authority and fill out the necessar paperwork. The application requires a valid SIN, and may also require proof of employment, as well as adequate reasons why the permit is necessary."

As far as that reads, you need a permit. Not a registration. In Britain, you need to register yourself, not the spell. They didn't say anything about Britain's policy on spells.

[edit]And just to be clear on the difference between these two.
Registering is to procure documentation to claim ownership of an item as your property.
I can register my car at the DMV. That doesn't mean I can drive it.

Getting a Permit is to be granted the right to use something under the regulations of the LAW regarding that item's use.

Would you be required to register your spells and get a permit? It doesn't say. There is only that one refernce to registration of magic in that one note on that chart on page 174 of SR3, while there's SR3, p173, 174, and MitS p11 saying completely the opposite.
My guess? Typo. Was once refered to as registering. Later became permits.[/edit]

Quite.

Let's say, for the sake of argument and for the moment, that you can determine the Force of a spell from trauma. A person may intend to cast a spell at Force 1 but it may still come out Force 3 (Mana Surges p87 MitS). You did not intend to cast the spell at an illegal force, but it did come out at a higher than legal force.

Now let us revisit the Force from trauma forensic scenario, pray tell, what is the difference between a Force 2D and a Force 4D on a body that fails the spell resistance? If the target failed the Willpower/Body/other Spell Resistance test, you compare spellcaster Successes to the target's Successes. All the pathologist is going to say is that the target took x amount of damage. The force of the spell is determined from astral space. A special exception is when the astral signature of the spell is still evident on the target for example, Slow Death or even something like Delay Damage.

The expert magician can testify that it is unlikely that a low Force spell cause so much damage, but he cannot say conclusively that a high Force spell killed the victim. To use your gun example, all the Forensics is going to testify to is that the 9mm bullet killed the victim. They cannot testify that by looking at the bullet and say it was fired by an SMG or a pistol. A skinny guy is unlikely to have caused massive trauma but it doesn't mean that a big guy must have killed the victim.

Hopefully you understand why I found the original text to be silly.

~J

Since magic is always considered pre-meditation when cast, if they plead that they weren't trying for a Force 3, then it would be a ruling of:
-1 count of Premeditated Magical Assult
-1 count of Involentary Manslaughter

Forensics would look at the body tissue to determine what levels of above normal mana exposure their body was subjected to.
Mixed with other pieces of evidence that help determine what type of spell this was (eg. Are they burnt to a crisp? Brain hemorrhaging? etc...), they would be able to determine if the spell was above or below the Force 3 level.
They would also be looking at how long the victim sustained a spells damage since a long use of some Force 2 spells could look like Force 3 burst spells.

That is horribly wrong my friend.
They can look at the scoring on the round, use their arsenal for such a purpose and fire several shots off until they find the 9mm weapon that can produce similar style of markings on the round.
Not only can they do the above, but they can first rule out many possibilities by determining the velocity of the round from it's smashed shape. This will let them know what type of 9mm weapons they are looking for, high velocity or low velocity.
Once this is done, they inform the detectives who begin to keep an eye out for that kind of weapon when they do their searches of the suspects property.

They can also tell you if the bullet was fired from a weapon that was silenced because silencers and supressors leave track marks seperately on the bullet than the barrel.

With the skinny guy:
That doesn't even compute in forensic science in any way. I'm sorry, but it doesn't.
They don't look at the guy first.
They look at the wound and determine the size of the hand and handedness from the bruising or fracture, and look for any odd markings that may indicate rings, gloves, or the like.

A mundane forensic team that has a magical forensic analyst on it would be devistating because the coroner would be able to tell everything about the time of death, and physical cause of death as well as any information about marking about the body; the lab would determine if the body was drug anywhere or whether it was murdered where it was found based off of the crime area's surroundings mixed with the coroners report; and with that information the mage would be able to determine the rough location of the spells origin in the astral and determine the spells force based off of the mana disturbance (much like blood spatter can help determine the velocity of a bullet and re-afirm the trajectory), and from the coroners information he would be able to detemine the type of spell category (in most cases: at least) that was used.
Then the mundane forensics would match any DNA, hair, cloth or other evidence to the suspect along with the magical analasys that was ran to determine ownership of the spell casted.

Aside from being completely insulting to the conversation at hand, that example is horribly un-comparible.

You might as well say that it's illegal to do curb-side card tricks because their magic, Is anyone going to do anything? no.

The spell attacks are equal to murders with firearms.
And those do not get ignored. They may get done sloppy on the investigation, but they don't get ignored by the law.

I was talking merely of the misguided belief that the legal system would do something about a person who simply knows a spell. I know how to make plastique, napalm and crude nuclear devices. I'm sure several agencies know I can do such things. Since I have done nothing with it though I am left alone.

Now it is a completely different story when you are talking about someone who uses a spell in a harmful fashion. Sure the guy who uses the illegal rated StunBall against some ganger harassing citizen might get questioned heavily, but by an large he will be left alone. Now as for that child killing Death Touch mage who knows it at force 2 (therefore a legal spell) is going to be hunted like nobodies business.

It's not the spell, it's what you do with it.