I'm not the biggest fan of reading so I spend a lot of time just waiting for my next Petty. I think it would be a cool innovation if we had court trials. This is completely up for negotiations but it could be an interesting way to non-violently disrupt each other.

The theory:

If you catch a WS of a PP/Mug/possibly add a new WS for this, maybe after OC's you get a WS of the mastermind; with this WS you can give it to the DA(District Attorney) (a new character in the tip area). So long as the offending player is still online and in the city, the player will be taken to court. up to 5 other players will receive a personal like an OC and it will be Jury Duty. The offending player will have to wait in court for 5 minutes or until a Jury anonymously votes in favor of the mobster. If the vote doesn't pass after 5 minutes the mobster will be free with the reason "Your family has threatened the Judge, you are free to go". If you get out this way the judge will reveal your accuser and you have the option to put him in jail if you have a CA.

My Reasoning:

In every American mobster story the mobster usually faces a court case, luckily they usually get out and this game doesn't have court anywhere.

Why do this:

I know the biggest thought is, why would we want to be inconvenieced for 5 minutes. Well assuming that you can get experience for this is enough reason right there, my thought with exp is that you get X amount of exp to send the man to court, you get 2X if they stay the whole 5 minutes. You get X/2 if you accept Jury Duty.

Extra:

Please discuss this, it can change as much as needed, for instance if a CA catches a WS it can auto Trial. I think OC's is the best way to do it because bank robberies are something the city would want to put forth effort to find a mastermind.

I'm sorry but I see this as a step too far towards other games. I really don't think this would be in keeping with the games core ideals.

I think the idea is potentially a good one. It would be good to have something else to do, who ever complains there are too many fun features in a game?

To Flash-Fire's point, that's just how it is. Most games that have things that this, would have a considerably larger amount of users. If done correctly, I think this could be a good thing for the game.

There would have to be some 'point' to do this to another player, other than XP. Maybe you get a cash reward for bringing this person to justice, maybe this reward is bigger depending on the rank of the accused player.

I don't think the accused should automatically get the name of the accuser just because it went 5 minutes. Maybe a 5% chance of a bribe going the right way for you with the judge, or whoever, and you get the name.(You could also tie it in with a persons stealth, the more stealthy, the more chance they have of getting away with it) This would then take money from you, say $50k, and give you the name of the person who accused you. You can then decide what you wanted to do with the information, maybe have a 'hostage note' type deal, where a message will go to the accuser along the lines of "XXX found out you put the DA on his back. You're going to have to make it worth his while to stop his corrupt officer putting you behind bars." Giving him the opportunity to pay his way out of jail time. (This jail time would be irreversable, meaning that you couldn't just get busted out after 30 seconds, maybe a minimum time of 30 minutes, too)

I don't see it being a game changing feature, but it could definitely be another bit of fun for users to interact with eachother.

Unfortunately it's complicated, it involves adding a bunch of new features to the game so it would be a process. But assuming it's down the road a little ways it'd definitely doable. I like your thoughts of tying in other aspects of the game like stealth and player rank, i'm sure we could find other things as well. We can throw out the whole Jury Duty if needed, I just thought it would allow people to do something extra while waiting for a petty.
@FlashFire, I don't play other games so I don't know about that, it was a completely original idea so far as I know, but I appreciate the input. It's less of a suggestion and more of a discussion at this point about how it could work or whether people would enjoy it.

I'm liking Pratsters version more so than the original suggestion.

I really feel there should be more done with the Witness Statement side of things. We users get the cash for selling it but it should cause something else to happen imo.