Context: This is a world inhabited by intelligent, non-anthro animals, some of which have decided to outlaw hunting and eating prey in favour of living in harmony and cooperating.
They have a zero tolerance policy for predation and it is criminalized extremely heavily. Depending on what species or taxon you are (all animals have the right to be tried by members of their own species and taxa, and they are responsible for carrying out sentences of their own kind too), First Degree Predation, where you personally kill then eat an animal, is the only crime that formally carries the death penalty. Regular first degree murder where you "merely" kill an animal without intent to eat them only has a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. Second Degree Predation (aka Simple Predation) is where you obtain meat with the intention of eating it without personally killing anything, carries only a mandatory fixed term prison sentence in addition to losing certain freedoms post release.
However, their laws on the issue is very much based on intent as that is their philosophy, that because they are all sapient and no longer bound by their natural hunter instincts, they are responsible for their own actions. You don't have to actually eat the prey you killed to have committed First Degree Predation, and the inverse is technically true as well, where if you kill an animal for some other reason and only after they're dead do you decide to eat them, then you're technically only guilty of murder and Second Degree Predation instead of First Degree Predation. There are also legal ways that certain animals can obtain animal tissue, for example, as skin grafts and organ transplants, autopsy and forensic investigations, or for general research. Because animals handling tissue in these cases don't intend to eat it, it does not fall under Second Degree Predation. However, if you buy animal meat and later decide not to eat it, that's still considered predation.
Especially with the nature of eating and digesting food, law enforcement only has a very small time window to order a suspect to undergo lab testing of what's in their belly where it will actually show a positive hit for animal tissue, so my original thought is that the intent clause is meant to make prosecuting predation easier, since they wouldn't need to actually prove that the accused has animal tissue in their digestive tract at any point, just that they wanted at some point for some form of animal tissue to end up inside them.
I know there are many real life laws that use intent in a similar way, but I don't know how courts actually prove intent beyond a reasonable doubt. Can anyone who's delved more into the legal side of worldbuilding comment on how the courts in my world might prove (or disprove) that someone intended to eat another animal when they do not have direct evidence that the animal was indeed eaten?
I've been ruminating on this for a bit (love your other writing btw!) and I think there definitely are good measures of circumstantial evidence that could be used for this!
First - as others have said - preparation for before and after. Butcher tools, different kinds of conservation equipment etc. It wouldn't exactly fit in a non-anthro situation imo, but there has to be some more natural equivalent, that is probably highly specific to their respective species. What comes to mind first are Shrikes, who impale their prey on sharp thorns or barbed wire. Even having a setup like that close to their living area might be incriminating, and Shrike-specific sub-societies would probably avoid having anything sharp around to begin with just to not seem like they're up to something.
There definitely would have to be specialists in court that are knowledgeable about predatory behaviors in different species - although, how would you avoid bias, misinformation and just plain ol' racism? Besides, when your goal is to demonstrate that natural urges can be overcome, it's a bit counteractive to rely on naturalism just for the case of persecuting the bad guys.
In the same vein, the court could be taking into account whether the victim was of a species that is traditionally seen as prey. A mouse getting preyed on by a cat just sounds a lot more feasible than a cat eating a lion. Although, with Sci-Fi, anything can be possible 🌈 But again, if they're sentient, the predators would grasp the rules at some point and specifically pick prey that seems unreasonable just in case they get caught.
There could be other common counter indications as well; If the victim is buried for example, or the corpse is disposed of in a way that would make future predation impossible. I imagine that if someone did genuinely commit murder, they'd make sure to drench the victim in acid or some other substance of the sort, just to make sure that they can't be implicated for predation. Being in possession of such substances for no good reason would make it easy to tell that a murder was premeditated too.
That might not count for species of carrion eaters though. A court could argue that a vulture who buried their victim could still return weeks later and commit predation on the rotten carcass. That again would be a very naturalistic argument for a society that claims to have overcome naturalistic instincts, but it definitely would be interesting to explore as a concept.
You could go a route of psychological plausibility - would a sentient predator really want to see their prey as a person, or would they prefer to mentally unlink and prey on someone they don't know and can objectify into just being meat? I'd wager the latter would be more common. So if the two involved parties had a history of social interaction, it would make predation less plausible in all but the most fucked up cases. (Those might even involve some messed up form of grooming and social isolation in anticipation of the crime)
Ending on the point of fucked up cases - how would a court deal with a case of a herbivore going specifically against their nature to commit predation? Would the jury be unwilling to prosecute despite overwhelming evidence, just because they're hung up on it being against natural instincts?
I think you've got a very neat system to explore such questions, looking forward to reading more of your writing :)
Thank you so much for your analysis! You've given me a lot to think about for this world and I really appreciate it! I'm so glad you like my writings and I will always work to improve it!