SD v Kaizen 2026 Crim 13
SD v. Kaizen [2026] Crim 13
| Date of judgment | 19 Apr 2026 (Oral) 24 Apr 2026 (Full) |
| Judge | Judge Hmquestionable |
| Charges |
|
| Verdict | Guilty of both charges |
| Sentence | Guilty 5 week ban |
| Applicable persuasive precedent | Empty |
JUDGMENT by Judge Hmquestionable
Introduction
[1] This is a very simple case regarding 1 charge of Association with a Proscribed Organization and 1 charge of Contempt of Court. At the end of the trial, I convicted defendant Kaizen of both charges and sentenced the defendant to a ban of
Note from the Archives: the previous sentence was left incomplete in the final document.
Charges
[2] There are 2 charges. The first is Association with a Proscribed Organization (the "APO charge”), which is a very simple charge, where as long as the defendant is proven to have associated with the Proscribed Organization they may be convicted of the charge. It reads:
1 count of Terrorist Conspiracy Division 2 Subdivision 4: Prohibition of Association with proscribed organization Hoax Specific allegation: By using an email which was short form for TVDP Account 1, TVDP being the previous name of a proscribed organization TIDE, the defendant acted in a grossly negligent way which would make a reasonable person believe they associated with a proscribed organization.
[3] The second is Contempt of Court (the “CC” charge). The Defendant is charged under the “disruption of judicial proceedings” element of the charge. It reads:
Indirect Contempt of Court Specific Allegation: The defendant acted in a manner that disrupted judicial proceedings by taking everyone’s access away from the google drive which contained images which were admitted as evidence. The case was also referred to DoJ by the Court, fulfilling requirements laid out in Article 21 Subdivision 1 Subsection 3 §1.
Evidence and Testimony
[4] There was a very large quantity of submitted evidence and testimony. I set these out in the table below. Please note that exhibits beginning with “APO” indicate exhibits referring to the APO charge, exhibits beginning with “APOW” are summaries of witness testimony (the full testimony may be found in the trial channel) and exhibits beginning with “CC” indicate exhibits relating to the CC charge. These separations in the evidence were made by the Prosecution.
EW1 refers to testimony by the Expert Witness. I allowed an expert witness to be admitted as I found it likely that assistance would be derived from the opinion of the expert on specific points of knowledge, giving the wide array of technical terms and services such as GitHub and GHunt, which I am not very familiar with. W1 refers to testimony by the other witness who appeared at trial.
| Exhibit Title | Information |
|---|---|
| APO1 | Screenshot of Defendant’s profile on Discord, contains a button which purports to link to their github connection. |
| APO2 | A screenshot of that said github profile. |
| APO3 | A screenshot of a github project on that profile which is named “project” |
| APO4 | A commit to that project on 15 July 2025. |
| APO5 | A text file which purports to include details of that commit, and in particular the detail that the email address associated with the github is an address which begins with the letters “tvdpacc”. |
| APO6 | A screenshot purporting to be from the “GHunt” program with information about that email address’s linked google account. The account is shown to be last updated on February 20, 2025. |
| APO7 | An affidavit which states that the raw info from the commit (see APO4) contained the email address seen in exhibit APO5. |
| APOW1 | Perishable Evidence Testimony: Witness APOW1 testified that they were sent a GitHub page that showed Defendant’s email address which contained a string of letters “consistent with TIDE”, and further testified that exhibits APO1-APO5 were accurate representations of the Discord and GitHub accounts of the Defendant which they saw on GitHub on 15th of March. They further testified that TVDP was the first iteration of the proscribed organization TIDE. |
| APOW2 | Perishable Evidence Testimony: Witness APOW2 provided essentially the same testimony as witness APOW1, with further information that their experience in the OHS and SDBI had led them to know that TVDP is the old name of the proscribed organization TIDE. |
| CC1 | Screenshot of the holding cell. A person is attempting to serve a search order on the Defendant, who asks for the signature of a Judge. |
| CC2a | The Defendant sends a link to a google drive. The link has been redacted. |
| CC2b | Reproduction of the google drive by the Prosecution. |
| CC3a | Deputy Attorney-General admits the google drive link in a hearing of the case [2026] SDCR 23. |
| CC3b | A redacted version of the image which the prosecution attempted to admit. The court has approved this redaction. The image contains a chat between the Defendant and a person named guava, who sends a screenshot of an instagram account. The details on that account have been fully redacted. |
| CC4 | A Court of Review Judge stating that they could not access the google drive in the CoR hearing (see CC2a). |
| CC5a | The then-deputy attorney-general states that they also cannot access the google drive (see CC2a). |
| CC5b | A affidavit from the then-deputy attorney general stating that they were not able to access the google drive (see CC5a and CC2a). |
| CC6 | The Court of Review Judge refers the conduct of the Defendant to the Department of Justice. |
| CC7 | A screenshot of the GHunt program which shows that the google drive (see CC2a) is owned by an account that has almost the same name as the Defendant. |
| EW1 | The expert was familiar with GitHub and Git. They opined that there is a “non-negligble probability” based on the evidence that the email address of the Defendant was the one shown in APO5, and that they believed that the Defendant associated with that email address, as “the account is with their name the account was linked to their discord account there's evidence that a commit existed there's evidence that is valid on probability that shows the commit with the same hash and the email making the commit is that”. They further testified that evidence from GHunt was generally common sense. |
| W1 | This witness, who is the Elections Supervisor testified that the proscribed organization TIDE was initially founded on February 19, 2025 as “Traditionalist Values Defense Party (TVDP)”, and rebranded to “Traditionalist Insurgency for Defense and Enforcement (TIDE)” 2 days later on 21 Feburary 2025. |
| Judicially Noticed Evidence | The Court has taken judical notice that the Traditionalist Insurgency for Defense and Enforcement (TIDE) was designated as a proscribed organization on the 29th of July 2025. |
CC Charge
[5] We will now go through the relatively simple analysis to determine whether the Defendant disrupted judicial proceedings. Exhibit CC1-CC3b and CC7 establish that the Defendant owned the google drive (see CC2a). CC4-5b establishes that the Defendant then removed public access to that drive during a judicial proceeding when it was being used, hence disrupting the proceeding as the court was unable to access the drive.
[6] The Defense has entered a submission that a court order is required for a Criminal Contempt charge. This is completely wrong and I have disregarded it. The Charge entered against the Defendant is not under that section of the Criminal Code. Furthermore, I am not satisfied by the Defense’s submissions that inconvenience and delay from the removal of access does not constitute disruption. The word “disruption” means “a break or interruption in the normal course or continuation of some activity, process, etc (MW)”. Causing inconvenience and delay is definitionally disrupting a proceeding. I therefore convict the Defendant on the CC charge.
APO Charge
[7] This is the more confusing charge, due to the myriad of evidence and witness testimony proffered by the Prosecution in support of the charge.
[8] The main gist of the Prosecution’s position, however, is that the Defendant had made a commit to a github repository (editing a page on github) (APO1-4) using an email address which contained the letters TVDP (APO5), which shows that the Defendant owned that email address. TVDP is an old name of the Proscribed Organization TIDE (W1) which was renamed on February 21 2025. The linked google account of the email address was edited just a day before, on February 20, 2025 (AP06), demonstrating the continued association of the Defendant,
[9] The Defense’s position is that there is an intent element to association, that “TVDP” could stand for any number of things and not necessarily the “Traditionalist Values Defense Party”, and that the Traditionalist Values Defense Party is not actually proscribed.
[10] In my view, there is no requirement for intent when one associates with a Proscribed Organization. This is because of the simple fact that the Criminal Code does not say anything about “intentional” association, it simply says “association”. Given that TVDP was the Traditionalist Values Defense Party (see testimony of W1) under a previous name, the element of association is already satisfied.
[11] The Defense’s other point is also not credible. The Traditionalist Values Defense Party is proscribed as it is simply another iteration of the Proscribed Organization TIDE.
[12] In conclusion, given that the Prosecution has proven association through the use of the TVDP email, the Defendant is also convicted on the APO charge. I note that there is no need to evaluate whether a reasonable person would believe that the Defendant associated with a proscribed organization, as they did proscribe with such an organization and that is sufficient for a conviction under the Criminal Code hoax provisions.
Sentencing
[13] As usual nobody has considered what the appropriate sentencing purpose is. Based on the evidence, I find that rehabilitation is the main purpose of sentencing for the APO charge, and general deterrence is the main purpose for the CC charge. The conduct under the APO charge was perceived by very few people and there is no evidence that the Defendant had any actual intention to associate with TIDE apart from bare allegations of the Prosecution. Given that the minimum sentence for Association is a 2 week ban, and given that there is no evidence that the Defendant assisted in the activities of the Proscribed Organization, I shall set a baseline sentence of 2 weeks for the APO charge.
[14] The prosecution presents the aggravating factors that –
- (a) The Defendant was an infiltrator into the community because they copied their biography from someone;
- (b) They are involved with TIDE because of the email address being named “tvdp account”;
- (c) The Defendant tried to delete evidence.
To my mind the only substantiated aggravating factor is C. There is simply insufficient evidence to determine whether the Defendant is an infiltrator, or whether the words “TVDP” in the email address were actually intended to stand for “Traditionalist Values Defense Party”. The Court considers the disruption of the process of justice through the attempted deletion of evidence to be serious, and will hence elevate the sentence by a period of 2 weeks.
[15] Mitigating factors presented are that “Defendant has no prior convictions; has participated in this community for a long time without any proven history of criminal misconduct; has caused no concrete harm; and has acted without any proven malicious intent. Furthermore, the alleged conduct was not operational in nature”. I find the points relevant and will make a downward adjustment of 1 week, which will balance the mitigating factors with the aggravating weight of the Defendant’s deletion of evidence.
[16] As to the CC charge, given the main purpose of sentencing, I shall use a higher 3 week ban as an initial sentence. The Defense did not submit any new mitigating factors for the CC charge, and the Prosecution did not submit any new mitigating factors for the CC charge. Hence, the same adjustment for the lack of antecedents for the Defendant applies and the sentence is reduced by 1 week to a period of 2 weeks.
[17] Given that the offences are not related to each other, the Defendant hence receives a total sentence of a 5 week ban for both charges, as the sentences shall run consecutively.
Conclusion
[18] For the reasons stated above, I convict the Defendant of both charges and issue a sentence of a 5 week ban.
So ordered.
Judge Hmquestionable
Inferior Court