Mere days after the Changeling attack on Canterlot, along with the new public knowledge that Changelings even exist, Ponyville police make their first arrest on the basis of suspected changeling status. While Shining Armor and Princess Cadance's burst of magic at their wedding may have briefly exposed many changelings, this has proven to be a magical feat not easily repeated. It quickly becomes apparent that nopony is aware of any easily replicable method of forcibly reverting a Changeling's shapeshifting.
There is thus no way to easily prove Changeling status- or lack thereof. This comes with a few major problems, the most significant of which is difficult to answer. How is it possible to balance the Equestrian court system's legal presumption of innocence with public safety?
Rating information: While there will be no explicit sex scenes, there are going to be some plot points which will mention sex as a topic, which is the reason I'm rating the story as teen. It will be done in a way that relates to the main theme of the story, so it hopefully won't be too prurient. If somebody paused before clicking the story due to the 'sex' tag, it thus shouldn't dissuade them. Similarly, if somebody found the story while searching based on that tag, it's probably not what they were looking for. (Although I would still appreciate their readership if somebody in the second category decided to check it out anyways).
Cut the pony off from love but make sure he or she is fed and watered well-if the pony starves it's a changeling.
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Then we can bind her hooves and toss her in a river
Ooh! An opening to what is potentially a thrilling legal drama, maybe? I see a lot of potential with this: the struggle to, essentially, "prove a negative". Maybe even some McCarthism undertones about how anypony can act "sufficiently pony" to avoid accusations of being a changling?
And what if they ARE a changeling? The recent attack aside, is "not being a pony" really a criminal offense in Ponyville? Should it be?
I'm going to be tracking this to see where it goes...
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Given that this is only a few days after the whole wedding attack on Canterlot, it’s not hard to argue that ponies and changelings are technically at war at this point -- and even if there are changeling noncombatants, thanks to the whole shapeshifting business it’ll be hard to tell them apart from the actual enemy agents and proper troops. So while I’d say that normally a changeling who just minded their own business in pony form and got discovered wouldn’t be in any major trouble as long as they hadn’t committed any actual crimes (that anyone else present knew about, anyway), thanks to Chrysalis’s whole scheme the situation is unfortunately not currently “normal”.
I would say you did!
Does the Changeling Trial apply to ponies? Or do bugs have no rights in Equestria? Like prisoners of war.
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'Changeling Trial'? So far we've only been dealing with very early pre-trial stuff, with the confusion surrounding that suggesting that not even that has been fully thought through, so I'm having a bit of trouble understanding what your question refers to.
Beyond that, prisoners of war are granted nominal rights (although admittedly often not followed in practice) by most real-world countries as per the Geneva Convention, so I find it somewhat alarming that you take the opposite situation as a given for Equestria. I had thought that I was portraying a country which overall has a legal system comparable to modern-day civilized countries, rather than archaic states pre-dating the concept of 'rules of war'.