Posted on 11/24/2005 11:00:30 AM PST by nickcarraway
ALBANY, Nov. 22 - Pythagoras won his day in court on Tuesday.
The question before the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, was whether a man named James Robbins was guilty of selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school - which carries a longer sentence - when he was arrested in March 2002 on the corner of Eighth Avenue and 40th Street in Manhattan and charged with selling drugs to an undercover police officer.
The nearest school, Holy Cross, is on 43rd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. How to measure? On foot, Mr. Robbins's lawyers argued, the school is more than 1,000 feet away from the site of the arrest, because the shortest route is blocked by buildings. But as the crow flies, the authorities said, it is less than 1,000 feet away.
Law enforcement officials calculated the straight-line distance using the Pythagorean theorem (a2 + b2 = c2) measuring the distance up Eighth Avenue (764 feet) as one side of a right triangle, and the distance to the church along 43rd Street (490 feet) as another, to find that the length of the hypotenuse was - 907.63 feet.
Lawyers for Mr. Robbins argued that the distance should be measured as a person would walk it because "crows do not sell drugs." But in a unanimous ruling, the seven-member Court of Appeals upheld his conviction and held that the distance in such cases should be measured as the crow flies.
"Plainly, guilt under the statute cannot depend on whether a particular building in a person's path to a school happens to be open to the public or locked at the time of a drug sale," Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye wrote in the opinion.
Mr. Robbins is currently serving a 6-to-12-year sentence.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Pythagorous done stole he theorem from de black Africans!
These "circumfrence" laws are bull hockey.
Proximity !!!
LOL
Is the distance measured to the edge of the school parcel or to the actual nearest corner of the building?
Uh, yeah, was there a need for that post on this thread?
Anyways, I'm glad to see a guy is going up the river for 6-12 when a child molester can get out in less time.
He is committing a crime in an area with an above average concentration of children.
Dump him in a DEEP hole and forget to pull him out.
Another analyst!
Oh, no, I'm a combinatorialist.
abs(a)+abs(b) is the Manhattan distance
(used not just by taxicabs but in clustering algorithms as well).
sqrt(a^2 + b^2) is the Euclidean distance -- but yes, a trivial consequence of the Pythagorean theorem.
Good thing you are not a topologist. They are all warped. And holier than thou.
If there are any birds in the animal kingdom that would sell drugs, you can bet your ass they'd be crows.
And before some troll thinks I'm saying that because they're black: no. And grow up.
It's because they're crows. Anyone who's spent any length of time around crows knows what I'm saying.
IIRC, taxis charge by distance travelled; this new legal definition of 'distance' appears to mean that they can only charge for the straight-line distance.
Be interesting to see somebody argue that before the same court.
I don't know why. I didn't even think there were any algebraic topologists anymore. It was hot for a while and then some places (Kansas U.) got stuck with a bunch of 'em. Pity the department with too many mathematical biologists now.
Won't work. Taxis measure by distance travelled (think arc length) but this law defines distance as distance from a point. This needs to be invariant with respect to the street grid. I suppose you could compute the great circle route, but the scumbag would still be too close to a school that way.
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