Posted on 04/09/2015 7:52:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
What began as a trickle has become a stream that could become a cleansing torrent. Criticisms of the overcriminalization of American life might catalyze an appreciation of the toll the administrative state is taking on the criminal-justice system, and liberty generally.
In 2007, professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School recounted a game played by some prosecutors. One would name a famous person — “say, Mother Teresa or John Lennon” — and other prosecutors would try to imagine “a plausible crime for which to indict him or her,” usually a felony plucked from “the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield.” Did the person make “false pretenses on the high seas”? Is he guilty of “injuring a mailbag”?
In 2009, Harvey Silverglate’s book Three Felonies a Day demonstrated how almost any American could be unwittingly guilty of various crimes between breakfast and bedtime. Silverglate, a defense lawyer and civil libertarian, demonstrated the dangers posed by the intersection of prosecutorial ingenuity with the expansion of the regulatory state.
In 2013, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, University of Tennessee law professor and creator of Instapundit, published in The Columbia Law Review “Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime.” Given the axiom that a competent prosecutor can persuade a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and given the proliferation of criminal statutes and regulations backed by criminal penalties, what becomes of the mens rea principle that people deserve criminal punishment only if they engage in conduct that is inherently wrong or that they know to be illegal?
Now comes “Rethinking Presumed Knowledge of the Law in the Regulatory Age” (Tennessee Law Review) by Michael Cottone, a federal judicial clerk.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
They are working on it.
Soon only white males will be guilty of crimes.
Illegals already get a pass with driving unlicensed, and looting is a civil right now.
Get Fathers back into the house! Otherwise, SHUT IT!
Undoubtedly a crime to publish this article.
Illegals get to kill as many Americans as possible with DUI’s, they’ll be booked and released to kill again and again.
Whites just looking at a minority with a questionable expression automatically equals the death penalty. No questions asked!
Empty all our prisons. That’s the ticket....like they did in Connecticut.
Yeah, equal protection under the law is dead, and the meaning of “illegal” is dead.
When you have full-time legislatures that are essentially “law factories,” what else should we expect?
OVERCRIMINALIZATION HEH?
What about a 70 year old Christian Businesswoman who owns a Flower business fined and threatened with business closure for refusing to decorate a gay wedding?
What about a Christian baker threatened with business closure for refusing to bake a cake with a same-sex theme for a gay wedding?
What about a photographer whose business is threatened for refusing to photograph a gay wedding?
If they continue to get softer and softer on crime, then vigilantism will be our only option.
There’s an interesting dynamic apparent that I call “crime compression.” Regulation and law is increasingly oppressive, causing overcharging for things that are either minor or shouldn’t even be the business of the law. At the same time, there’s a liberal sentiment to be soft on traditional criminality.
So, minor offenses (if indeed they should be offenses at all) are overcharged, and major crimes are undercharged.
Yeah.
Expect THAT kind of thing to increase.
The problem lies in homes - home life, discipline, learning responsibility, etc. - best results found in two parent families.
The black community with over 70% births to single women guarantees problems. How does government fix that? It doesn’t. Only the black community can - if they would.
the .gov can encourage them by not subsidizing poor choices like they currently do.
When you woke up this morning and before you got out of bed you more than likely broke a state or federal law. By the time you got to work or the welfare office it is a certainty. It is the ultimate way for dictators to control their subjects. Make no mistake about this.
When I think back to my teen and early adult years and then compare them to now it seems like almost everything is now agains’t the law.
Answer: don’t commit crimes. Problem solved.
See, because there aren't a thousand laws you don't even know about that you, yourself, break regularly.
Y'see.
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