This may be a topic for another thread, but it brings me right into the thing that bothers me most about our system of law.
Resisting Arrest.
IMHO there should be no such thing. If you are found guilty of a crime than you are found guilty. If you are found innocent that you should be considered immune to such charges on grounds of self-defense.
The simple issue is that making it a crime to defend yourself against any perticular segment of society(in this case LEO) is in itself an offens to liberty.
To me it seems real simple. If a man is restraining another man than it should not matter what the occupation of either is in relation to the legality of the struggle. It is because of things like Resisting Arrest that create an enviroment where things like the abduction of the jews in WW2 can happen.
That pic is not of an execution. Camp guards were rounded up. Some made a break for it. Shots were fired by GI’s. The guards on the ground feigned death. In a nutshell. Wikipedia is wrong.
So when a moron fights w/ me when I arrest him for whipping his wife’s ass, what should I charge him with? Nothing? Resisting a LEO who is making a lawful arrest should never be acceptable. Being found innocent of a crime does not necessariyl negate the lawfulness of an arrest.
This jumped out at me at the end of this link. Shows what is acceptable unless I am somehow taking it out of context.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Rapanos attempted to level three different parcels of land by uprooting vegetation and filling low spots with sand and dirt. He also dug an extensive network of ditches to dry out the sites, which resulted in excavated dirt being sidecast into wetlands. The parcels of land were intended to be developed for a shopping mall and residential homes.
The problem being is that in many cases of “resisting arrest” the person’s actions wouldn’t qualify as assault. Resisting and assaulting an officer are both catch all charges and if you throw enough shit at the wall something’s gonna stick. There are also times where resisting a lawful arrest or assault are valid charges but I’ve seen quite a few cases where it’s simply used to arrest someone. Why was the person arrested? He was resisting arrest!
The one I hate is “conspiracy”. If said perp gets raided and arrested then potentially anyone he came in contact with could be charged with conspiracy. The prosecutors also use “conspiracy” as a generic charge when they can’t get you for anything else. That way even if you get off for more serious charges, the fact that they arrested a bunch of other people with you pretty much ensures a conspiracy charge will stick. On top of that, they seem to be coming up with more and more crimes like “lying to the FBI” is a crime. That way even if they can’t convict you for something more serious, the fact that you may not have fessed up at the time of your arrest means an almost automatic conviction for “lying.”:suicide:
I’m not up on federal statutes as much as I am on OH’s but I know what you mean; you see it in tv shows a lot. Lying to a federal agent, obstructing justice blah blah. I would just keep my mouth shut, invoke my miranda and 5th Amendment rights. “Lawyer, Now.” would be the only words out of my mouth.
As Irish said the shootem up wild west never really happened like it has to be thought of due to Hollywood. Criminals were actually treated a lot more harshly, and most people were good law abiding types. IE didn’t steal because depending on the item it meant a rope. Even our CURRENT Texas self defense laws, at least in part, date back to the ‘wild west days’ which allows us to shoot thieves at night.
Now, because we have so many more laws on the books we can’t lock up the real criminal element in society because the jails are full of people who never did anything to anyone else but just broke a law wherein the gov had told them they can’t do XYZ just because we say you can’t type deal. Basically we have much more people in jail yet the punishments are much lighter. I believe it was a few years ago SCOTUS ruled we cannot hang rapists. So you can rape and beat the shit out of a woman leaving her for dead but you’ll probably be out in 10 years. We had a kiddie rapist about 2 miles away who had 15 counts for lewd acts with a child, and he was in jail for 15 years. So each count was 1 year of jail time.
There are so many laws we have created so many criminals and we have weakened our punishments so much that our justice system is broke. But we add more and more laws every year making it harder to keep real criminals locked up.
“Never speak to a Federal LE without a paper trail to back up your words and a lawyer”. Ask if you are under arrest. If you are, demand to call your lawyer then, not later. If you are not, ask to be released, if they do not release you, ask to call your lawyer right then. Pretty much bad WWII movie reaction, Name, address, DOB, etc only give data that you can show as being absolutely true.
I was told that by an FBI agent who had gotten disgusted at the bureau becoming the “F*****g Bureau of Intelligence” post 9/11 and wasn’t afraid to bitch as he was 2 years from mandatory.
Sad that it has come to be that such behavior is your best defense.
Kinda hard to get stuck with a 1001g indictment if you never say a word to them. I always wondered who came up with the idea that it was ok for your government to lie to you, but it’s not ok for you to lie to your government?
Beats me. All they did is ensure that anyone with any brains wouldn’t even give the time of day to a Fed for fear of being charged with lying to a Fed.
The same way any transportation besides your own two feet is subject to checkpoints and sexual molestation, owning military grade weapons is subject to 10 years in jail for each offense, and basically everything else that has been invented since the late 1700’s is a privilege because it doesn’t explicitly say in the bill of rights driving down the road is a right.
The gov has continuously looked to expand its power while simultaneously viewing everything a human can do “post 1787” as a privilege, even taking things “pre 1787” with a grain of salt (IE permits to lawfully assemble in a public place). Thats the nature of any government, and why we started out with as little as possible.
