dumb laws
Neutered animals
Apr 30th
There seems to exist a rule of lawmaking that every good policy decision must not go unpunished and must be equally balanced by a completely bone-headed one. That logic and good sense must be sacrificed at the altar of fear-mongering at least once every legislative session.
Given all the good work the CT legislature has done this year, it seemed inevitable that someone would end up being spanked. Sure enough, a bill has made its way out of committee that underlines the commonly-held belief that any good work that comes out of a legislature is sheer, blind luck and most of the bills passed are ineffectual at best or mind-bogglingly stupid at worst.
This particular euphemism would not only make it a Class D felony - punishable by up to 5 years’ incarceration – but also place the offender on a public sex offender registry. The act? Committing a “lewd act” while in prison.
The bill, says the Department of Correction, is necessary because inmates often expose themselves and masturbate in front of staff members. In 2011 alone, there were 390 such incidents committed by 94 inmates.
Wait. Hang on.
94 inmates? Out of approximately 17,000 at any given time? That’s 0.55% of the inmate population. That’s barely half of one percent of the entire population in all of CT’s prisons.
And for this we need a new crime? One that would impose a mandatory consecutive sentence no less? And one that would land the offender on a sex offender registry for 10 years, presumably with the short description that “this person exposed himself in prison”.
Have we suddenly solved every other problem that plagues the State of Connecticut that this is all that remains to be whipped? Are the administrative punishments so limp that this is even viewed as a necessity? (Clearly, they are not, as evidenced by the offender rate of 0.55%. There exists a deterrent, and an effective one.)
Although the masturbation aspect of this bill will garner the most headlines, it is important to note that the bill is broader than that. It criminalizes any “lewd exposure”. What that is will be known when we see it. Presumably, any exposure than a correctional officer decides they do not like will be lewd.
The second clause of the bill, presumably inserted because even the drafters recognized the outrageous nature of it, is a red herring and a lie. It states that this lewd exposure or masturbation “may reasonably be expected to be viewed by a reasonably identifiable employee of the Department of Correction”. Umm, hello? It’s a fucking prison. Every living second “may reasonably be expected to be viewed by a reasonably identifiable employee of the Department of Correction”.
Public indecency, in the free world, is defined as:
(1) an act of sexual intercourse, (2) a lewd exposure of the body with intent to arouse or satisfy his or her sexual desire, or (3) a lewd fondling or caress of another’s body.
When not in prison, this act is designated as a Class B misdemeanor, worthy of no more than 6 months in jail. In that same jail, it is apparently 10 times more despicable.
Masturbation in prisons – or lewd exposure – is about two things: sexual release and maintain a modicum of dignity. We strip inmates of their humanity, we strip them of their privacy, we strip them of their freedom, we strip them of their clothes and perform cavity searches, we strip them of any semblance of privacy, we treat them like animals and then we act surprised – shocked, even – when they use the only thing we can’t take away from them, their bodies, to regain a sense of control over their situations.
Meanwhile, rapes in prison go unnoticed, condoms aren’t passed out, disease is rampant and staff exert immense physical and sexual control over their wards. And yet all we want to do is flog the prisoners more. Treating them like animals isn’t enough, we want to neuter them.
[Let's not forget the preposterous cost implications of this 5 year consecutive requirement: the current average cost of housing an immate is $44,000+ per year. For every inmate who is convicted of this nonsense, we're adding $220,000 to the DOC's already bloated budget.]
Norm has more.
Legally carrying a weapon is a crime
Aug 18th
wait, does that count as Arson?
Look, I dislike guns. I dislike them a lot. I don’t believe that people kill people, rather that guns – the objects from which projectiles are discharged at a high rate of velocity, thereby permitting them to enter the bodies of individuals, causing fatal damage to bodily organs – kill people. I’d rather there weren’t any, or at the very least, we had stringent gun control laws.
But do you know what I dislike more? Stupid laws and even stupider interpretation of laws that criminalize perfectly legal conduct. Somehow, despite my strict personal opposition to guns, it is still legal to carry a licensed firearm in Connecticut. In public. Openly.
Yet, for some reason, the state’s “top criminal justice official” – a made up title if I ever heard one – wouldn’t recommend it. Why, you might logically ask, is it not a good idea? For the same reason that photographers across the country are being arrested for videotaping police encounters with civilians: because no one knows the law (see also this post by Balko on an issue similar to the one in the instant post).
I’m not making this shit up.
Mike Lawlor, already featured in one post today for his sage legal prognostications, offers up another:
“In almost every situation you can imagine this happening in, it qualifies as breach of peace,” he said. “If you walk into a restaurant with a gun it’s almost by definition a breach of peace.”
That results in an arrest and sets in motion a chain of events that usually results in the revocation of an issued pistol permit, he said. And that’s the way it should be, Lawlor said. Anyone who walks into a McDonalds plainly carrying a firearm either intends to alarm people or is irresponsible, he said.
“Almost by definition”? Oh, really? Challenge Accepted! Here‘s the relevant Breach of Peace statute:
Best. Quote. Ever.
May 23rd
Look, you folks know it’s no secret that I’m disillusioned with the people that pretend to govern us, especially when it comes to their views on justice and crime. This disenchantment has been solidified in the current legislative session, starting with EdithGate and today’s news that the abominable DNA upon arrest bill staying alive. This bill, you will recall, permits the state to take DNA samples of any arrested of a crime. The DNA profile would then remain in the State’s database until you were acquitted and then you jumped through bureaucratic hoops to get it removed.
Explains State Rep Hewitt, a proponent of the bill:
“If I walked out of this door right now and I was arrested for rape with an eyewitness and there was DNA found on the scene of that rape — God help me I wish they would take my DNA.
I’d wish the same too. And you know what? They do. It’s usually titled ‘Motion for Non-Testimonial Evidence’ and is always granted, because there’s no basis to object. Then the police take a buccal swab of the defendant, do some science-y magic and decide if you’re the guy. It. Happens. All. The. Time.
Said another:
Rep. Don Clemons, D-Bridgeport, said it was the rape and murder of his son’s mother more than 30 years ago in Bridgeport that makes him inclined to support the bill. He said from 1978 to 1982 there were eight women abducted from Bridgeport and later found strangled and raped. To this day, those cases remain unsolved, he said.
“When I saw this piece of legislation Rep. Hewett produced, it brings back haunting memories,” he said, but he added that the measure could provide resolution for the families affected by those crimes.
And so you’d think there was no hope for individual freedoms and liberties in the Constitution State. But there is. And his name is Peter Tercyak, D-New Britain. Which brings us to the greatest quote ever:
Personally I’ve long argued that we won’t be robbed of our liberties at gun point. We will freely give them up one at a time to solve one problem at a time with our hearts being tugged by one truly horrible story at a time,” he said. “That’s why we’ve coded our liberties as we have.
Take a minute and read it again. Isn’t it beautiful?
Good enough for government work
Sep 2nd
The Blagojevich trial (and subsequent mistrial) has provided plenty of fodder for discussion among the press, the blogosphere and the nation in general. But it seems as though a bit of the madness that allows him to polish his hair using shoe-polish has seeped into the rest of the world as well. Take this Time article for instance, which uses the fact that the government was unable to convince 0.004% of the population of Chicago, to describe the ill that ails our criminal justice system: hung juries
After coming up with only a single conviction on 24 counts of corruption, federal prosecutors eager to send former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich to prison will in January 2011 begin his second trial with what they hope will be a more effective strategy. What won’t change is the fact that the 12 jurors who will hear the case will be bound by the same ancient — and some argue outdated — rules for criminal juries that have changed just a little since King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215.
So, just what are these “outdated” rules? Jury unanimity, juries not being allowed to take notes or ask questions and jurors not being permitted to discuss the case before all the evidence is complete.
I’ve written about the phenomenon of permitting jurors to ask questions during a trial before and I still disagree with the practice. But how bored are we with the concept of criminal trials – and how convinced are we that those who are arraigned, indicted and tried are guilty – that we are willing to forgo the simple notion that if society is going to convict, condemn and incarcerate on of its own, then it must be done only after a small representative sample of its members agree?
“Much of the elements of jury reform has reflected on the phenomenon of hung juries,” says Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard of the Indiana Supreme Court, a former trial judge in Evansville. “And what happened [in Chicago] is akin to what would have happened in most state courts 15 years ago — but wouldn’t happen in a great many places today.”
Even unanimity, the most cherished rule of all — and the one that spared Blagojevich on the charge that he tried to sell a seat in the U.S. Senate — is open for debate in the states. While the Supreme Court has insisted that federal criminal trials have a unanimous verdict, states have been permitted to experiment. Unless a defendant’s life is on the line, criminal juries in Oregon and Louisiana need only 10 votes or nine, respectively, to convict. “I describe this in general as treating jurors like adults,” says Shepard, who has helped lead major changes in Indiana but credits the states of Arizona and New York with giving momentum to jury reform. “We want to give them room to make decisions like adults typically make decisions.”
That quote made my head spin when I first read it and I’m not sure it’s stopped spinning yet. In other words, Justice Shepard, we can’t be bothered that the State’s evidence is so flimsy that it can’t convince 6 or 12 people of a man’s guilt, but heck, he’s probably guilty anyway, so we’ll take 5, because you really can’t account for that lone crazed juror.
Close enough for government work.
The underlying theme in this non-unanimity movement seems to be that mistrials are an inconvenience. An inconvenience to the court, to the prosecutors, to the staff and to everyone but the one person to whom a trial matters most: the defendant.
How are we to have faith in a system where you are tried by a large governmental entity, your guilt or innocence to be decided by a not-really representative portion of “your” community and then that very government tells the representative portion: it doesn’t matter if you all agree or not, as long as a majority does.
Most of these “reforms” seem to miss the fundamental (and cherished) aspects of our criminal justice system – save perhaps the one about note-taking, which seems like common sense. We require jurors to not deliberate until the end of evidence so they don’t make up their minds in advance, so they can be fair and balanced and consider all the evidence in its entirety. We don’t permit them to ask questions during testimony because it isn’t their burden to prove or disprove anything at all. It is the State’s burden and their burden alone. Jurors are not investigators; they’re arbiters of evidence.
And we ask for unanimity in their decision making because that unanimity reflects the soundness of the decision to prosecute an individual. A conviction and subsequent incarceration is one of the harshest actions taken by the abstract Government against its citizens. If we can’t get a miniscule portion of the citizens that it purports to represent to agree on the guilt of a man, then the government has failed.
It may be close enough for government work, but when it comes to justice, there should be no such thing.
Gun-waving cop has right to privacy
Aug 2nd
is that a gun in your hand or are you just happy to see me?
This incident occurred back in April, but is back in the news with an ACLU press release. The ACLU is representing Anthony Graber…well, you know what? Just watch:
That’s Graber, on the motorbike, and that’s Joseph David Uhler, gun-waving, taking-too-long-to-identify-himself, plain-clothed, unmarked-car-driving, off-duty, state police officer.
Graber got a ticket for speeding, which he gladly accepted, but was then subject to some Apple Gestapo tactics, with police getting a warrant to search his home and seize his computers.
He’s charged with illegally recording the conversation he had with the officer in public and thus violating the officer’s right to have a private conversation while waving a gun at a suspect and yelling at him on the offramp of an exit off the major interstate in the country, which is nonsense code for cops are above the law. Plus the fact that there’s a damn video camera stuck to the guy’s helmet.
Popehat (and the multitude of comments) covered this back in April, with an in-depth analysis. I won’t repeat it here, but I’ll give you this extract:
Allegedly, Graber is being charged with “interception of an oral communication” under Maryland’s “wiretap” law, Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. §10-402. The law makes it a felony to “intercept” with an “electronic device,” in this case the microphone attached to Graber’s prominent helmet camera, an oral communication in private conversation.
But that isn’t what Graber’s really being prosecuted for. He’s being prosecuted for contempt of cop. For embarrassing a cop. A cop, and a department, that richly deserve the embarrassment they’ve gotten, and the embarrassment they’re going to receive.
Because the charge against Graber is utterly unfounded. The definition of “oral communication” under Maryland’s wiretap law requires that the conversation be “private,” which is to say that it must be one in which the party being recorded has a reasonable expectation of privacy. Fearnow v. C & P Telephone Co., 104 Md. App. 1, 33, 655 A.2d 1 (1995), aff’d, 342 Md. 363, 676 A.2d 65 (1996). According to the Maryland Attorney General’s office, it is not a crime to record a very public conversation, such as a political party meeting, even in secret.
It seems that Graber is not alone in this. Here‘s another recent arrest for the same charge, also in Maryland. Of course, law enforcement types are always good for some lulz:
Remarkably, the state Attorney General has already opined that when police record in public, that is not a private conversation subject to the same laws. In other words, in any public interaction between a police officer and a member of the public in Maryland, it is private for one of them but not the other.
I know most law enforcement agencies are opposed to videotaping interrogations, but this is a little ridiculous.
Innocence on a clock
Jul 7th
When I first turned my eye toward law school and the criminal justice system, the echoing refrain was that we, in this country, were the best. The criminal justice system, the jury system, the resources, the level of intelligence on both sides of the aisle on the bench all combined to create the best that the world had to offer. Law school, immersing us in the vagaries and nuances of Constitutional and criminal law, making us read and learn awe-inspiring quotes from Justices past, only served to reinforce that notion.
We were fooled. Years later, with years of practice and actual experience under my belt, I’ve come to the conclusion that while the system may still be the “best” in the world, it is only so by comparison to the others that are currently in existence (and even that I doubt, but since I’m no comparative law scholar, what do I know?). That makes me sad, both for the systems of other countries and our own.
There are two indelible truths about the system here in the US: it is the criminal conviction system and finality is king (an idea that deserves a fuller post; upcoming).
And when you combine those two inescapable conclusions, you get Lee v. Lampert (pdf). Lee, you see, got stuck in that quagmire that is AEDPA. Lee, you may also see, has proven that he is actually innocent of the crimes of which he stands convicted. And yet, because he missed the statutory, non-jurisdictional, arbitrary deadline for filing a federal habeas corpus petition, he will get no justice.
Twice in jeopardy, 40 years apart
May 17th
Back in 2007, when the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania announced its intent to prosecute William Barnes for the death of officer Walter Barclay, eyebrows were raised. Barnes, you see, had already been tried for the 1966 shooting of Barclay and had been found guilty of attempted murder. Why was he not charged with murder at the first trial? Because Barclay wasn’t dead yet.
He died in 2007, more than 40 years after the shooting. The Commonwealth, already having exacted 26 years from Barnes, now 74, for the attempted murder, now seeks to exact some more for the eventual death of Ofc. Barclay.
Barnes’ second trial for the act of shooting Barclay began today in Philadelphia. The Commonwealth will attempt to prove that the gunshot wound suffered by Barclay in ’66 – which left him wheelchair bound – caused the urinary tract infection in 2006 that ultimately killed him.
The defense will seek to show the jury that the Commonwealth cannot prove the causal link, relying in part on the fact that Barclay, despite being confined to a wheelchair:
was able to drive a specialized car, walk with braces, earn a college degree, marry and divorce three times and perform sexually, had been in three car accidents and had fallen out of his motorized wheel chair twice during the 41 years that he lived after being shot
Mark Bennett, in a comment to Scott’s post above, asked in 2007:
I must be missing something, because those articles don’t even discuss this question: How does a conviction for attempted murder not jeopardy-bar a prosecution for murder when the victim dies?
Every day is Caturday
Apr 29th
Cats are popular. They’re even more popular on the internet, which was, as we all know, invented just for cats. Every day is Caturday [here's the ED version of Caturday, which means it's totally NSFW. I mean it, really. Not. Safe. For. Work].
Sometimes, though, the internet bleeds into real life (shocking, I know). And such has been the case the past week, with three stories – two local – involving cats and crime.
First, this tragi-comic tale of Gregory Lesco, who killed the family cat after it ate his pet bird (no, I”m not making that up):
Police say Lesco told them he was doing dishes when the bird flew from his cage to join him and the cat, named Pepper, jumped up and grabbed it. He said he hit the cat in the head with a baseball bat and then suffocated it with a rug.
He says he struck the cat to try to get it to drop the bird, and then suffocated it because he couldn’t afford to take it to a vet to treat its injuries.
Mr. Lesco, not to be confused with the equally bizarre Matthew Lesko, is charged with one count of Animal Cruelty, which happens to be a class D felony, punishable by 5 years in jail.
Then yesterday, I saw this post by Rick Horowitz about a Michigan law that makes it a crime for cats to fight. Since there’s no room in cat jails, they stick the owners in human jails instead:
The City of Kalamazoo, Michigan, apparently has some fairly weird laws on the books regarding animals. For example, it is apparently a misdemeanor — not an infraction, but a misdemeanor with a real criminal record and a real jail sentence as a potential punishment — not that a simple thing like a criminal record could ever impact anyone’s ability to get a job or a professional license — a misdemeanor to own a cat that fights with other cats. In addition to making it apparently illegal to have a cat that fights with other cats, Kalamazoo also charges owning a dog that barks as a misdemeanor.
I don’t know if that last bit is true, but the charges will be dropped if the cat behaves herself. The cat’s plan is working. Next step: world domination.
And finally, this morning, we get news of a honest-to-goodness cat burglar. No, I mean that literally. A woman who burgles cats (and there’s another awesome cat picture after the jump so don’t you dare not click through):
Vengeance at its most shameful
Mar 29th
Jordan Brown, a resident of western Pennsylvania, is charged with shooting Kenzie Marie Houk and her unborn child. Police say that Brown shot her once at point blank range. Today, a judge ruled [thanks to Doc Berman via Gamso] that the prosecution against Brown can remain in his court and denied the defense’s motion for transfer of venue.
Jordan Brown is 12. At the time of the death of Houk, he was 11.
I repeat. Jordan Brown is 12. And a judge ruled that he can be tried as an adult. A state in these United States is about to prosecute an eleven year old as an adult murderer.
Here is a file picture of him, taken from CNN. Look at it. This cherubic 12 year old now faces life in prison. The rest of the post after the photo and the jump.
A few stray thoughts
Mar 23rd
the metaphor, stupid
Monday was a marathon day at the state legislature, with several criminal justice bills being considered. Two of the most important, in my view, were the bills to eviscerate The Great Writ (see prior post here) and Connecticut’s first attempt at residency restrictions (see previous post here). For those who want to brave through the public hearing, the entire video is here and written testimony submitted can be read here.
[A warning: this post is long, repeats some arguments I've already made and is extremely rude and vitriolic. But if you don't read it, you support terrorists.]
The habeas corpus effective suspension and evisceration bill
Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane testified at length (almost an hour, I think) on the habeas corpus “reform” bill. There were many, many problems with his testimony, but a few things really stuck in my craw. The entire basis for the State’s “suggestions” in the habeas reform bill seemed to be premised on two things: 1) that there is a glut of “frivolous” petitions and courts are overburdened; and 2) by moving the restrictions on the filing of habeas corpus petitions to the “front end”, rather than during the process itself, there will be a lot of weeding out and the load will be lightened.
Both are unfounded. CSA Kane went on for the better part of an hour, trumpeting the vast number of “successive petitions”, before someone on the committee had the good sense to ask him for some numbers. Just what constitutes a successive petition and what does he consider frivolous? Certainly not all petitions that are denied are not frivolous and eventually he had to admit that. Later on, during the testimony of the Deputy Chief Public Defender, we heard that a meager 4 1/2 % of all petitions were “successive”, in that petitioners had filed a prior habeas corpus petition.
But the State’s argument was premised on this straw man (if not outright lie) that the courts were dealing with a deluge of repetitive, frivolous and time consuming merit-less habeas petitions where petitioners were on their 9th or 10th bite at the apple. From what I’ve been told, there is maybe one inmate who is on his 7th or 8th petition, but that’s about it.
The second premise of the state’s position is all the more confusing and confounding.
Come with me…to jail for 20 years: an alien abduction
Feb 10th
It seems that the Supreme Court of the good state of Connecticut (SCOC, which you may pronounce S-Coc if you so please) is having fits. Specifically fits with our kidnapping statutes. Almost from the day they, in a moment of rare weakness, decided to bring some sanity back to the overbroad application of the statute, they’ve been backpedaling furiously, as if to atone for their one sin.
In that original decision, they decided – rightly in my opinion – that kidnapping is more than just mere restraint required for the commission of another felony. So if I held you down and forced you to read this post, I’d be guilty of torture, but not kidnapping.
Then they tinkered with the remedy, because how could one justify letting defendants go? Of course you can’t.
And now, this past week, comes the granddaddy of them all: State v. Winot (leave the why not? jokes for later, please).
This is a case that has been two years in the making. It was argued in January of 2008. Yes, that’s TWO-THOUSAND-EIGHT. And what perplexed them so? Judging by the decision, the vexing question was how to uphold this conviction with a straight face. 730 days later, I don’t think they’ve managed it.
The facts
She began to walk faster, but the defendant forcibly took her right arm. When she asked him to let go, he refused, yelling, ‘[n]o, it’s too wet out here; you’re getting in my car today.’ He tried to pull her toward his car, but she resisted, pulling back in the opposite direction. To get him to release her, the victim then leaned over to bite the defendant, at which point he quickly let go and rushed back to his car. In doing so, the defendant was almost hit by a maroon car. Upon being released, the victim ran home and told her mother what had transpired. The entire incident lasted only a few seconds.
That’s less time than it took you to read that first sentence. He took her right arm, she pretended to bite him, he let go. A matter of seconds. Got that?
The challenge
The Constitution is a wet blanket
Jan 31st
The Constitution was intended to be many things: a guide, a charter, founding principles and at the very least a set of instructions for those that sought to build a just and fair country from the ashes of rebellion.
What it was never intended to be was a blanket, and a wet one at that. Unfortunately, state Sen. Tim Burchett, R-Knoxville, TN (hey! stop rolling your eyes) didn’t get that particular memo.
So, in his Tennesseean way, he has introduced a bill making it a felony for criminal defense lawyers to make “unproven insinuations” about crime victims during the course of a trial.
Lawmakers said it isn’t fair for attorneys to try to make criminals out of victims during a trial. However, some attorneys believe this notion is unconstitutional.
The discussion for the new law came about after a couple in Knoxville was tortured and killed in 2007. The parents of Channon Christian listened to the graphic details in court last year and said defense attorneys insinuated their daughter used drugs.
“They criminalize the victims. They are in the grave. They have no defense,” said state Sen. Tim Burchett, a Republican from Knoxville.
If you’re black and you smoke pot, get arrested
Dec 29th
I'm not as think as you stoned I am
(Title sung to the tune of “If you’re happy and you know it…” What? It’s 11:00pm. Buzz off.)
While much of the news media and indeed the blawgosphere has been preoccupied with the news that NYC isn’t really a big, bad and dangerous place, curious little attention has been paid to another story out of New York: that under Mayor Bloomberg, drugs arrests have spiked and that blacks are 7 times more likely to be arrested for drug offenses than whites.
Thanks to Matt at Change.org (a blog you should be following if you aren’t already), we learn that a new study (and a related NYT article) has been published analyzing the incidence of drug related arrests in the Big Joint:
Is a battle on sex offender registration brewing?
Dec 29th
Silly sex offender registration laws have long been a bone that I’ve been itching to pick. If you asked me to list the ten worst decisions by SCOTUS in the last decade, Smith v. Doe and Dept’ of Public Safety v. Doe would make the top 5 of that list.
But I’ve always had the nagging feeling that both those decisions didn’t preclude future challenges to sex offender registration laws and their retroactive applications as violations of the Ex Post Facto clause. Now, we may just find out, because Maine’s Supreme Court has held that its sex offender registration law (SORNA) does violate the EPF.
The Maine decision is State v. Letalien, in which the defendant challenged the change in registration requirements from 15 years to lifetime and from change in address notifications to proactive 90 day reporting requirements. Interestingly, the ME court finds that the Federal and Maine Constitutions provide the same EPF protections and so the EPF violation is of the Federal Constitution.
Just like SCOTUS in Smith, the Letalien court concludes that SORNA is civil in nature and then engages in a discussion of the seven Mendoza-Martinez factors to determine if a statute that is intended to be civil will be found to be an ex post facto law. It will be so only if the “party challenging the statute provides ‘the clearest proof’ that ‘the statutory scheme [is] so punitive either in purpose or effect as to negate [the State’s] intention’ to deem it ‘civil.’” Kansas v. Hendricks. The factors are:
Between a void and a hard place
Dec 20th
You are Paul Clarke. You live in a small town in England. You’ve had a run-in or two with the law, but nothing serious. One day, you find a black bag a the end of the garden. You think it’s a bag of rubbish (garbage, for you non-Brits). You open it and inside find a shotgun. Being civic minded (plus a little lazy), you take the gun to the police a few days later and turn it in.
Fast forward a number of months. Where do you think you are now, Paul?
Awaiting sentencing for possession of a shotgun Sentenced to 12 months suspended, that’s where. An offence which carries a mandatory-minimum penalty of 5 years. Jack of Kent, a British blougger, has written extensively on this case and it’s well worth the read (via the deadly Charon). As with all strict liability crimes and crimes that involve mandatory-minimum sentences, the befuddling question here is the exercise of discretion to prosecute Mr. Clarke. While the police were unwilling to comment on the case, Jack of Kent was able to enter into a lengthy e-mail exchange with the Crown Prosecution Service, who explained their decision to prosecute thusly:
Paul Clarke claimed that he found the shot gun in his garden and decided to bring it to the police station. Evidence showed that he was in possession of the gun and the cartridges for some days earlier and that at that time he did not try to contact the police, for them to collect the weapon. He could not explain why he waited some days before bringing the gun to the police station and why he did not contacted the police for them to come and collect the gun.
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