If the Law Is This Complicated, Why Shouldn’t Ignorance Be an Excuse? - Clark Neily & Jack Brown - Townhall:
October 30, 2017 - "When was the last time you sat down with a complete set of the federal, state, and local codes setting forth the tens of thousands of criminal violations for which you could be sent to jail? If you answered 'never,' you’re in good company. Nevertheless, America’s judges still cling to the proposition that it’s perfectly fine to lock people up for doing something they had no idea was illegal. But it’s not fine, and the justifications for that palpably unfair rule have only grown more threadbare with time....
"One rationale for the maxim that ignorance of the law is no excuse was to give people an incentive to educate themselves about legal requirements. But as any law student will attest, one can study those requirements for years and barely scratch the surface. Another rationale was to prevent people from escaping criminal penalties by claiming ignorance, even when they actually knew they were breaking the law. That might have made sense in ancient times when there were only a few dozen crimes on the books and all of them involved morally blameworthy conduct like murder, arson, or rape.
"But today the law has grown so complicated, and the relationship between law and morality so attenuated, that these supporting rationales no longer make sense. There have been multiple attempts to count the number of federal crimes, including by the Department of Justice, and no one has yet succeeded. Title 18 of the United States Code, which governs crimes and criminal procedure, has over 6,000 sections, and it is estimated that there are more than 4,500 federal crimes and over 300,000 agency regulations containing criminal penalties. And of course this does not include the dizzying array of state and local criminal codes, ignorance of which is practically assured but still not excused....
"Moreover, ... the increasing criminalization of morally blameless conduct makes the punishment of innocent mistakes even more likely. For example, federal law makes it illegalto possess the feather of any native migratory bird even if one just picks it up off the ground, and the potential penalties for doing so include fines and even time in prison....
"A trio of seafood importers were sentenced to eight years in federal prison because some of the lobsters they imported from Honduras were alleged to be undersized or egg-bearing females that were unlawfully shipped in plastic bags instead of the cardboard boxes mandated by federal law.....
"Indianapolis 500 champion Bobby Unser ... was convicted of illegally driving his snowmobile in a National Forest Wilderness Area in 1996 after he and a friend were stranded in the mountains during a blizzard, and forced to take shelter in a barn while suffering from hypothermia....
"In 2009, Robert Eldridge, a fisherman from West Chatham, Massachusetts, faced up to a $100,000 fine and a year in prison after he freed a humpback whale that had been caught in his fishing gear, and only escaped with a comparatively small $500 fine after pleading guilty. More recently, Alison Capo also faced a year in prison after her daughter rescued a federally protected woodpecker from the family cat.... (Her initial fine of $535 was ltimately rescinded by the agency, claiming it was a “clerical error.')....
"Subjecting well-meaning homeowners, desperate snowmobilers, innocent password sharers, and countless other blameless Americans to prosecution for conduct that no reasonable person would know was illegal does nothing to advance the cause of justice and much to undermine it."
Read more: https://townhall.com/columnists/clarkneily/2017/10/30/if-the-law-is-this-complicated-why-shouldnt-ignorance-be-an-excuse-n2401290
'via Blog this'
October 30, 2017 - "When was the last time you sat down with a complete set of the federal, state, and local codes setting forth the tens of thousands of criminal violations for which you could be sent to jail? If you answered 'never,' you’re in good company. Nevertheless, America’s judges still cling to the proposition that it’s perfectly fine to lock people up for doing something they had no idea was illegal. But it’s not fine, and the justifications for that palpably unfair rule have only grown more threadbare with time....
"One rationale for the maxim that ignorance of the law is no excuse was to give people an incentive to educate themselves about legal requirements. But as any law student will attest, one can study those requirements for years and barely scratch the surface. Another rationale was to prevent people from escaping criminal penalties by claiming ignorance, even when they actually knew they were breaking the law. That might have made sense in ancient times when there were only a few dozen crimes on the books and all of them involved morally blameworthy conduct like murder, arson, or rape.
"But today the law has grown so complicated, and the relationship between law and morality so attenuated, that these supporting rationales no longer make sense. There have been multiple attempts to count the number of federal crimes, including by the Department of Justice, and no one has yet succeeded. Title 18 of the United States Code, which governs crimes and criminal procedure, has over 6,000 sections, and it is estimated that there are more than 4,500 federal crimes and over 300,000 agency regulations containing criminal penalties. And of course this does not include the dizzying array of state and local criminal codes, ignorance of which is practically assured but still not excused....
"Moreover, ... the increasing criminalization of morally blameless conduct makes the punishment of innocent mistakes even more likely. For example, federal law makes it illegalto possess the feather of any native migratory bird even if one just picks it up off the ground, and the potential penalties for doing so include fines and even time in prison....
"A trio of seafood importers were sentenced to eight years in federal prison because some of the lobsters they imported from Honduras were alleged to be undersized or egg-bearing females that were unlawfully shipped in plastic bags instead of the cardboard boxes mandated by federal law.....
"Indianapolis 500 champion Bobby Unser ... was convicted of illegally driving his snowmobile in a National Forest Wilderness Area in 1996 after he and a friend were stranded in the mountains during a blizzard, and forced to take shelter in a barn while suffering from hypothermia....
"In 2009, Robert Eldridge, a fisherman from West Chatham, Massachusetts, faced up to a $100,000 fine and a year in prison after he freed a humpback whale that had been caught in his fishing gear, and only escaped with a comparatively small $500 fine after pleading guilty. More recently, Alison Capo also faced a year in prison after her daughter rescued a federally protected woodpecker from the family cat.... (Her initial fine of $535 was ltimately rescinded by the agency, claiming it was a “clerical error.')....
"Subjecting well-meaning homeowners, desperate snowmobilers, innocent password sharers, and countless other blameless Americans to prosecution for conduct that no reasonable person would know was illegal does nothing to advance the cause of justice and much to undermine it."
Read more: https://townhall.com/columnists/clarkneily/2017/10/30/if-the-law-is-this-complicated-why-shouldnt-ignorance-be-an-excuse-n2401290
'via Blog this'
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