How to contact a government prosecutor? Do public prosecutors work for a city, county, or state, or does it vary by location? Are they called district attorneys, attorneys general, prosecutors, or something else. Specifically, if I have been a victim of monetary criminal matter, how do I find the prosecutor that has jurisdiction and how can I contact that person? Is there only one prosecutor that has jurisdiction or do I have a choice among several, such as depending on where I live, where the criminal lives, or where the crime took place? (I am asking specifically about a matter that involves a wrong-doer in Atlanta and a victim in New York.) To make initial contact, do I send an email, do I make an appointment, do I just show up at the prosecutor's office? On reflection, perhaps the crime took place over the internet. I paid by paypal and the other party did not use the money as agreed upon, pocketing it instead. So, where did the crime take place?
You do not contact the District Attorney's Office, the Police do that. You call your police department and they will dispatch a car to you. Meet with them and tell them the case. They will take the report back and get it to the D.A.'s office. The D.A.'s office will decide if there is a case or not. If they find there is a case, they will contact you for the next steps. It starts with a phone call to the police.
Law enforcement officers have a wide latitude when dealing with someone who is not following the law; in general they cannot issue you a fine if you are not speeding but they are not required to issue a fine if you are speeding. So if the LEO decides for whatever the reason that you do not deserve a ticket even if you were driving sobre the speed limit, he ello not issue it and that would be the end of it. Now if the officer issues the ticket, there is recourse. The most simple would be simply to forward additional evidence to the police department, even informally, to see if they rethink about it and void the ticket on their own. If they still refuse, there are always procedures to legally challenge a ticket, which may depend based on the jurisdiction and even the kind or amount of sanction. In general I would expect that it goes that far and you can show that it was indeed an emergency, even in the absence of a specific law a judge would invalidate the fine because it would go against the public interest. And if even that does not work, you may probably ask for a pardon.
This is a rather elaborate version of receiving stolen property. It is a crime because you know that the property is not yours and you know who it belongs to. The fact that funds were returned mitigates the punishment that might be imposed, but disgorgement of profits as well as principal would be a typical criminal restitution in such a case. A prosecutor could decline to press charges (and often would decline to do so), but would have the authority to do so. An analogous case that comes up more frequently is when an attorney takes client funds out of his trust account (either accidentally or intentionally) and then uses the funds in a way that produces a profit or avoids, for example, a late payment penalty, and then returns the funds improperly withdrawn from the trust account. This is still conduct for which attorneys are routinely disbarred and prosecuted criminally. Even if the person didn't know that the money belonged to someone else when it was used, the true owner of the money could sue for unjust enrichment for both the funds and the proceeds from the funds. For example, if funds were accidentally deposited in your bank account rather than the correct one due to a transposition of numbers in the account number, and you didn't notice this error, you would have liability to return not just the accidentally deposited funds, but also the profits from those funds, because both would be unjust enrichment. But, in an accidental case where there was no knowledge that the funds were wrongfully placed in your account, you could deduct from the amount to be returned any banking charges you incurred with respect to the transactions and it would not be a crime.
The best course would be to contact the public defenders office and explain the situation to their intake or consultation services. Remember, you don't have to be going to trial to avail yourself of their services and sometimes, helping cops makes the cops suspicious about you (it would not be the first killer who cozies up to the police to learn what they know about his crime). If the Public Defender thinks you're rich enough not to need their services, you should call criminal defense attorney practices. Most law offices will offer consultation free of charge as part of client intake, so they will be willing to hear your case and offer advice. In either case, check with the lawyer that attorney client privilege is in effect. If they say yes, explain in detail to them, everything you know and want to discuss, even if some of it could criminally implicate you in this or another crime. Treat it as your deathbed confession and you know full well which circle of hell you're going to if the priest doesn't absolve you of sins (okay, too Catholic... but the Lawyer is not going to turn you in if the privilege is in effect... he could lose his license to practice law over it... we can make all the evil lawyer jokes we want, but this is one of the few sacred tenants of their profession.). Listen to his advise. Also see if you can find a second opinion. It's not that the first guy gave bad advice, but the next guy might give you something different. If you still do not feel comfortable, then keep your mouth shut. If they arrest you for the murder, do not talk until you have an attorney present and prepare to tell him exactly what you did. Especially if you did do it. Always answer your attorney truthfully.
Not all illegal things are crimes. Lack of evidence. They are asked to testify, and they say "what I said in my book was a lie". There is no general law against lying, except when under oath. Statute of limitations. Saying "10 years ago I did smoke drugs" means that any offence is no longer prosecutable. Lack of details. Which jurisdiction were they in? When did they commit the act, how many acts? You cannot be arrested for being a "bank robber" or a "murderer". You are charged with "robbing Bank X on 123 Fake Street the Thursday 25 April 2018" or "murdering Jim Thio in January 2017". Otherwise the defendant would have a hard time defending himself (how to prove that you have not killed anyone at any time?) All of the above combined with prosecutorial discretion in the form that any possible prosecutor will most likely determine that bringing charges would be just a waste of time and resources. UPDATE February 2018: Just for the sake of completeness, a reference to the situation of Jacques Cassandri, who did boast about a serious crime(a robbery in a Societe Generale vault in 1976) in a book. Unfortunately for him, he made some kind of mistake/miscalculation and the crime had not yet expired, so he has become an example of someone being prosecuted by confessing a crime in a book.
I'd imagine that testimony from the defendant is rare enough that in the majority of cases, prosecutors do not meaningfully prepare for a cross examination. To the extent they do, I'd expect the preparation is similar to that for basically any other witness. So I wouldn't expect complicated flowcharts, because the general rule at trial is that you only ask questions whose answers are both known and helpful. So if I need to place the defendant at the OK Corral at 3 p.m., I'm only going to ask him where he was at 3 p.m. if I have evidence showing that fact is true -- maybe he gave a written statement to the sheriff, maybe he posed for a daguerrotype, whatever. I expect him to deny it, so I don't ask the question unless I have evidence more convincing than his denial. In this way, a defendant -- like any hostile witness -- is used less to provide any facts of their own, but rather as an involuntary narrator of my own story, authenticating evidence and validating the facts consistent with my theory of the case.
Absolutely not. Lack of authority Law enforcement officers do not have the authority to grant immunity from prosecution. The decision to prosecute lies with the district attorney's office. Courts have sometimes held that a promise of immunity by a police officer can make resulting statements inadmissible, but that's it -- the state is not bound by the police officer's promise to not prosecute, except in exceptional cases. They can gather other evidence and prosecute anyway. Prospective immunity The contract claims to provide immunity against prosecution for future crimes. Contracts against public policy are void, and I'm having trouble thinking of something which is more against public policy than a license to commit crimes. No one can offer that immunity through contract. In a recent trial of a Boston mob boss, he attempted to claim that a federal prosecutor had given him immunity for any and all future crimes for some time period; the court did not accept that, because a license to break the law is not a valid contract. Public authority There is a situation in which certain officers can grant authority to break certain laws: to catch bigger criminals. However, for fairly obvious reasons, there are extremely strict rules on when this is valid, both on the government procedure side and the claiming-the-defense side. The defense can only work if the defendant honestly believed the government had authorized his actions, if the government actually had authorized them, or if he followed official government legal advice. In this case, the defendant has no idea if government officials have agreed to the terms; he would have approximately no chance of convincing anyone he legitimately thought that the government approved of his actions. They certainly wouldn't be actually properly authorized, and he hasn't sought advice from the government. Other issues Police aren't the only people on this site. An investigation tends to involve one or more non-government agents who provide testimony in court. No contract with a private party can stop them from testifying in a criminal trial; certain relationships mean testimony isn't allowed (e.g. a lawyer can't testify about dealings with their client without client permission), but regular users could be required to testify against the site operator (possibly on the basis of actual immunity). Sources Public authority stuff: this Justice Department page, plus some discussion in this order. Prospective immunity: that same order. Lack of authority: myriad readings.
Once a case has been commenced, you can definitely lose, or you can probably lose. If you decline to proceed, you definitely lose. If you proceed, the jury (or judge as the case might be), might find some witnesses more believable than others and might find that the forensic evidence is not as convincing as it seems. Empirical evidence suggests that criminal trials reach the correct conclusion in about 90% of cases that aren't resolved on an uncontested basis. Generally speaking, the Crown is only going to press a case where the prosecutor subjectively believes that they are correct that the defendant is, at least, guilty of something. So, a Crown prosecutor can also justify "rolling the dice" in a case with a low probability of winning, because at a minimum, a factually guilty defendant (whether it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt or not in a particular trial with a particular finder of fact) has to suffer through a trial which is a form of punishment (particularly if the defendant can't secure pre-trial release). Also, while the Crown prosecutor ultimately represents the state and not the victim, the victim of a crime is a quasi-client and sometimes a victim who often has personal knowledge of a defendant's factual guilt, really wants to have their "day in court" and a chance to present their case to the public for all to hear. Law enforcement officers working on the case may want it to go to trial for similar reasons. Strategically, bringing even weak cases to trial also makes a Crown prosecutors threat to go forward with a trial even in a seemingly weak case more credible and that can increase the prosecutor's negotiating power. Also, a trial always reveals information, and sometimes the information revealed in a trial that is lost can provide value in future law enforcement efforts. Finally, prosecutors are humans and people, in general, don't like to admit their own mistakes. So, they may go forward even when their case is weak because they don't want to admit that they were mistaken and would prefer to have somebody else say they were wrong than to admit error. The personality type that doesn't admit mistakes is pretty common in this area.