Is distribution of drugs in itself a crime? You always seem to hear of people being done with &quot;possession with intent to distribute,&quot; rather than actual distribution. Why is this?
Yes, distribution of controlled drugs is itself a standalone offence. Under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, s. 4(1), it is an offence to supply or offer to supply a controlled drug to another. And supplying includes distributing. Possession with intent to supply is also an offence. Section 5(3) makes it an offence for a person to have a controlled drug in their possession, &quot;with intent to supply it to another.&quot; The Crown Prosecution Service says: Where the evidence supports a charge of supplying or possessing controlled drugs of any class with intent to supply, this is to be preferred to a simple possession charge.
A sufficient explanation would be that the ticketed driver was caught and the unticketed driver was not because the officer was already responding to a situation. Had the officer caught the unticketed driver, he would have ticketed him for the same offense. Courts would accept that it would be impossible for the officer to deal with both offenses at the same time. Selective enforcement is done properly when the prosecutor evaluates the risk verses reward of perusing a criminal prosecution against an individual based on the evidence, the nature of the crime, and the likely-hood of a conviction if it goes to trial. For example, while using illict substances is a crime, the government will usually only prosecute on that charge if they find your use while in possession with intent to sell (or in connection to another crime). In this instant, the high school stoner is not going to be as instrumental in the case as the dealer, who can lead to suppliers if he cooperates OR is removed from distributing in his territory if he does not. If the stoner is picked up on a minor offense and carrying a small amount on his person, the police might arrest him for the crime but agree to not press charges if he gives them information to who the dealer who sold him the substance is. Again, the risk here is putting a small time criminal into jail at cost of society, when society would benefit more if that cell was housing the bigger fish (a criminal record can prevent getting certain jobs, which will more likely turn stoner high schooler into jobless loser, which would be a drain on public welfare in and of itself, and that's not including the possibility that joining in drug trafficking as a seller would fix his lack of income). Conversely, in cases such as espionage, the death penalty is on the books but is rarely pursued in favor of lesser sentences. Here, the pay off is that they dangle the death penalty over the spies head unless he tells them about all his spying activities, which benefits the spy agency in filling in security gaps and potentially finding more spies. The use of lighter charges in exchange for a guilty plea is also favored as trials are costly. If a criminal pleads guilty to a crime that the government has them dead to rights for, the prosecution will reward them with lighter offenses for saving their office the price tag of a full blown trial. All this is on condition that selective enforcement is not used as a basis of discrimination, which is illegal for the prosecutors to do.
Note that what is being bought or sold here is actually information about the exploit. Attempting to criminally penalize the transmission of information in the US often runs into First Amendment issues. If a person has good reason to know that information is going to be used to commit a crime, or is likely to be so used, and there is no plausible legitimate use for the information, that person might be charged with complicity or conspiracy for distributing the information. But where there are legitimate uses, that is much less likely. Here the information could be used to defend against the exploit, or to identify and remove software subject to the exploit, or for research into such exploits generally. There may be other legit uses as well. Some years ago the Federal government attempted to prosecute a person for exporting a book describing how to create an encryption program. The courts eventually ruled that this was protected speech. I suspect a similar ruling would be made in the sort of case described in the question, but the details would matter.
Growing marijuana is very often legally classed as "manufacture of a controlled substance." In criminal law, "manufacture" tends to be explicitly defined to include cultivation, but this is in fact a reasonably common use of the term (it doesn't have to mean producing with machinery). And so it's extremely unlikely that anyone will be convinced that you even might have thought the agreement didn't cover growing marijuana. The intent of the parties is fairly clear there.
You are misinformed. In fact, approximately the reverse is true: in a typical jurisdiction in the United States today in excess of 95 percent of criminal cases that begin never reach a verdict. (The exact number varies a little, depending on which exact court system we're talking about.) Or never reach a trial at all, in fact. Or never even come close to making it to the trial date. Now, in some of those instances the charges wind up being dismissed. In some others defendants are diverted outside of the traditional criminal justice system when the circumstances seem better suited to other resolutions (examples: a petty criminal who steals to feed a drug addiction is diverted into a process where he or she will get drug treatment, a non-violent mentally ill person is put into a process where he or she will get mental health treatment); if they complete the diversion program the criminal charges are dropped. But in the vast majority of cases a defendant winds up pleading guilty, in court, to something. Sometimes in exchange for the prosecutor dropping certain other charges. Sometimes in return for the prosecutor downgrading a charge he or she would otherwise pursue in court to a charge for a lesser offense. Sometimes just in return for perhaps getting some credit in the eyes of the judge for "acceptance of responsibility" when sentencing rolls around. But make no mistake: there are few elements more central to the way modern American criminal justice works than plea bargaining. But don't feel too bad: for what it's worth you are certainly not alone in thinking otherwise. In fact, in my personal experience almost everyone outside the legal profession and the court system/s holds at least a few large misconceptions about the way criminal justice in the U.S. actually works. General news media outlets contribute quite a bit to helping those misconceptions form by typically focusing solely on the rare, high-profile, controversial (and thus ratings-grabbing) cases rather than the vast, vast number that end in a whimper instead of a bang. Law drama shows and movies almost invariably bear little relation to reality. (And that's is totally fine, BTW, as long as you realize they bear almost no relation to reality.) Which makes sense: Law &amp; Order: SVU probably wouldn't have stayed on the air year after year if most episodes just consisted of an endless stream of one rote, dull plea hearing after another, each featuring some otherwise-unremarkable sleezeball who's been caught dead-to-rights downloading and re-distributing child pornography. (And, BTW, the misconceptions aren't limited to criminal law &amp; justice, by any means. In fact, in my view other high-profile legal arenas like civil litigation, intellectual property disputes, constitutional law battles, and many others are even more misunderstood. But I digress...) Anyway, to sum up: very frequent plea bargaining = one of the foundations of how modern American criminal justice operates at a practical level. For tons more stats, background info, and analysis corroborating and analyzing that fact, see the links commenters have already posted and/or any of the many, many good items on the topic indexed via our friend Google.
How come this is viable? Because it’s legal. What if people use their service to commit crimes? What if people use a Ford in a bank holdup? Or a Glock in a murder? Or the US Postal Service in a Nigerian letter scam? If the goods or services are legal and not provided for an obviously illegal purpose, nothing happens.
As far as I can tell, it was punished severely, but not quite that severely. I found Nevada's 1971 controlled substances statute, AB 107. &quot;Marihuana&quot; appears in Schedule I, the list of drugs which are most tightly restricted (Section 31, subsection 4(j)). Section 65 makes it a crime to possess such substances. Under subsection 1, a first offense was punishable by 1 to 6 years in prison, a second offense by 1-10 years, a third or subsequent offense by 1-20 years. There were also fines of up to about $2000-$5000. There was an exception in subsection 3 for marihuana possession of less than one ounce: a first offense could alternatively be punished by up to one year in county jail, probably at the discretion of the prosecutor or judge. Second offenses were treated as a first offense under subsection 1, and so on. Selling and distributing drugs including marihuana was punished more severely. Under Section 62, the punishment was 1 to 20 years in prison for a first offense, and for a second offense, life in prison without possibility of parole. If the drug was distributed to a person under age 21, a first offense was punishable by life in prison, but with possibility of parole after 7 years. There was no exception for small quantities of marihuana. I didn't find a reference to the specific 25 year term you mention. It's possible that it comes from some version of the law as it existed before or after the 1971 statute; I didn't check. Also, marijuana was (and still is) also illegal under federal law; I didn't check what punishment federal law would have prescribed at the time. It's unlikely that the City of Las Vegas would have had separate laws; this sort of thing would normally be done at the state level. As far as I know, this is in keeping with other state drug laws of the time, and given the prevailing politics, I'm not surprised by the law. Drug use was treated very differently under the law than the other &quot;vices&quot; you mention. It'd be outside the scope of this site to discuss the possible factors behind this, but you could perhaps take it to Politics.SE or History.SE. Nevada eventually legalized recreational marijuana for adults in 2017, according to https://norml.org/laws/nevada-penalties-2/. It was not the first state to do so; Washington State had taken a similar step in 2012.
The players behind KAT don't make themselves known. The owners of Pirate Bay were known and were personally legally pursued. That's the place to start. Law enforcement can't criminally charge anyone if they don't know who is responsible. Second is that KAT complies with DCMA takedown rules. They publicly claim to at least. PB was known to have a more f-off attitude. The US Justice Dept does pursue KAT which is why KAT changes domains so often. They do get shut down. Law enforcement has better things to do. The record and movie studios and industry-groups have money and technology to pursue infringers. It's my impression that law enforcement is happy to let the copyright holders do the heavy lifting and the government can come in with criminal charges.