How do people publicly admit to criminal activity and not typically get arrested? I've noticed that people on YouTube and even on TV would sometimes say things like "I used to take lots of coke a few years ago" or "I used to smoke weed daily until this and that" or "Yea, I smoke weed every once in a while," or "I used to pirate games a lot when I was a bit younger" or "I used pirated Windows and Photoshop until I got a job," etc., etc.. Basically they are confessing to a crime, on public record, couldn't anyone come after them? They've already confessed - technically all that would have to be done is a trial. In these cases: possession of coke, weed, pirating games and software. In some cases - admittance that they will do it again soon - smoke weed ("I smoke it once in a while"). I just keep wondering every time I hear or read it... I thought finally it's time to ask people who know what they're talking about and who may be able to satisfy my curiosity and help me understand. Hope the tags are right.
Unless the Youtube Video shows them committing a crime, then no, they couldn't be arrested and tried for a crime. Them saying it, not under oath, is just hearsay that has no evidentiary value unless there is already other evidence they have committed a crime. In that case, its an admission. But there must be other, either circumstantial, or actual physical evidence of a crime. Past intoxication is not a crime, either. Possession of drugs, if caught with them is. But saying you got high is not. People have walked into police stations and confessed to murders. But with no evidence, no body, no name of a missing person, they can't even be held after the holding period for investigatory purposes expires. If the video shows them committing assault, or breaking and entering (there actually are idiots who post this stuff), the video is actual evidence of a crime and it is often used against them. The statements can be used to begin an investigation, but people don't usually confess to anything worth pursuing even an investigation. The fact that someone says they used to do something criminal is not enough. For all you ( meaning anyone ) knows, the statute of limitations has expired because they "pirated games" 10 years ago. Your comment is right on.
The purposes of criminal justice include (this list is based on the Sentencing Act 1991 in Victoria): Deterrence Rehabilitation of offenders Denunciation ('this behaviour is wrong') (Retribution can also be a purpose.) What the question is talking about is rehabilitation. As discussed in the book 'Starship Troopers', you can't expect a person to improve their behaviour if they are not shown how. Some simple examples in practice include violent offenders being sent to anger management classes, or bad drivers being sentenced to remedial training. Why aren't all offenders put into rehabilitation programs? Some reasons include: Cost. It would be very expensive to offer all the rehabilitation which would help all offenders. Often this kind of thing is court-ordered, so if the judge does not know about relevant programs or does not assess the offender's needs correctly, then the offender will not be sent to them. The offender is unwilling to participate in programs that are available, and there are limits to how much coercion a given society is comfortable applying. There is no 'one size fits all' rehabilitation. Some people need to talk about what makes them use drugs, others need to talk through their childhood issues, others need training so they can get a job and not fall back into bad habits when they are released from prison. Perhaps North Korea has a great curriculum for putting lots of people in a camp and they come out model citizens, but I'm not aware of the details. Can a person really be forced to do anything? Even the army can't do that. The army might put you in prison, but that's redundant for a person who is already a prisoner. You can always threaten to kill them, I suppose, whip them, or brainwash them with electrodes perhaps, but that depends on your principles as a society. I think it's fair to say that, these days, the trend is towards what the question suggests, which is putting as many offenders as possible into rehabilitation. In 2014 it was reported that Texas took the money it would have spent on building a new prison and used it on rehabilitation instead, and there were suggestions that that worked well.
This is actually a very complicated question, about (1) the scope of "knowingly", (2) what kind of "intent" is required for conviction, (3) how does the jury understand and evaluate concepts of intent and (4) how does an attorney persuade the jury that the situation does or does not satisfy the particular intent requirement. One thing we can dispose of quickly is the possibility that the law says that the accused has to actually know that the act is against the law. It is a standard legal fiction (2,400 years old) that the accused knows the law, or should have known. As for the 4th element, persuasion, on the strong side we have statements of intent by the accused – "And I pulled out my rifle and blew his head off, and I laughed the whole time". What the jury has to decide is whether the accused had in mind a conscious purpose of doing some act (that is, it wasn't just an accident like butt-dialing, or an instant stimulus-response reaction to some event). "Intent" generally falls in the realm of acting "purposely", which the Model Penal Code §2.02 defines as: A person acts purposely with respect to a material element of an offense when: (i) if the element involves the nature of his conduct or a result thereof, it is his conscious object to engage in conduct of that nature or to cause such a result; and (ii) if the element involves the attendant circumstances, he is aware of the existence of such circumstances or he believes or hopes that they exist. which more or less means what you think "with intent" means. That doesn't say what they intended to do, it just distinguishes intent from negligence and accident. The prosecutor would then present factual evidence that the accused had a bad intent, like showing that he actually made an attempt to access credit card account data (that such data had been accessed when he broke into the system), etc. We can sort of dispose of the other scope question about "knowingly", namely, what things would he have to know? The chunk accessing a protected computer without authorization can be interpreted in a number of ways, having to do with which elements of the clause are known to the accused. You might know that you were accessing but not know that you were unauthorized; you might know that you were accessing and unauthorized, but not know that the computer is protected. The only reliable way to know which is which is to study the case law on a statute and see if there is a controlling decision that say e.g. that you have to know that you are accessing and are unauthorized, but you don't have to know that the computer is protected. I haven't determined (yet) is there is decisive case law on this, but I'm betting that the outcome would be that not knowing of the protected status of a computer carries no weight. As for what kind of intent, there is a distinction between "specific intent" and "general intent". The distinction comes down to having some evil purpose like "make him suffer" (general intent) versus a specific evil purpose like "kill him". Finally, the people who actually decide, the jury, will be given instructions that say what they have to look for. Here is the tip of the tip of the iceberg, from California's criminal jury instructions. The judge will say... The People must prove not only that the defendant did the acts charged, but also that (he/she) acted with a particular (intent/ [and/or] mental state). The instruction for (the/each) crime [and allegation] explains the (intent/ [and/or] mental state) required. A[n] (intent/ [and/or] mental state) may be proved by circumstantial evidence. Before you may rely on circumstantial evidence to conclude that a fact necessary to find the defendant guilty has been proved, you must be convinced that the People have proved each fact essential to that conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt. Also, before you may rely on circumstantial evidence to conclude that the defendant had the required (intent/ [and/or] mental state), you must be convinced that the only reasonable conclusion supported by the circumstantial evidence is that the defendant had the required (intent/ [and/or] mental state). If you can draw two or more reasonable conclusions from the circumstantial evidence, and one of those reasonable conclusions supports a finding that the defendant did have the required (intent/ [and/or] mental state) and another reasonable conclusion supports a finding that the defendant did not, you must conclude that the required (intent/ [and/or] mental state) was not proved by the circumstantial evidence. However, when considering circumstantial evidence, you must accept only reasonable conclusions and reject any that are unreasonable. and then there will be some specific elaboration of whether they have to find that the accused just generally intended to do bad, versus intended to specifically defraud.
Hope you have a good prosecutor and a sympathetic judge "They asked repeatedly how much she had to drink ..." Objection: Asked and answered "how she could claim not to remember certain details" Objection: Calls for a conclusion/speculation. The witness is not a brain scientist, she cannot speculate as to why people remember some details and not others. She is testifying as to what she does remember, not as to why she doesn't remember things. "asking if she had not been flirting with him in the days before the incident" Objection: Relevance. Is the defense seriously suggesting that flirtation, if it happened, in the preceding days amounts to consent at the time of the incident? "asked her why she had not chosen a more modest one" Objection: Relevance. Is the defense now suggesting that what the witness wore amounts to consent?
This is going to vary based on jurisdiction. In Wisconsin, the attempt statute covers all felonies, but it doesn't cover all misdemeanors. The statute says: Whoever attempts to commit a felony or a crime specified in s. 940.19, 940.195, 943.20, or 943.74 may be fined or imprisoned or both as provided under sub. (1g), 943.20 is in that list, and it just so happens to be the theft statute, which includes theft via fraud. So Eve is out of luck - her attempted theft is a crime, even if she doesn't try to steal the $2500.01 needed to trigger a felony. The penalty listed for attempts is half the sentence you'd get for the completed crime. But even if this wasn't covered by the attempt statute, once the police start investigating Eve, they'll likely find a victim, or some other crime to charge her with. People who do this sort of thing tend to have a pattern of doing this sort of thing. And I notice she's using the Internet to commit the crime; that means she's involved in systems affecting interstate commerce, and she may be breaking all manner of federal laws in addition to state laws.
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.
You are wrong that they never get into legal trouble. It isn't terribly common but it certainly happens to those that get relatively prominent. Many of the folks doing the copyright infringement are judgement proof. It makes little sense for Disney, for example, to sue some guy living in his parents' basement for uploading a clip of their movie when that guy has no assets. Financially, it wouldn't be worth the cost of a lawyer. Many of the folks doing the copyright infringement are in jurisdictions that look the other way. If you're a Russian citizen pirating content owned by American companies, the Russian authorities aren't going to cooperate and arrest you and the American companies likely can't recover any judgement they'd get because you don't have any assets in America. There is a whack-a-mole problem. If there are hundreds of people posting pirated content to Facebook and each one is running hundreds of pages, that's tens of thousands of pages posting content. By the time you identify and close all of them, the pirates will have created tens of thousands of new pages. There is a cat-and-mouse problem. Copyright owners have automated tools to scan for their IP to issue takedown notices. Piraters know this so they modify the video (posting it as a mirror image or adding some additional video elements) in order to evade the automated tools. If copyright owners have to manually identify pirated content, it's realistically not cost effective to do so. The humans finding that content would cost more than the business loses in revenue to pirates. Tracking down the actual human/ business behind the copyright infringement is often a fair amount of work and may involve motions in courts in multiple countries. That work tends not to be highly prioritized by law enforcement. If you're a small fish, it is unlikely that anyone would go to the effort of unmasking you in order to sue.
1. I want use a friend who has no legal training as my "counsel," do the police have any legal recourse from allowing me to talk to him prior to interrogation? E.g., can they insist that my counsel be a member of the bar in the state where I have been arrested? Yes. If they don't want you to, you cannot talk to a friend, only a lawyer. If you got an OUI, and you're not being a jerk, they will probably let you talk to whomever you want (within reason &ndash; it's not social hour). However, they can keep you from speaking to anyone but a lawyer as that person could gain information from you that can corrupt their investigation. (E.g., they arrest you with 10 lbs. of methamphetamine. They know it's "fresh" and likely came from a local lab that they suspect you of running. You cannot be allowed to talk to just anyone, as they could help get the lab broke down, moved, destroyed). In TV shows you see attorneys doing this type of illicit thing, but in reality that is very rare. When you enter the police station to speak with a client, you must present your bar card (license to practice). Friends are not allowed in, even if you value their counsel &ndash; they are not counselors! 2. I want to consult a "team" of qualified counselors. Are there legal grounds or regulations to limit the number of individuals I consult prior to interrogation, and who I have present during interrogation? No. You can have your entire legal team with you, while preparing for court, or while being questioned, within reason. They do not need to rent a conference room to fit your 30 person legal team, but if you want 3 or so lawyers in with you, and you can afford paying each $250-$500 per hour, then have at it. Most lawyers would counsel you against this, as it creates an undue impression of limitless (hence likely illegal) funds. (But if you're a hedge fund manager, and you can show your money is legally earned, it's really your choice.) I have had occasion to go in to meet a client with co-counsel numerous times (especially in early years of practice when there is a lead attorney and second chair, so to speak, even for interrogation (which means silence by the client). They can "impede" access to some extent, though they typically don't. They can play games with your lawyer and make them wait and make you wait, but not while they are in with you, and only for so long. Once your lawyer arrives they should leave you alone. (Some courts say once you ask for counsel they need to leave you alone, but this only really matters if they get a confession from you (or any evidence) before you've (and this is what they're hoping for) recant your request for counsel and your right to remain silent.) 3. Can my contact with counsel be proscribed in any way? E.g., can the police limit the duration or schedule of contact with counsel? Can they impede or delay access to me by someone who claims to be my counsel? Once you've called your lawyer, they need to to let him or her meet with you for a reasonable amount of time before questioning. This is typically a quick meeting, just long enough to make sure you will not say a word. Even completely innocent people should keep their mouth shut &ndash; innocent people do occasionally get arrested and convicted! No matter what the police say, there is no benefit, ever, from talking to them. Some police, who know it's their last shot to get a confession and know once your lawyer gets there will never talk to you again (and they have enough to go forward without your confession in the event you just start blabbing "you did it" before they can get you to invoke your rights) will keep talking to you and tell you not to comment, just to listen, even while your lawyer sits outside. They can say you're being processed, or there's a security issue, any number of reasons for short delays if they need it. They will then go on and on about "how they can maybe help you out if you talk now, but once your lawyer arrives all bets are off." These are just tricks to get you to recant/revoke your rights and to obtain your confession. You will usually see your lawyer shortly after arrival. Can they impede or delay access to me by someone who claims to be my counsel? Yes, if your lawyer doesn't have adequate ID or cannot verify he is licensed in that state, or in another state and with local counsel. The police do not have a duty to research your lawyer's credentials, and don't have to go online and look your attorney up in the bar directory to make it easier for him or her to get to you. However, if they know the attorney, and he or she forgot his bar card, they would probably lose the confession if you confessed while they make him go get it. Most lawyers carry their bar card in their wallet, so this is not a typical problem. 4. What do police have to do to facilitate my access to my desired counselor(s)? E.g., how long can I be held after requesting an attorney without being allowed to attempt to contact one? You have a right to contact a lawyer. There is no explicit right to a phone call, although some form of contact is implied. Hence, you can usually be held 3 hours before they have to let you "contact" someone, and this is after processing. You can be held until your lawyer gets there or until your arraignment, whatever comes first. If your lawyer doesn't show up, you will be given another opportunity by the court to get your lawyer of choice there for arraignment. If you can't, and you don't want to go forward, a public defender will move to waive your right to a speedy trial and seek a continuance until you can get your counsel of choice there. If this happens, consider getting a new lawyer. What means must I be granted to find and contact the counsel of my choice? This actually differs depending on where you are and what you did. Again, you have a right to counsel but they can determine how you get this done. Sometimes there are local laws that say you get any number, or 3, or 1 completed phone call to reach your counsel of choice. If there is an overriding risk that you will call someone to communicate information that could put the investigation in jeopardy or would be adversely impact their evidentiary value in some way, even when these laws exist the police can refuse you direct contact with anyone and may implement a strict "they call" policy, where they will call the lawyer and tell them, or call your family to let them know, and they can call the lawyer. They cannot hold you for a protracted amount of time without giving you some way to get word to a lawyer; it must be reasonable. There is not a lot of law out there about what is not reasonable, because the police know, and for the most part accept, that once right to counsel has been invoked they are done. There is case law saying that 3 hours is reasonable. What is not reasonable? That is fact dependent.