If a pardon is specifically referencing a crime a person has been convicted of, can an individual sue him for a different crime? Pardons, except for amnesties, are typically given after a person has been convicted of a crime, and they specifically reference that crime. In this respect, President Trump’s pardons of Scooter Libby, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos and Roger Stone are typical. After asserting that the recipient is given a “Full and Unconditional Pardon,” they go on to specify the statutes each was charged with violating and describe in detail the punishments given. Their pardons extend to the named crimes and no other. The pardon given to Michael Flynn is somewhat different. After referencing the charge of lying to federal investigators for which Flynn was convicted, the president goes on to pardon Flynn not just for this crime but also for “any and all possible offenses” within the jurisdiction of the Special Counsel’s investigating authority or relating in any manner to the Special Counsel’s investigation [of Russia’s attempted interference in the 2016 presidential election and links to the Trump campaign]. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/01/17/presidential-pardons-settled-law-unsettled-issues-and-a-downside-for-trump/ If a pardon is specifically referencing a crime a person has been convicted of, can an individual or a government sue the pardoned person for a different crime committed at the same time? Let's say a person committed crime A, B, C and D, but he was only convicted for crime A and B, then after a pardon was handed, can people still sue that person for crime C and D even though the crimes were committed by the same act? It seems like it's the case since Michael Flynn's pardon was particularly architectured in a way to avoid this.
The pardon does what it says it does Typically, the pardon is given for which the accused has already been convicted. Therefore, the principle of double jeopardy applies: the person has already been tried on the facts and all the charges that were or should have been brought have been determined. This, of course, doesn't prevent charges from being laid for other crimes allegedly committed at other times over different events. In the case where a person is pardoned more broadly, as in the Michael Flynn example, in addition to the double jeopardy limitation, a prosecutor is prevented from charging anything that falls within the scope of the pardon. Pardons do not constrain civil suits If you are pardoned of say, murder, that does not prevent the victim's dependants from bringing a wrongful death suit, just as being found not guilty wouldn't. These are different cases with different parties and the pardon has no effect. Similarly, a Federal pardon does not prevent a State (or another country) from laying charges over the same matter and vice-versa.
When it is a mistake of memory, and not intentional (as this question is asking), there are no clear standards, and it is largely up to prosecutorial discretion. This means that whatever factors affect prosecutorial discretion (such as the prosecutor knowing who they have to work with on other days) can become significant in the determination. A prosecutor who announced this decision also specifically noted that it's up to the prosecutor to decide each case separately, with no guidance on fact patterns that could influence the decision either way. The Washington Post Magazine covered this question somewhat in depth several years ago, arriving at that conclusion. This was a surprise to me, but the article seems like a good resource on this - the question turns out to be more interesting and less resolved than it first appeared to be.
The jury ultimately decides if a person is guilty or not. Jury nullification is when the person is clearly guilty or innocent, but for some odd reason the jury (who knows the person is guilty/innocent) gives the "wrong verdict" An example of this in the UK was when a guy was being charged with a spy crime years after his crime happened (I cant remember the case), the jury essentially thought that so much time has passed that it was silly to convict him, so gave a non guilty verdict. There are cases for and against jury nullification. In my personal belief I think in certain cases, such as if edward snowden would be charged, I would find him non guilty as a matter of what is right to ky conscience, regardless of the fact that he clearly did something illegal
It's naive to assume a college age hacker (or a hacker who bases his/her attacks from an academic institution) is treated differently than a "real" hacker, whatever a real hacker might be. The sentence any convicted hacker receives depends on many factors: the prosecutor, the evidence, veracity of witnesses, jurisdiction (academic or not), previous criminal records, the actual laws the person is being charged under, the judge, the jury, the lawyers, plea bargains, media coverage, etc. There are so many factors that the outcomes of the prosecutions of "hacking" crimes can be very different, re: your examples. Read about each case and you'll find many differences. Academic fraud or any form of fraud are completely different crimes. Hackers can commit fraud, but not all fraud involves hacking. Being convicted of fraud can sometimes happen if the evidence for a hacking charge is weak, or other factors. Again, that involves the specific case, the prosecutor, laws, the evidence, etc.
Willfully telling an untruth or making a misrepresentation under oath is perjury; the reason you do so or the substance of it is irrelevant. It is the act of perjury itself that is an offense and led to the impeachment.
The resolution in Connecticut is a statement that has been agreed by the state's legislature, but is not a law. If it were, it would indeed need to be signed by the Governor, by virtue of Article 4, Section 15 of the state Constitution. It exonerates the victims insofar as it expresses the current legislature's disapproval of the witchcraft trials of the past, and apologizes to living relatives. All of the victims are long dead, whether they were executed by the state or not, so even if this were a legally-effective pardon, it would have no other practical consequences. That said, a state legislature could enact pardons for named individuals, or a class of people. It would be unlawful to criminalize a named person (that's a &quot;bill of attainder&quot;) or to punish someone for an act that wasn't a crime at the time (an &quot;ex post facto law&quot;). But the opposite, which reduces or eliminates a punishment, is not covered by the federal or state constitutional bans on such laws. That was explained by Samuel Chase in Calder v Bull, 3 U.S. 386, a Supreme Court decision of 1798 dealing with actions of the Connecticut legislature ordering a retrial in a probate case (with my emphasis): Every law that takes away or impairs rights vested agreeably to existing laws is retrospective, and is generally unjust and may be oppressive, and it is a good general rule that a law should have no retrospect; but there are cases in which laws may justly, and for the benefit of the community and also of individuals, relate to a time antecedent to their commencement, as statutes of oblivion or of pardon. They are certainly retrospective, and literally both concerning and after the facts committed. But I do not consider any law ex post facto within the prohibition that mollifies the rigor of the criminal law, but only those that create or aggravate the crime or increase the punishment or change the rules of evidence for the purpose of conviction. Every law that is to have an operation before the making thereof, as to commence at an antecedent time or to save time from the statute of limitations or to excuse acts which were unlawful, and before committed, and the like, is retrospective. But such laws may be proper or necessary, as the case may be. There is a great and apparent difference between making an unlawful act lawful and the making an innocent action criminal and punishing it as a crime. At the time, Connecticut's system for pardons made it so that an offender would always have to petition the legislature to pass a bill to that specific effect. That model predated the U.S. Constitution, and continued to operate after its ratification. The Governor only had the power to grant temporary reprieves, when the legislature was out of session - in fact, he still does (Article 4, Section 13 of the Constitution of Connecticut). Presently, the state has instituted a permanent system of a Board of Pardons and Paroles, but in principle they could enact some other model. The contemporaneous A System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut by Zephaniah Smith (1795) says in Book 5, Chapter 26: The power of granting pardon to criminals sentenced to death, or to any other punishment, is vested by law in the legislature. This carries forward a practice from the British legislatures, which also often passed acts to pardon or indemnify certain offenders. There was therefore quite a long history for Chase to allude to, even though he was writing not long after the revolution, in terms of this being part of the standard panoply of things a state legislature can generally do.
No. There is no such thing as vicarious criminal liability. Anyone convicted of a crime needs to be personally involved and have knowledge of the relevant facts for co-conspirator or solicitation liability. There isn't really a single law that says it. It is rooted in the overall structure of the criminal codes at the state and the federal level, and in the elements of each of the possible crimes. Section 302 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (15 U.S.C. 7241), requires a CEO to certify that its financial statements are materially correct to the best of the knowledge of the CEO, and also that certain internal controls are, or are not, in place, to the best of the knowledge of the CEO. Regulations address whom the CEO is entitled to rely upon in acquiring the knowledge that the CEO has when certifying the disclosures that are made under the Act. And, Sarbanes-Oxley imposes duties on lawyers and others to inform he CEO of irregularities. But the CEO is not subject to criminal or civil liability without having knowledge of errors or omissions in these statements that are contrary to the certification.
A subject can become a target, and this happens all the time. The subject/target distinction is not a statement about whether a person has done anything wrong; it's only a statement about how much information the prosecutor has linking you to a crime he is investigating. That means that the subject himself need not do anything to move from one category to the other. Here's guidance from the DOJ's manual for U.S. Attorneys: It is the policy of the Department of Justice to advise a grand jury witness of his or her rights if such witness is a &quot;target&quot; or &quot;subject&quot; of a grand jury investigation. See the Criminal Resource Manual at 160 for a sample target letter. A &quot;target&quot; is a person as to whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the judgment of the prosecutor, is a putative defendant. An officer or employee of an organization which is a target is not automatically considered a target even if such officer's or employee's conduct contributed to the commission of the crime by the target organization. The same lack of automatic target status holds true for organizations which employ, or employed, an officer or employee who is a target. A &quot;subject&quot; of an investigation is a person whose conduct is within the scope of the grand jury's investigation. So the designation changes when the prosecutor has enough information to change it, not necessarily because the subject has done anything new. Imagine a prosecutor investigating a bank robbery. He watches surveillance footage showing a man checking out the bank repeatedly in the days leading up to the robbery. That's enough to bring him &quot;within the scope of the investigation,&quot; but it's not really damning enough to link him to the crime or make him a defendant. So he remains a subject, and the FBI continues to investigate. All sorts of things could happen that might make him a target: someone else implicates him; video footage shows him robbing the bank; he admits to the crime; he denies the crime with an alibi that doesn't check out; he lies about something else, making him a target for making false statements to a federal investigator. Note that the change could come because of something the subject did himself, because of something someone else did, or just because the prosecutor happened upon some new information.