Are US federal guidelines and statistics available for sentencing for &quot;possession of a gun by an addict&quot;? After 04:44 in CNN's June 22, 2023 Was Hunter Biden given a 'sweetheart deal'? Legal expert weighs in, the senior legal analyst for CNN, and former assistant United States Attorney Elie Honig says: If we look at the gun charge here, it is exceedingly rare for somebody to be charged with a federal gun crime and given pretrial diversion, as Hunter Biden has been given, meaning he doesn't even have to plead guilty as long as he behaves himself, the charge will go away. On the other hand, the vast majority of federal gun crimes involve somebody who either use the gun in some sort of violent crime or somebody who is a prior convicted felon. So it's rare to even see anyone prosecuted at all under the law that Hunter Biden was prosecuted for, which is possession of a gun by an addict. Rare or not, are US federal guidelines and statistics available for sentencing for &quot;possession of a gun by an addict&quot;? That would seem to be germane to a discussion of the level of &quot;sweetheartness&quot; associated with this particularly notable and visible case.
I can at least look at the federal sentencing guidelines. From the description of the offense I'm guessing he's charged under 18 USC §922(g)(3). In the guidelines, this offense would appear to fall under &quot;§2K2.1. Unlawful Receipt, Possession, or Transportation of Firearms or Ammunition; Prohibited Transactions Involving Firearms or Ammunition&quot;. The notes here say: For purposes of subsections (a)(4)(B) and (a)(6), &quot;prohibited person&quot; means any person described in 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) or § 922(n). I therefore believe he meets the criteria of §2K2.1(a)(6) (&quot;if the defendant was a prohibited person at the time the defendant committed the instant offense&quot;), which would mean the base offense level was 14. Then the big question is whether he falls under §2K2.1(b)(2): If the defendant, other than a defendant subject to subsection (a)(1), (a)(2), (a)(3), (a)(4), or (a)(5), possessed all ammunition and firearms solely for lawful sporting purposes or collection, and did not unlawfully discharge or otherwise unlawfully use such firearms or ammunition, decrease the offense level determined above to level 6. I doubt the handgun was for sporting purposes or for collection; it was likely for self-defense. But I also don't think he is accused of unlawfully discharging or using it. I'm not sure exactly how this would be interpreted. If the offense level is 6, a sentence of probation would normally fall within the guidelines. If it was 14 (or even 12 after a possible 2-level decrease for taking responsibility), a sentence of probation would not be within the guidelines. This is, however, a pretrial diversion, not a conviction. I'm not sure how much the ordinary guidelines apply to that, or whether that's normally done for this sort of thing. It's also possible that I'm missing some factor which would change the offense level more.
In the US, it depends on the jurisdiction because each state has its own homicide statutes: but, the defining elements don't differ a lot. Drawing on Washington state law, the first question is whether you intended to kill a person (it doesn't have to be a specific person). If you did, you have committed first-degree murder. It is first-degree murder, because it requires a certain amount of advance planning to kill with a drone. It does not matter that the drone houses the gun that killed the person and a program determines when the gun fires (the "it was the drone, not me" defense gets you nowhere: otherwise, you could always claim "It wasn't me, it was my gun / knife / fist".) If instead this is a badly-designed pig-slaughtering drone, then it could be manslaughter in the first degree, if the act was reckless, or manslaughter in the second degree, if the act was with criminal negligence. To determine which it is, you look at the definitions: A person is reckless or acts recklessly when he or she knows of and disregards a substantial risk that a wrongful act may occur and his or her disregard of such substantial risk is a gross deviation from conduct that a reasonable person would exercise in the same situation. versus A person is criminally negligent or acts with criminal negligence when he or she fails to be aware of a substantial risk that a wrongful act may occur and his or her failure to be aware of such substantial risk constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise in the same situation. So it would depend on whether you decided that safeguards which would prevent shooting people were too much bother (you know there is a risk and set aside that concern), or it didn't occur to you that a flying gun might hurt a person.
This is a good question, although it discusses crimes. This answer generalizes the question by giving a response for civil violations. In the united-states, where federal civil-procedure is followed and provided the tape isn't solely for impeachment purposes (i.e. it also documents other elements), there are certain disclosures required at the beginning of discovery governed by Rule 26(a)(1)(A)(ii). If a party withholds one of these disclosures, under Rule 37(c)(1), the court is able to take a number of actions, including throwing the evidence out. This could, of course, result in the withholder's conviction. Yet, if the court does not go to that extreme, it may impose the sanctions in Rule 37(b). So the withholder's attorney might try to make a case that the evidence is, indeed, solely for impeachment purposes.
This is a good question, which I am going to answer from a practical perspective, rather than a theoretical one, which would probably justify a law review article (applications of the takings clause to criminal justice fact patterns is actually one of my pet areas of legal scholarship, but a lot of it calls for dramatic changes in established practice and precedents reached from other perspectives, making it impractical to pursue in real life). I recently had a case along these lines in my office where my client's property was seized as evidence in a criminal case against a third-party. The crime involved a gun shop where all of the guns that were in the possession of the shop owner for repairs at the time of the bust (i.e. as bailments), including ours worth several thousand dollars in addition to having some sentimental value, were seized as evidence of charges against a shop owner who was fencing stolen goods, making sales to felons off the books, falsifying excise tax returns, etc. He seemed legitimate and had been in business for many years in what was not a fly by night operation. He had all of the proper licenses. Who knew we were dealing with a crook? In that case, we intervened on behalf of our client in the primary case to seek the physical return of the property (basically a replevin claim), as have others affected by the bust. It took a few months and some legal fees, but we prevailed without too much effort, as have the other intervenors. Generally speaking, to make a 5th Amendment claim, you would have to show a total taking and move into some legal gray areas in this context, while it is usually hard for authorities to show a continuing need for possession of third-party property in the face of a demand for its return, especially when photography and other scientific tools can document the evidence in great detail these days. In that case, showing that our client's particular gun was not involved in any illegitimate transaction also simultaneously made it less important as evidence, although that would not necessarily be true in general in these kinds of situations. There is a pending case in Colorado posing similar issues, where a suburban police department essentially destroyed a guy's home in order to catch a felon with no relation to the homeowner whatsoever, who had fled into it and taken refuge there. But, that case, as far as I know, has not yet been resolved on the merits.
Desuetude is the wrong concept. Desuetude relates to laws as a whole falling out of use; it doesn’t relate to individual cases. There is no question that the UK actively enforces their bail laws so they are not falling out of use. There is a statute of limitations that applies to non-major crimes within which the state must initiate prosecution. However, in this case the prosecution for bail violation has been initiated and Mr Assange is “on the run” so this is not relevant. Neither is the fact that the original charges that led to his arrest has been dropped- he is wanted for escaping lawful custody under English law for which the penalty is pretty stiff. I will also venture an opinion that the case against him is as open and shut as it comes. TL;DR When he dies.
Neither with or without a warrant, if the confession is all there is. For a felony, the question is whether there is probable cause (4th Amendment). This is true whether the police arrest you, or they get a warrant – the difference being that in the latter case the warrant is issued by a guy with much greater knowledge of what constitutes probable cause. The question then would be whether a confession alone constitutes probable cause. There is a venerable rule, the corpus delecti rule (300+ years old) that requires there to be independent evidence of a crime, the point of this rule being to to prevent mentally ill people from being convicted of a crime that never even happened. Under that rule, a confession alone would not be probable cause (but a confession and a bloody glove could be). This article reports that at the federal level and in 10 states, there is a lower bar of mere "corroboration" without the need to argue that there was an actual crime. Exemplifying this relaxing of the traditional rule, in Opper v. United States, 348 U.S. 84, the court held that "[a]n accused's extrajudicial admissions of essential facts or elements of the crime, made subsequent to the crime, are of the same character as confessions, and corroboration by independent evidence is required". However, "[t]he corroborative evidence need not be sufficient, independent of the statements, to establish the corpus delicti" and "[i]t is sufficient if the corroboration supports the essential facts admitted sufficiently to justify a jury inference of their truth; but those facts plus the other evidence must be sufficient to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt". In such jurisdictions, courts take a "totality of circumstances" approach focusing on whether the confession is trustworthy.
The question is oddly phrased: The law does not give allowances for its violation. Many laws have exceptions. E.g., the law against killing endangered animals contains an exception for defensive killings. Perhaps you are thinking of safe harbors? For example, there are general provisions in the law like "exigent circumstances" that allow police to proceed with actions that, absent those provisions, would constitute violations of law. "Permission" to violate a right can be granted explicitly in the form of a warrant, which allows law enforcement to "violate" specific property and freedom rights. Finally, one might consider an executive pardon or jury-nullification to be ex post "permission to break the law."
Its worth actually reading through the law again - they're meant for different categories of drugs - and its worth looking up the relevant laws as a whole. You can't cherrypick which law you charge them under in this case. It depends on what the suspect has in posession, and if you have more serious charges, they're probably going to be preferred unless the prosecution decides to throw the entire library at the suspect and charge them with everything they can, or a larger subset. A quick search on the internet - which shouldn't be taken as legal advice, brings up this link. Category 1 drugs are addictive and seen as therapeutically useless - you shouldn't have any realistic reason to have quantities of it in your posession. Category 3 is drugs with therapeutic use - stuff like codine. You could get a prescription for that, but there's potential for abuse. They're aimed at different classes of drugs - and the confusion is over a misinterpretation of what the law is about. As an aside, this is why you need to usually read more than just a specific statute or law to get what its about.