Do the Ohio sheriffs suing Afroman have any legal standing in their claim of &quot;invasion of privacy and misappropriation of their likenesses&quot; lawsuit? From this article “Afroman Sued by Sheriffs for Allegedly Profiting from Raid on his Home. Afroman is reportedly being sued by a number of Ohio sheriff deputies for allegedly profiting off the raid they conducted on his home last summer. The Adams County Sheriff’s Department ran up on Afroman’s home last August, where officers searched for illegal narcotics but failed to find anything. Afroman filmed the entire raid via his security cameras, and in the months since the raid has compiled the footage together to turn it into a music video called “Will You Help Me Repair My Door.” This has reportedly upset the Ohio sheriff’s deputies involved in the raid as they believe Afroman to be profiting off their hard work. In turn, the police are suing for invasion of privacy and misappropriation of their likenesses, and are claiming the music video has caused them emotional distress, ridicule, humiliation, loss of reputation and embarrassment. “My house is my property, my video camera films, everything on my property as they begin, stealing my money, disconnecting plus destroying my video camera system, they became my property,” Afroman said. “Criminals caught in the act, of vandalizing and stealing money. My video footage is my property. I used it to identify the criminals who broke into my house, and stole my money. I used it to identify criminals, who broke into my house, stole my money and disconnected my home security system.” Do the Ohio sheriffs suing Afroman have any legal standing in their claim &quot;invasion of privacy and misappropriation of their likenesses&quot; lawsuit?
The deputies have standing, but they're probably going to lose. &quot;Standing&quot; is just a legal principle that limits the legal process to people who have suffered certain types of injuries. Jen's answer offers a good explanation of why the answer is yes, they do have standing. But I assume you're less interested in whether the officers are capable of bringing the case than in whether their case is likely to succeed. The answer to that is no. Claim 1 alleges a violation of Ohio's right-of-publicity statute. But that statute includes a carveout for any &quot;use of the persona of an individual that is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as long as the use does not convey or reasonably suggest endorsement by the individual whose persona is at issue.&quot; Ohio Rev. Code 2741.09 . So the officers lose if Afroman's videos are protected by the First Amendment. And they almost certainly are, as the assumption is that all speech is protected unless it falls into one of several very narrow categories -- incitement, defamation, fighting words, etc. -- that are pretty clearly not applicable here. Claim 2 alleges misappropriation of persona. This claim strikes me as the strongest, but probably still pretty weak. To win this claim, the deputies must prove: that Afroman appropriated to his own use or benefit the reputation, prestige, social or commercial standing, public interest or other values of their name or likeness; that their names or likenesses have some intrinsic value; and that that value was taken by defendant for its own benefit, commercial or otherwise. Jackson v. Playboy Enters., Inc., 574 F. Supp. 10, 13 (S.D. Ohio 1983). See also Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broad. Co., 433 U.S. 562, 576 (1977) (&quot;No social purpose is served by having the defendant get free some aspect of the plaintiff that would have market value and for which he would normally pay.&quot;). It seems like it will be difficult to argue that the deputies' names or likenesses have any intrinsic value on which to premise damages. If the idea of this tort is to give the plaintiff the benefit of the commercial value of the misapporpriation, the court must evaluate whether there's any commercial value to the use of the deputies' names or images. Are these deputies moonlighting as models? Would they have licensed the use of their likenesses if Afroman had so requested? It seems unlikely. Instead, the value of using them in these contexts arises only from their connection with a newsworthy event on which Afroman wishes to comment. That seems to move us out of privacy territory and into protected speech territory, which means Claim 2 should fail. Claim 3 alleges false-light invasion of privacy. To win this claim, the deputies must prove: that Afroman gives publicity to a matter concerning them; that the publicity placed the deputies before the public in a false light; that the false light in which the other was placed would be highly offensive to a reasonable person; and that Afroman acted with actual malice. Welling v. Weinfeld, 113 Ohio St. 3d 464, 473 (2007). The complaint does not identify any statements Afroman made that were false or that placed the deputies in a false light before the public. The only things I can see as possibly &quot;false&quot; are the hyperbolic statements mocking the police officers, such as those suggesting that a female deputy is actually a man because her voice was &quot;three octaves lower&quot; than his, or his suggestions that the police are members of the KKK. Without something more substantial that reasonable people would have been likely to truly believe was true, this claim is likely to fail also, as hyperbole and opinion are generally protected under the First Amendment. Vail v. the Plain Dealer Publishing Co., 72 Ohio St. 3d 279, 283 (Ohio 1995) (“The ordinary reader would accept this column as opinion and not as fact. Therefore, the statements are protected.”). Claim 4 alleges unreasonable publicity given to private lives. To win this claim, the deputies must prove: there is publicity; the facts disclosed concern an individual's private life; the matter publicized was one that would be highly offensive and objectionable to a reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities; the publication was made intentionally, rather than negligently; and the matter publicized was of no legitimate concern to the public. Cox v. Hausmann, No. 3:17-cv-02420, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 181458, at *33 (N.D. Ohio Sep. 30, 2020). From my review of the complaint and some of Afroman's media, it doesn't look like Afroman has publicized any facts that are subject to a legitimate claim of privacy. Instead, Afroman has published video of government officials, engaged in the work of government, and commented on those videos. Those are matters about the deputies' public lives, not private, and the conduct of police is of legitimate concern to the public. Claim 4 should therefore also fail. It seems more likely that this case was brought to intimidate Afroman or to create some kind of leverage in the civil-rights claim Afroman will probably be bringing based on potential violations of his Fourth Amendment rights. If this is correct, the deputies will be lucky to have the case simply dismissed. Sanctions and an abuse-of-process counterclaim are more likely.
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.
&quot;Checking someone's digital footprint&quot; could be stalking, depending on the circumstances. The better question to ask is about the legality of a certain action, and not the specific name used in a jurisdiction (although indeed in Washington there is a defined crime of &quot;stalking&quot;). I don't know what you mean by &quot;checking someone's digital footprint&quot;, and it is not defined by law. Looking at RCW 9a.46.110, we can first discern that it does not matter for the definition of the crime where these people live or where the robbery took place. If two people from Alberta travel to Alaska and harass or murder a person from Texas, Washington law does not enter into the equation. The crime that you're asking about is the snooping, so for Washington to have jurisdiction, the snooping has to be &quot;in&quot; Washington. That does not mean that both parties have to be in Washington – there can be complex jurisdictional laws if the accused is in another state or country. The accused can easily be prosecuted in his own state, he can also be prosecuted in a foreign country, if he is caught there or if he is extradited to that country. For the act to be stalking, the first element is that &quot;He or she intentionally and repeatedly harasses or repeatedly follows another person; and...&quot;. Harassment is defined in that section as a knowing and willful course of conduct directed at a specific person which seriously alarms, annoys, harasses, or is detrimental to such person, and which serves no legitimate or lawful purpose. The course of conduct shall be such as would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress, and shall actually cause substantial emotional distress to the petitioner, or when the course of conduct would cause a reasonable parent to fear for the well-being of his or her child. Since there was no communication between the parties, there is no harassment in the legal sense. There is no &quot;following&quot; either, therefore the act fails to constitute stalking w.r.t the first elements. Since the crime is defined by a conjunction of elements and your scenario fails on the first conjunct, it is not &quot;stalking&quot; (it is also not &quot;harassment&quot; as defined in RCW 9A.46.020, 9A.46.060.
These are some thoughts about the state of affairs in the US, I do not know how it works in the UK. In the US it seems to be a legal gray area. Gray enough that I do not think any lawyer could say for certain that the use of the data is legal. The data is stolen. If possessing stolen property is illegal then possessing this data is also likely illegal. Of course experts disagree, Stuart Karle, an adjunct media professor at Columbia University and former general counsel for the Wall Street Journal says: ...the documents have been published by the hackers, they are now public by virtue of being put on the Internet. But Barrett Brown was charged with trafficking in stolen authentication when he forwarded a link to some stolen emails. He signed a plea for acting as an accessory after the fact. He spent more than a year in jail while they sorted it out. In the US there is no law banning the download of hacked documents. In fact Bartnicki v. Vopper 532 US 514 (2001) stands for the rule that journalists can report on illegally obtained information. But contrast that with the Barret Brown prosecution! And decide where a data scientist fits. Also there is the question of whether an illegally recorded conversation is of the same "illegal" nature as hacked personal information.
§Sec. 54-212 of the ordinance states (a) It shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture, sell, offer or display for sale, give, lend, transfer ownership of, acquire, carry or possess any assault weapon or large capacity magazine in Cook County So if the gun is an assault weapon, it is not legal to sell. That ends the legal inquiry. Beyond that, we can only conjecture as to possibilities, for example (1) you may be mistaken in your assessment of some particular firearm, (2) the authorities don't know yet so haven't taken action or (3) they do know and they have taken action. Your link did not lead to any obvious things that count as an assault weapon, perhaps you could be more specific.
I'll use Wisconsin as a jurisdiction. If you file a false death certificate, that's a felony. But you probably wouldn't go that far. It could be disorderly conduct. In Wisconsin disorderly conduct is described as follows: Whoever, in a public or private place, engages in violent, abusive, indecent, profane, boisterous, unreasonably loud or otherwise disorderly conduct under circumstances in which the conduct tends to cause or provoke a disturbance is guilty of a Class B misdemeanor. There's also a statute prohibiting "Disrupting a funeral or memorial service" but it won't apply in this case unless disorderly conduct applies. It would raise the penalty to a class A misdemeanor (or a class I felony if you somehow did it again after being convicted once.) On the civil side, there could be an action for intentional infliction of emotional distress, either for the false report of your death, or for a "corpse" suddenly coming to life. This kind of lawsuit requires "extreme and outrageous conduct", but if this isn't, I don't know what would be.
As a legal matter, you need to call or visit your local police station, report that you found some lost money, answer their questions honestly and dispassionately (they don't care about your hate etc. unless it's causing an active situation they have to deal with, and even then they don't much want to hear you go on about it), and then let them deal with it. You can tell your neighbor, if he inquires, that you have handed the matter to the local police and he can inquire with them about claiming it; feel free to ask the police to affirm that's the suitable course of action. You can expect to be given legal possession of it if they are unable to determine the true owner in accordance with local law. You can ask the police for details on that, though they'll probably just tell you as a matter of procedure without prompting.
Publishing government records is pretty classic First Amendment-protected activity. Keeping in mind that one can find a lawyer to sue for anything, I think that person would likely be operating well within the law. One thing in particular that I'd recommend staying aware of is how one might attempt to monetize this endeavor. There have been a lot of sites publishing arrest records, court records, and mugshots, and then charging people to have them removed to keep them from popping up in a Google search for those people's names. That is -- rightly -- regarded as sketchy behavior; while several states have passed laws prohibiting that business model, I don't believe any such law exists in Washington State at this point.