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A common refrain you hear from law enforcement is "ignorance of the law is no protection from breaking it." But what if it was? As Harvey Silverglate details

A common refrain you hear from law enforcement is "ignorance of the law is no protection from breaking it." But what if it was? As Harvey Silverglate details in his book, "3 Felonies a Day,[1]" it is absurdly easy to accidentally commit a federal crime and serve prison time. The idea behind vindictive punishment is to make it so bad that you won't commit a crime, but if people aren't aware of the liabilities, how can people truly know their risk? Often intent has to be proven, but if it's in the interest of the prosecutor and their career to get a conviction, they'll get a conviction. I think to reduce the "arrest/convict, ask questions later" approach is to give every officer and prosecutor a publicly available scorecard that shows their record of rightful arrests and convictions versus wrongful ones, as well as excessive punishment sought and applied in wrongful cases. There is a scene at the end of the hilarious murder trial film, My Cousin Vinny, when the defense's expert witness completely shatters the prosecution's case, and the prosecutor immediately moves to dismiss all charges. I wonder if that would happen today? 1. http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.asp...

anon4 11y ago
You reminded me of something I heard the other day regarding minimum sentencing laws -- they (partly) don't work because people aren't law experts and don't know about them. It's like that joke "I bought a book on livestock breeding but the cows can't read it". Maybe better education of the consequences would help. Or not. I don't know.
adekok 11y ago
> A common refrain you hear from law enforcement is "ignorance of the law is no protection from breaking it." > > But what if it was? It is for police and judges. See what happens if a policeman gives you a bogus ticket. Or a judge makes a decision counter to the law. The onus is on you to prove they're wrong. And there is no punishment or negative feedback on them for breaking the law. If the police and judges aren't required to know the law, I don't see why anyone else needs to know it, either.
- splat 11y ago
  This principle was explicitly upheld by the Supreme Court in Heien v. North Carolina. A police officer pulled a car over because it had a broken brake light. During the stop, the police officer became suspicious that the car was carrying drugs, searched the car (with the permission of the driver) and found cocaine. Now, as it happens it is not illegal under North Carolina state law to have a broken brake light, so the police officer had no basis to pull the man over in the first place. But the Supreme Court ruled that there are so many laws out there that a police officer cannot possibly know them all and because the police officer believed that the defendant was breaking the law in good faith, that was good enough for a traffic stop.
  - SilasX 11y ago
    Why would it be legal to have non working brake lights? Is car safety equipment just optional in NC? (Makes sense that it should be insufficient for a car search though.)
    - splat 11y ago
      I might have had it slightly wrong in my original comment. I think that only one of his brake lights was faulty and it's not illegal to have one broken brake light.
adrusi 11y ago
I agree, there should be some process to challenge that a law is too obscure, and if the judge agrees with the defendant, the defendant's charge is dropped and a process put into motion to dramatically increase public awareness of the law. It seems we have a blanket policy to address ignorance of the law, which makes no sense because the whole point of trials is to make decisions case-by-case. I don't think this process would be used often though.
iamcurious 11y ago
I think that "ignorance of the law is no protection from breaking it" is desirable. Otherwise it would be on everybody's best interest not to know the law. Of course, it is also desirable for a lay person to be able to know the full extent of the law. Maybe we should make a rule about the maximum amount of information that can be encoded in our legal system. Such as, you can only get n bits of information, for some reasonable n. Say the same amounts of bits that takes to encode Romeo and Juliet. Once they are all used up, it would not be possible to mandate more things unless some previous mandates are removed. We would still need codes and regulations, though, and we could assign m new bits to each of them. With the rule that no role should require one to be aware of more than k codes and regulations. For the smallest possible k. So the cost of knowing (albeit not necessarily understanding) the law would be n + mk. Which seems sensible enough.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >I think that "ignorance of the law is no protection from breaking it" is desirable. Otherwise it would be on everybody's best interest not to know the law. Have it depend on some community average. Common laws, ignorance is no excuse. Esoteric laws? Not knowing is an excuse. This way, society will make sure to know the laws they value (such as knowing theft is wrong because more people would rather not be stolen from than be able to get away with stealing), but society is still protected against insane esoteric laws that just serve to make everyone into a criminal.

anon4 11y ago

You reminded me of something I heard the other day regarding minimum sentencing laws -- they (partly) don't work because people aren't law experts and don't know about them. It's like that joke "I bought a book on livestock breeding but the cows can't read it". Maybe better education of the consequences would help. Or not. I don't know.

adekok 11y ago

> A common refrain you hear from law enforcement is "ignorance of the law is no protection from breaking it." > > But what if it was? It is for police and judges. See what happens if a policeman gives you a bogus ticket. Or a judge makes a decision counter to the law. The onus is on you to prove they're wrong. And there is no punishment or negative feedback on them for breaking the law. If the police and judges aren't required to know the law, I don't see why anyone else needs to know it, either.

splat 11y ago
This principle was explicitly upheld by the Supreme Court in Heien v. North Carolina. A police officer pulled a car over because it had a broken brake light. During the stop, the police officer became suspicious that the car was carrying drugs, searched the car (with the permission of the driver) and found cocaine. Now, as it happens it is not illegal under North Carolina state law to have a broken brake light, so the police officer had no basis to pull the man over in the first place. But the Supreme Court ruled that there are so many laws out there that a police officer cannot possibly know them all and because the police officer believed that the defendant was breaking the law in good faith, that was good enough for a traffic stop.
- SilasX 11y ago
  Why would it be legal to have non working brake lights? Is car safety equipment just optional in NC? (Makes sense that it should be insufficient for a car search though.)
  - splat 11y ago
    I might have had it slightly wrong in my original comment. I think that only one of his brake lights was faulty and it's not illegal to have one broken brake light.

adrusi 11y ago

I agree, there should be some process to challenge that a law is too obscure, and if the judge agrees with the defendant, the defendant's charge is dropped and a process put into motion to dramatically increase public awareness of the law. It seems we have a blanket policy to address ignorance of the law, which makes no sense because the whole point of trials is to make decisions case-by-case. I don't think this process would be used often though.

iamcurious 11y ago

I think that "ignorance of the law is no protection from breaking it" is desirable. Otherwise it would be on everybody's best interest not to know the law. Of course, it is also desirable for a lay person to be able to know the full extent of the law. Maybe we should make a rule about the maximum amount of information that can be encoded in our legal system. Such as, you can only get n bits of information, for some reasonable n. Say the same amounts of bits that takes to encode Romeo and Juliet. Once they are all used up, it would not be possible to mandate more things unless some previous mandates are removed. We would still need codes and regulations, though, and we could assign m new bits to each of them. With the rule that no role should require one to be aware of more than k codes and regulations. For the smallest possible k. So the cost of knowing (albeit not necessarily understanding) the law would be n + mk. Which seems sensible enough.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>I think that "ignorance of the law is no protection from breaking it" is desirable. Otherwise it would be on everybody's best interest not to know the law. Have it depend on some community average. Common laws, ignorance is no excuse. Esoteric laws? Not knowing is an excuse. This way, society will make sure to know the laws they value (such as knowing theft is wrong because more people would rather not be stolen from than be able to get away with stealing), but society is still protected against insane esoteric laws that just serve to make everyone into a criminal.