8 ms·

This seems like clear "witness intimidation" aka "Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant" https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512 https://ww

This seems like clear "witness intimidation" aka "Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant" https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512 (b)Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to— (1)influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding; (2)cause or induce any person to— (A)withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding; (B)alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal an object with intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; (C)evade legal process summoning that person to appear as a witness, or to produce a record, document, or other object, in an official proceeding; or (D)be absent from an official proceeding to which such person has been summoned by legal process; or

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Cannot prove it unless the victim was in a state that allows one party consent audio recording and was recording audio. Although Florida is the only southern state that requires all party consent for recording audio, and I presume the previous poster was talking about Texas. Smartphones have solved the recording audio problem, so presumably it would have been possible.
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  Even then, they will end up not firing the employee then and there, and instead find an excuse to fire them a couple of months later.
  - lemoncookiechip 5y ago
    Or make his work-life a living hell so he quits himself.
    - earleybird 5y ago
      Which has a name: constructive dismissal
- vageli 5y ago
  > Cannot prove it unless the victim was in a state that allows one party consent audio recording and was recording audio. Although Florida is the only southern state that requires all party consent for recording audio, and I presume the previous poster was talking about Texas. Smartphones have solved the recording audio problem, so presumably it would have been possible. Is this true even when gathering evidence of a crime?
  - kodah 5y ago
    California has the same law as Florida. Edit: the laws are the same, and you can't use an illegal recording in a court -- expressly. If you try to give an illegal recording to the news you'll likely get taken in civil court.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      The news organization is free to play it, but the person who recorded it would have still broken the law and opened themselves up to prosecution. https://recordinglaw.com/party-two-party-consent-states/ https://recordinglaw.com/party-two-party-consent-states/
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      In California a recording without required consent is a crime when made. Intended use doesn't play into that. It is also separately prohibit from use as evidence in court except as evidence of violation of the law prohibiting such recording itself. > If you wanted to play it on the news, however, you're still free to do that as far as I know. Sure, if you want to advertise the crime you committed on the news you are permitted to do that. There is no express prohibition on this in the California law, sure, but it probably is a good way to rack up civil liability as well as advertising your existing exposure to criminal liability. If Florida really has identical law in this area, I’d expect the same thing.
      - kodah 5y ago
        Ah, today I learned. I had searched on this a while back but couldn't find provisions for the civil side of things.
- cormacrelf 5y ago
  Sorry, where does it say that all proof must be in the form of an audio recording? Prosecuting crimes worked perfectly fine before the invention of the tape recorder.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I am deducing it based on the fact that if one person is threatening someone by talking to them in person with no one else around, then he said she said accusations will not be sufficient to convict one of witness tampering in a criminal trial.
    - deepsun 5y ago
      But how then verbal intimidation was proven in an age before audio-recording?
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Was it? It is pretty well known that one of the main obstacles for populations such as poorer people, women, minorities, or anyone else in a position position where someone has power over them that they can be coerced into questionable activities and they have no recourse because there is no proof.
        cormacrelf 5y ago
        This is correct if your only goal was to secure a conviction, but you are forgetting that when witness tampering is occurring, there is already a judge who is very willing to hear evidence about it. The integrity of their court is at stake. They absolutely do not require an audio recording to make any number of potent orders to protect you. The indirectness of the threat and its unsuitability to curing by judicial power is more of a problem than the lack of audio recording. Your best bet if you care about delivering the evidence is probably to leverage the power of the judge, ventilate it and get the people threatening you to retreat. If you do that, you transform a threat behind closed doors (not to do something) into a retaliation for something real that you did (telling the court about tampering) that you can tell your tenure committee about later. In sum, open justice is designed to expose these things, it is far and away the best forum for it, so better to use it while you can.
- ninjinxo 5y ago
  Aren't there usually provisions to override requiring all party consent, if it becomes reasonably necessary as criminal (not civil) evidence or for your own legal/physical protection? Edit: I looked into it, nope, Florida is utterly insane - a child didn't get consent to record their rapist soliciting/threatening them, so the evidence was denied; On December 11, 2014, the Florida Supreme Court held in McDade v. State, 154 So. 3d 292 (Fla. 2014), that a defendant accused of child molestation has an expectation of privacy in conversations between him and his victim taking place in their shared residence where he asked her to have sex with him and also alluded to his prior acts of sexual abuse. ... the court concluded that the Secrecy of Communications Act’s (SCA), F.S. Ch. 934, et seq. (2014), plain language barred the trial court’s admission of a recorded conversation between McDade and his victim into evidence. The decision may surprise some, especially when one considers that the victim’s actions in McDade also constituted a crime under the SCA and authorized the criminal defendant in that case to sue the victim under the statute’s civil cause of action https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/mcdade-v-state-a-clarion-call-for-an-exception-to-floridas-secrecy-of-communications-act/ https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/mcdade-v-... https://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-district-court-of-appeal/1633785.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-district-court-of-appeal/1633... https://law.justia.com/cases/florida/supreme-court/2014/sc13-1248.html https://law.justia.com/cases/florida/supreme-court/2014/sc13... They have since made a exclusion for this scenario, allowing children to record talking to their abusers. https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2015/7001 https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2015/7001
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    You should still record anyway. Use it in the court of public opinion.
    - Loughla 5y ago
      Except if the recording is illegal, it can be used, in some states, against you criminally and civilly. I was just having this conversation. You can be sued and/or jailed if you record someone without their consent in a two party consent state. Not saying it's right or wrong, but it exists and is something to think about.
- xyzzy21 5y ago
  Technically, yes. But when the other party is breaking the law, I'd still do it. Then if the other party wants to prosecute on that, well, then discovery will become interesting and all of it will affect the other case.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  Generally whistleblowing laws override audio recording consent. Tampering with a witness is a crime, and attempting to document evidence of a crime will outweigh the civil tort.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
JaceLightning 5y ago
Yep. Just like the George Floyd trial "if they don't find him guilty, we'll burn the city down."

lotsofpulp 5y ago

Cannot prove it unless the victim was in a state that allows one party consent audio recording and was recording audio. Although Florida is the only southern state that requires all party consent for recording audio, and I presume the previous poster was talking about Texas. Smartphones have solved the recording audio problem, so presumably it would have been possible.

smnrchrds 5y ago
Even then, they will end up not firing the employee then and there, and instead find an excuse to fire them a couple of months later.
- lemoncookiechip 5y ago
  Or make his work-life a living hell so he quits himself.
  - earleybird 5y ago
    Which has a name: constructive dismissal
vageli 5y ago
> Cannot prove it unless the victim was in a state that allows one party consent audio recording and was recording audio. Although Florida is the only southern state that requires all party consent for recording audio, and I presume the previous poster was talking about Texas. Smartphones have solved the recording audio problem, so presumably it would have been possible. Is this true even when gathering evidence of a crime?
- kodah 5y ago
  California has the same law as Florida. Edit: the laws are the same, and you can't use an illegal recording in a court -- expressly. If you try to give an illegal recording to the news you'll likely get taken in civil court.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The news organization is free to play it, but the person who recorded it would have still broken the law and opened themselves up to prosecution. https://recordinglaw.com/party-two-party-consent-states/ https://recordinglaw.com/party-two-party-consent-states/
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    In California a recording without required consent is a crime when made. Intended use doesn't play into that. It is also separately prohibit from use as evidence in court except as evidence of violation of the law prohibiting such recording itself. > If you wanted to play it on the news, however, you're still free to do that as far as I know. Sure, if you want to advertise the crime you committed on the news you are permitted to do that. There is no express prohibition on this in the California law, sure, but it probably is a good way to rack up civil liability as well as advertising your existing exposure to criminal liability. If Florida really has identical law in this area, I’d expect the same thing.
    - kodah 5y ago
      Ah, today I learned. I had searched on this a while back but couldn't find provisions for the civil side of things.
cormacrelf 5y ago
Sorry, where does it say that all proof must be in the form of an audio recording? Prosecuting crimes worked perfectly fine before the invention of the tape recorder.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I am deducing it based on the fact that if one person is threatening someone by talking to them in person with no one else around, then he said she said accusations will not be sufficient to convict one of witness tampering in a criminal trial.
  - deepsun 5y ago
    But how then verbal intimidation was proven in an age before audio-recording?
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Was it? It is pretty well known that one of the main obstacles for populations such as poorer people, women, minorities, or anyone else in a position position where someone has power over them that they can be coerced into questionable activities and they have no recourse because there is no proof.
      - cormacrelf 5y ago
        This is correct if your only goal was to secure a conviction, but you are forgetting that when witness tampering is occurring, there is already a judge who is very willing to hear evidence about it. The integrity of their court is at stake. They absolutely do not require an audio recording to make any number of potent orders to protect you. The indirectness of the threat and its unsuitability to curing by judicial power is more of a problem than the lack of audio recording. Your best bet if you care about delivering the evidence is probably to leverage the power of the judge, ventilate it and get the people threatening you to retreat. If you do that, you transform a threat behind closed doors (not to do something) into a retaliation for something real that you did (telling the court about tampering) that you can tell your tenure committee about later. In sum, open justice is designed to expose these things, it is far and away the best forum for it, so better to use it while you can.
ninjinxo 5y ago
Aren't there usually provisions to override requiring all party consent, if it becomes reasonably necessary as criminal (not civil) evidence or for your own legal/physical protection? Edit: I looked into it, nope, Florida is utterly insane - a child didn't get consent to record their rapist soliciting/threatening them, so the evidence was denied; On December 11, 2014, the Florida Supreme Court held in McDade v. State, 154 So. 3d 292 (Fla. 2014), that a defendant accused of child molestation has an expectation of privacy in conversations between him and his victim taking place in their shared residence where he asked her to have sex with him and also alluded to his prior acts of sexual abuse. ... the court concluded that the Secrecy of Communications Act’s (SCA), F.S. Ch. 934, et seq. (2014), plain language barred the trial court’s admission of a recorded conversation between McDade and his victim into evidence. The decision may surprise some, especially when one considers that the victim’s actions in McDade also constituted a crime under the SCA and authorized the criminal defendant in that case to sue the victim under the statute’s civil cause of action https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/mcdade-v-state-a-clarion-call-for-an-exception-to-floridas-secrecy-of-communications-act/ https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/mcdade-v-... https://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-district-court-of-appeal/1633785.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-district-court-of-appeal/1633... https://law.justia.com/cases/florida/supreme-court/2014/sc13-1248.html https://law.justia.com/cases/florida/supreme-court/2014/sc13... They have since made a exclusion for this scenario, allowing children to record talking to their abusers. https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2015/7001 https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2015/7001
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  You should still record anyway. Use it in the court of public opinion.
  - Loughla 5y ago
    Except if the recording is illegal, it can be used, in some states, against you criminally and civilly. I was just having this conversation. You can be sued and/or jailed if you record someone without their consent in a two party consent state. Not saying it's right or wrong, but it exists and is something to think about.
xyzzy21 5y ago
Technically, yes. But when the other party is breaking the law, I'd still do it. Then if the other party wants to prosecute on that, well, then discovery will become interesting and all of it will affect the other case.
FireBeyond 5y ago
Generally whistleblowing laws override audio recording consent. Tampering with a witness is a crime, and attempting to document evidence of a crime will outweigh the civil tort.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

JaceLightning 5y ago

Yep. Just like the George Floyd trial "if they don't find him guilty, we'll burn the city down."