7 ms·

If I believe, in good faith, I have not broken the law. I should not be convicted.

by ty6853 1y ago

mjd 1y ago
This is not responsive. The police did not commit a crime here. Also note that there are good-faith defenses to all sorts of crimes, because (for example) there is a difference between knowingly defrauding a customer and just making a mistake.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  > The police did not commit a crime here. They did, however, violate the Fourth Amendment. Per the court.
  - mjd 1y ago
    The Fourth Amendment was violated by the magistrate judge who issued the illegal warrant, not by the police officers who, acting in in good faith, executed it.
    - RHSeeger 1y ago
      No, the judge told them they were allowed to do it. The act of doing it is what violated the fourth amendment. If they hadn't acted on the warrant, the fourth amendment wouldn't have been violated. The judge was _wrong_, but the police are the ones that violated the amendment.
      - mjd 1y ago
        “No warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, … and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Judge Magit violated the amendment by issuing the warrant.
    - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
      If my lawyer tells me selling a specific analog version of fentanyl is legal because it's different enough/whatever, and I good faith sell an analog version of fentanyl, do I get a good faith exemption?
      - lucb1e 1y ago
        Bad analogy but I'll try it: I take it fentanyl is some illegal drug, but some people can legally sell drugs (licensed apothecaries). If they go for a license, get it approved, then sell a drug, and then it turns out the license is invalid due to no fault of their own and should not have been issued, I don't think anyone is surprised if the apothecary is not on the hook for that. But I'm not a lawyer, much less a judge, so who knows what they'd actually rule In the example where "someone told me to do it", you're glossing over evidence (this was in writing, not hearsay). In the example of addictive substances, you can be reasonably expected to do your own research and not take a random person's written word for it. The analogy is so hyperbolic, I don't get the impression you're trying to reasonably think about this case
        _DeadFred_ 1y ago
        Fentanyl is an illegal drug. There is an Analog Acct that makes it so that close analogs to fentanyl are illegal. That was done because people were making analogs and getting away with it. Drug dealers then went to their lawyers and asked if certain formulations fell under the Analog Act. Their lawyer said no and wrote out how they were legal and didn't fall under the analog act. They sold the drugs and went to prison even though they thought they were in the clear (so good faith should apply, right?). This is a real case that I have experience with so not sure why I'm being called out as acting in bad faith or making up a ridiculous scenario. This is a real scenario with the people sitting in prison still (for another 5 years).
        lucb1e 1y ago
        Right, I see. There's still the difference of having official permission according to the legal system, such as the search warrant being a mechanism codified in law, or the mechanism to get a license as an apothecary to operate a pharmacy If there is no such license you can apply for, I'm not sure there exists a system by which you can be indemnified from criminal prosecution for doing such sales (or possession or whatever the case may be) The question reminded me of a 2019 case where two parties went to the judge to get a ruling on something, without there being damages or claims. (Here, a potential buyer and seller could ask to decide whether a certain substance would be legal to sell before the sale happens, steering clear of prosecution until there is a ruling.) Reading that case back, the legal provision that made this possible only applies to situations where the parties are free to do whatever (such as with a contract dispute); it does not work for creating jurisprudence on criminal law. Asking ChatGPT as a quick last attempt, it proposes to ask a lawyer (you've shared how well that worked) or to sue the government over the law that makes the sale illegal which would be void if the judge goes "this substance doesn't fall under that law anyway" and then you've got jurisprudence to work with. The latter sounds a bit strange, not sure if that's actually possible, but it'd be worth exploring for such edge cases where it may or may not be criminal to do a certain thing Of course, I totally see how this is a double standard: you've done your homework and to the best of everyone's knowledge it's legal, and then when it turns out you're wrong, whether you get sent to prison depends on whether it was the government who sanctioned it. Everyone can make an honest mistake, government or no I don't know the intentions of the drugs dealers you have experience with. If there are legit purposes for the specific analog they were selling (that is, purposes falling outside of the spirit of the law that makes fentanyl (analogs) illegal) then it seems strange that a judge would send them to prison for years. Was a long prison sentence perhaps compulsory due to some minimum sentence requirement as part of this war on drugs thing? Wondering this since our government is implementing more and more minimum punishments despite research showing this does not deter the behavior and also increases recidivism due to the longer time you spend outside society, losing any position that you had in it. It's great
- everforward 1y ago
  18 U.S. Code § 242, “Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States…”. The judge erred in granting the warrant, the police violated the above statute. Them being unaware would be an affirmative defense, that does require admission of the above crime.
- qingcharles 1y ago
  Police can commit statutory crimes to gather evidence in the USA. I'd like to see any solid ruling that says otherwise. What they cannot do is violate certain constitutional rights to do so without triggering exclusion.
encom 1y ago
If you can cite previous court cases in your favour, you probably won't.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> If I believe, in good faith, I have not broken the law. I should not be convicted How often does this actually happen in criminal matters?
- mjd 1y ago
  It's a perfectly reasonable defense to a charge of mail fraud, for example. Or employing illegal aliens. "But they told me they had work visas, and they showed me what later turned out to be expertly-counterfeited visas!" Why shouldn't that get you off the hook, if true?
- ty6853 1y ago
  Jeremy Kettler -- bought a silencer completely made and sold within his state (no interstate commerce) and believed based on the Kansas Second Amendment Act (I think that was the name) which legalized intrastate NFA items that it was 100% legal. His own state representatives had advertised to their constituents that the law exempted silencers that never crossed state boundaries. The buyer and seller did it openly and even had photos on facebook, seemingly totally oblivious this would actually still touch federal law / interstate commerce. Cody Wilson -- Went to a sugar daddy website that verifies IDs to ensure all 'escorts' are 18 which is a pretty good faith way to do it IMO. Woman seemingly had fake ID at some point, and also lied and turned out to be like 16 or 17. At some point later she underwent counseling at school and admitted she was an escort, after which a criminal investigation happened and Mr. Wilson was arrested. As a strict liability crime, there was no defense that due diligence was done to ensure the escort was 18.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    The SAFA case is complicated, granted, and rare; it reached the appellate circuit for a reason. CSAM and child sexual assault are one of the few areas of criminal law where we confer (in my opinion, correctly) absolute liability. Broadly speaking, I think more cops have been convicted of duty-related crimes than unsuspecting random convicted of and punished for a crime they didn’t know they committed.
__loam 1y ago
This is a weird concept to people in stem fields, but in law intent matters a lot. It's the difference between manslaughter and murder.
- ty6853 1y ago
  It apparently doesn't in one of the areas of which I have a high level interest. The ATF is constantly changing their mind on what a machine gun is, and if it is one, it is a strict liability crime. Not long ago a guy was put in jail for creating business-card sized metal sheets with the image of a 'lightning link' (machinegun conversion device) on it. Not the actual device, just a picture of it etched <0.001" into the metal. Clearly just art, and even when the ATF cut it out they could not get it function as a machine gun. They gave it to an actual machinist, and even after a day he could not get it to function as a machine gun. They could only get it to do anything by literally jamming it into the gun and making it do hammer follow, which every AR-15 can do with the parts already in it. Up until the guy was convicted I don't think anyone had any idea a picture of a machine gun on a metal card was a machine gun. They even convicted the guy advertising it, who never as far as I know actually distributed one.
  - kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
    Meanwhile, you can use bump-stocks as a redneck machine gun all day long.
    - AngryData 1y ago
      Bumpstocks are a worthless gimmick, you can bump fire 99.9% of semi-auto guns with zero modifications or special stocks.
  - aftbit 1y ago
    Are you talking about the AutoKeyCard case, Kristopher Ervin and Matthew Hoover? Ervin finally gets out of prison on 2025-05-03 and Hoover gets out on Christmas 2026.
addicted 1y ago
If you believe in good faith that you have not broken the law, and can reasonably convince a jury of that, you almost certainly will receive a lighter sentence than you would have otherwise and in some cases also be acquitted. So this isn’t really a good argument even if we ignore the fact that it’s a non sequitur. A better argument is that the good faith exception, while making sense in principle, can easily be abused by the police to make illegally obtained evidence look like it was done in good faith, and therefore the exception itself should be removed because of how difficult it is to actually gauge and enforce.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > If you believe in good faith that you have not broken the law, and can reasonably convince a jury of that, you almost certainly will receive a lighter sentence than you would have otherwise Juries usually don't decide sentencing, and even if they did I don't think that would matter with crimes viewed as wrong in themselves (mala in se) though it might with crimes viewed as wrong because they are prohibited (mala prohibita).
  - ty6853 1y ago
    Well there's also the case that a main component in having your sentence reduced is expressing genuine remorse. I'm not sure how on earth someone could be remorseful for a mala prohibitum victimless offense while simultaneously maintaining they in good faith thought they were following the law. Any expression of those two views simultaneously would in practice be seen as not much more than "sorry I got caught -- doing something I thought was legal."
    - tedunangst 1y ago
      Doesn't seem contradictory to explain you thought it was okay and had no ill intent, but now realize your mistake and won't do it again. Requiring regret is problematic when you're claiming innocence (didn't do it), but when all parties agree you did it, your concern is convincing them you won't do it again.

If I believe, in good faith, I have not broken the law. I should not be convicted.

by ty6853 1y ago

If I believe, in good faith, I have not broken the law. I should not be convicted.

mjd 1y ago

This is not responsive. The police did not commit a crime here. Also note that there are good-faith defenses to all sorts of crimes, because (for example) there is a difference between knowingly defrauding a customer and just making a mistake.

ceejayoz 1y ago
> The police did not commit a crime here. They did, however, violate the Fourth Amendment. Per the court.
- mjd 1y ago
  The Fourth Amendment was violated by the magistrate judge who issued the illegal warrant, not by the police officers who, acting in in good faith, executed it.
  - RHSeeger 1y ago
    No, the judge told them they were allowed to do it. The act of doing it is what violated the fourth amendment. If they hadn't acted on the warrant, the fourth amendment wouldn't have been violated. The judge was _wrong_, but the police are the ones that violated the amendment.
    - mjd 1y ago
      “No warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, … and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Judge Magit violated the amendment by issuing the warrant.
  - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
    If my lawyer tells me selling a specific analog version of fentanyl is legal because it's different enough/whatever, and I good faith sell an analog version of fentanyl, do I get a good faith exemption?
    - lucb1e 1y ago
      Bad analogy but I'll try it: I take it fentanyl is some illegal drug, but some people can legally sell drugs (licensed apothecaries). If they go for a license, get it approved, then sell a drug, and then it turns out the license is invalid due to no fault of their own and should not have been issued, I don't think anyone is surprised if the apothecary is not on the hook for that. But I'm not a lawyer, much less a judge, so who knows what they'd actually rule In the example where "someone told me to do it", you're glossing over evidence (this was in writing, not hearsay). In the example of addictive substances, you can be reasonably expected to do your own research and not take a random person's written word for it. The analogy is so hyperbolic, I don't get the impression you're trying to reasonably think about this case
      - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
        Fentanyl is an illegal drug. There is an Analog Acct that makes it so that close analogs to fentanyl are illegal. That was done because people were making analogs and getting away with it. Drug dealers then went to their lawyers and asked if certain formulations fell under the Analog Act. Their lawyer said no and wrote out how they were legal and didn't fall under the analog act. They sold the drugs and went to prison even though they thought they were in the clear (so good faith should apply, right?). This is a real case that I have experience with so not sure why I'm being called out as acting in bad faith or making up a ridiculous scenario. This is a real scenario with the people sitting in prison still (for another 5 years).
        lucb1e 1y ago
        Right, I see. There's still the difference of having official permission according to the legal system, such as the search warrant being a mechanism codified in law, or the mechanism to get a license as an apothecary to operate a pharmacy If there is no such license you can apply for, I'm not sure there exists a system by which you can be indemnified from criminal prosecution for doing such sales (or possession or whatever the case may be) The question reminded me of a 2019 case where two parties went to the judge to get a ruling on something, without there being damages or claims. (Here, a potential buyer and seller could ask to decide whether a certain substance would be legal to sell before the sale happens, steering clear of prosecution until there is a ruling.) Reading that case back, the legal provision that made this possible only applies to situations where the parties are free to do whatever (such as with a contract dispute); it does not work for creating jurisprudence on criminal law. Asking ChatGPT as a quick last attempt, it proposes to ask a lawyer (you've shared how well that worked) or to sue the government over the law that makes the sale illegal which would be void if the judge goes "this substance doesn't fall under that law anyway" and then you've got jurisprudence to work with. The latter sounds a bit strange, not sure if that's actually possible, but it'd be worth exploring for such edge cases where it may or may not be criminal to do a certain thing Of course, I totally see how this is a double standard: you've done your homework and to the best of everyone's knowledge it's legal, and then when it turns out you're wrong, whether you get sent to prison depends on whether it was the government who sanctioned it. Everyone can make an honest mistake, government or no I don't know the intentions of the drugs dealers you have experience with. If there are legit purposes for the specific analog they were selling (that is, purposes falling outside of the spirit of the law that makes fentanyl (analogs) illegal) then it seems strange that a judge would send them to prison for years. Was a long prison sentence perhaps compulsory due to some minimum sentence requirement as part of this war on drugs thing? Wondering this since our government is implementing more and more minimum punishments despite research showing this does not deter the behavior and also increases recidivism due to the longer time you spend outside society, losing any position that you had in it. It's great
everforward 1y ago
18 U.S. Code § 242, “Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States…”. The judge erred in granting the warrant, the police violated the above statute. Them being unaware would be an affirmative defense, that does require admission of the above crime.
qingcharles 1y ago
Police can commit statutory crimes to gather evidence in the USA. I'd like to see any solid ruling that says otherwise. What they cannot do is violate certain constitutional rights to do so without triggering exclusion.

encom 1y ago

If you can cite previous court cases in your favour, you probably won't.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> If I believe, in good faith, I have not broken the law. I should not be convicted How often does this actually happen in criminal matters?

mjd 1y ago
It's a perfectly reasonable defense to a charge of mail fraud, for example. Or employing illegal aliens. "But they told me they had work visas, and they showed me what later turned out to be expertly-counterfeited visas!" Why shouldn't that get you off the hook, if true?
ty6853 1y ago
Jeremy Kettler -- bought a silencer completely made and sold within his state (no interstate commerce) and believed based on the Kansas Second Amendment Act (I think that was the name) which legalized intrastate NFA items that it was 100% legal. His own state representatives had advertised to their constituents that the law exempted silencers that never crossed state boundaries. The buyer and seller did it openly and even had photos on facebook, seemingly totally oblivious this would actually still touch federal law / interstate commerce. Cody Wilson -- Went to a sugar daddy website that verifies IDs to ensure all 'escorts' are 18 which is a pretty good faith way to do it IMO. Woman seemingly had fake ID at some point, and also lied and turned out to be like 16 or 17. At some point later she underwent counseling at school and admitted she was an escort, after which a criminal investigation happened and Mr. Wilson was arrested. As a strict liability crime, there was no defense that due diligence was done to ensure the escort was 18.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  The SAFA case is complicated, granted, and rare; it reached the appellate circuit for a reason. CSAM and child sexual assault are one of the few areas of criminal law where we confer (in my opinion, correctly) absolute liability. Broadly speaking, I think more cops have been convicted of duty-related crimes than unsuspecting random convicted of and punished for a crime they didn’t know they committed.

__loam 1y ago

This is a weird concept to people in stem fields, but in law intent matters a lot. It's the difference between manslaughter and murder.

ty6853 1y ago
It apparently doesn't in one of the areas of which I have a high level interest. The ATF is constantly changing their mind on what a machine gun is, and if it is one, it is a strict liability crime. Not long ago a guy was put in jail for creating business-card sized metal sheets with the image of a 'lightning link' (machinegun conversion device) on it. Not the actual device, just a picture of it etched <0.001" into the metal. Clearly just art, and even when the ATF cut it out they could not get it function as a machine gun. They gave it to an actual machinist, and even after a day he could not get it to function as a machine gun. They could only get it to do anything by literally jamming it into the gun and making it do hammer follow, which every AR-15 can do with the parts already in it. Up until the guy was convicted I don't think anyone had any idea a picture of a machine gun on a metal card was a machine gun. They even convicted the guy advertising it, who never as far as I know actually distributed one.
- kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
  Meanwhile, you can use bump-stocks as a redneck machine gun all day long.
  - AngryData 1y ago
    Bumpstocks are a worthless gimmick, you can bump fire 99.9% of semi-auto guns with zero modifications or special stocks.
- aftbit 1y ago
  Are you talking about the AutoKeyCard case, Kristopher Ervin and Matthew Hoover? Ervin finally gets out of prison on 2025-05-03 and Hoover gets out on Christmas 2026.

addicted 1y ago

If you believe in good faith that you have not broken the law, and can reasonably convince a jury of that, you almost certainly will receive a lighter sentence than you would have otherwise and in some cases also be acquitted. So this isn’t really a good argument even if we ignore the fact that it’s a non sequitur. A better argument is that the good faith exception, while making sense in principle, can easily be abused by the police to make illegally obtained evidence look like it was done in good faith, and therefore the exception itself should be removed because of how difficult it is to actually gauge and enforce.

dragonwriter 1y ago
> If you believe in good faith that you have not broken the law, and can reasonably convince a jury of that, you almost certainly will receive a lighter sentence than you would have otherwise Juries usually don't decide sentencing, and even if they did I don't think that would matter with crimes viewed as wrong in themselves (mala in se) though it might with crimes viewed as wrong because they are prohibited (mala prohibita).
- ty6853 1y ago
  Well there's also the case that a main component in having your sentence reduced is expressing genuine remorse. I'm not sure how on earth someone could be remorseful for a mala prohibitum victimless offense while simultaneously maintaining they in good faith thought they were following the law. Any expression of those two views simultaneously would in practice be seen as not much more than "sorry I got caught -- doing something I thought was legal."
  - tedunangst 1y ago
    Doesn't seem contradictory to explain you thought it was okay and had no ill intent, but now realize your mistake and won't do it again. Requiring regret is problematic when you're claiming innocence (didn't do it), but when all parties agree you did it, your concern is convincing them you won't do it again.