Statutory Citations in Newspapers: Why Not?

[NanoByte]

Medicine and Law rather more closely resemble illnesses in US society and certain others, than remedies. As controlling things approaching citizens' access to life and liberty, and on a lesser level health and property, it is very easy for the practitioners within the reigning professions to rule with iron hands, whatever the form of government those citizens impose upon themselves. In fact, it appears that, in more democratic nations, physicians and attorneys at law merely usurp the power that is decreaseded in the heads of state therein -- leaving such other citizens as are not in a position to wield wealth, really in little better a situation than they'd be in in more totalitarian regimes.

Law and medicine, as known today, at least in the US, are much more word-centered than are other pursuits, short of those of full-time authorship and journalism. As tossed between professionals with inordinate power and persons of low power and tendencies toward mob emotionalism, words can be the work of the devil. Let us drop medicine at this juncture and treat only of one aspect of law, in which this claim of mine is well illustrated -- and ask the above titular question here.

All professionals love to try to make their work esoteric from the masses, for reasons of ego, income and whatever else; but law, by nature, once it should become an inhouse thing, no longer can serve its social function -- because the public must know the law to be responsible citizens, and only in such case can the law work to the society as a whole's advantage. Thus all the words or other designations of the law, presumed to be a set of codes by convention of the society as a whole, must be directly understandable by the public in theirterms, albeit divorced from the tendency of the simpler portion of the public to let words drift along with not necessarily appropriate emotions.

Avoiding the issue of the use of common English in the law (with which the English appear to be more compliant today than are North Americans), let's center on the interface of law and the public as it occurs in newspapers. I have asked the title question here of journalists but have not yet done so of lawyers.

Journalists consistently spout that the public can't handle numbers; but today, popular society is inundated with numerical specifications of computers and many other devices. It is, for reporters, at least, I conclude, too much of a hassle for them to relate to legal codes. So journalists ramble on in reporting crimes and other legal matters with rubbery words, in the absence of code citations, without our being able to tell, sometimes, very much at all what some quarrel between an individual and society is really about, or maybe just a quarrel between that person and law enforcement. Words like 'assault', 'molest', 'violence', 'serious', 'deadly weapon', etc. have become almost meaningless these days. No doubt attorneys like it that way. The more confusion, the more jobs attorneys can find to support themselves. I do know that politicians just love it that way, because they can get elected almost solely on screaming with such words about how they will, if elected, get new laws passed killing all misdemeanants six ways at once for breathing second-hand weed or whatever, while having nothing intelligent to say about preventing actual damage to the public or hanging government together more efficiently. And every time significant crimes or civil suits are reported in newspapers, knee-jerk bills are composed by simple-minded legislative clerks and never made consistent with the many other related laws, until decades after they're passed into law -- at which time all kinds of such cycles are overlapping. Of course, again, this in no way hurts the legal profession. . .but it does cause all the rubber words to bounce around through further iterations, until law, as applied in the US at least becomes nothing but a means of support for attorneys, judges, police agencies, and the vast array of support personnel in their organizations. . .while nobody knows what the laws are, and less and less people care -- not the least of which are attorneys at law. And law libraries split their sides with the bleached carcasses of our continent's once extensive forestlands.

So, what say attorneys and others here about the nationwide, at least US, taboo on pinning down in print what exact federal, state or local codes are being charged, or are officially cited as applicable to any given dispute reported in a news article? Often, the only vernacular verbal descriptions leave one without even knowing whether a charge is an infraction or a capital offense.

Ray

[Babar714]

I got lost after 'decreasded'. Great post, though.

[Babar714]

Heehee, I misspelled his misspelling! No more trolling for me tonight.

[NanoByte]

Oh, well, two wrongs make a right, don't they? But then my wrong only resulted from my trying to make my post "righter" by changing that word. . .but forgetting that I had left the past-tense ending there and didn't need a new one. (Shoulda used numbers, I guess. ;-) )

Ray

[NanoByte]

Hey, why do posts previous to my last say "1:XX am CDT", but then my last, posted only a few minutes later, say "2:XX am CDT (12:XX am PDT)"?

Ray

[Moonshine]

Erm, I'm not sure what exactly the question was anymore, great post though. If you are asking on opinions as to why offenses are not described exactly by the press, I'd say that it is exactly because most people don't understand the minutae of the law, the difference between second degree murder and manslaughter for instance, and more to the point, most people don't care that much.

I know that personally I'm fine with hearing on the news that somebody has been shot without knowing exactly what the technical nature of the crime that the perp is going to be charged with is. However I really don't like the dumbing down of the media, assuming that everybody watchin is stupid and that things need to be made black and white before Joe Public will be able to understand, which leads to a very quick polarisation of opinion on the issues of the day, making it all the easier for politicians to make capital with soundbites and knee-jerk legislation, rather than real solutions.

Have I posted an answer to totally the wrong question here?

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It only hurts when I laugh.

[Nickrz]

The Illuminati must be screwing with the clock again.

[Sofa King]

Consider this one:

Sec. 53-37a. Deprivation of a person's civil rights by person wearing mask or hood: Class D felony.

Any person who, with the intent to subject, or cause to be subjected, any other person to the deprivation of any rights, privileges or immunities, secured or protected by the constitution or laws of this state or of the United States, on account of religion, national origin, alienage, color, race, sex, blindness or physical disability, violates the provisions of section 46a-58 while wearing a mask, hood or other device designed to conceal the identity of such person shall be guilty of a class D felony.
(P.A. 82-14, S. 1, 2.) [Connecticut]

So, if a guy burns a cross in someone else's front lawn, do you really want to see the press say, "Mr. John Wayne Flannel of Snipsic, CT was charged by local police of violating Section 46a-58 while wearing a mask, under Section 53-37a of the Connecticut Criminal Code," or do you want to hear them say, "racially motivated hate crime?"

Personally, I'd like to say, "they busted another damned Tri-Kap in Snipsic. How did these assholes get so far north?" But that's why I'm not of the press.

[RealityChuck]

Let's not forget space considerations, either. Newspapers drop serial commas to save space, so they aren't likely to cite the actual charge when there's a shorter designation.

[GregAtlanta]

I think you're looking for a complicated answer to a simple question. I've worked in print media for many years, some of the best as a police reporter for a major newspaper, and I can tell you that we didn't provide the specifics you want for two reasons: a)most people don't care. b)most readers would not understand.
Like or it or not, newspapers are products that have to cater to their readership. If we wrote a crime story that cited the legal statutes, Joe "Give Me the Sports Page" Reader would not read past the first paragraph.
And for the record, there's more attention to those specifics than you may notice. While the typical newspaper crime story does not cite a specific statute, it damn sure better get the charge right. When someone shoots someone else, the writer is not free to just cavalierly say the assailant is charged with "murder" or even "killing Mr. Smith" because that's the logical assumption when the victim dies. If he was charged with manslaughter, or assault, or whatever other charge is possible, the writer has to get it right even if there's no citation of specific laws and legal minutia.
So, in effect, the writer is telling you exactly what statute the person is charged with violating. The article may say "murder" instead of citing the legal banalities, but they also say "Wal-Mart" instead of "the retail entity incorporated under the name Wal-Mart Corporation of the Universe, as registered with the SEC as a 10-SP1 multilateral corporation, blah, blah, blah..."
-- Greg, Atlanta

OK, now here in this thread we exhibit exactly some of the typical knee-jerk and ulteriorly slanted stuff that makes up this country. My OP was overly long and careful to state my exact complaint (with, OK, maybe a little baggage also), and yet these posts, for the most part, just set out stereotypical knee-jerk opposing stances, not to the specific content of my post, but rather to some little categorical construction already in their heads that basically aligns to my subject matter. Greg and Moony, however, start clicking a little into a reasonable gear at about the middle of their posts.

Granted that I might be over-emotional to some intermediate violent crimes, were I a victim or close to a victim of one; however, I think, even before the US poluted Boston Harbor by dumping that tea in it and decided to set up its own shop, there was a fairly strong thrust in England along the lines that "the punishment should fit the crime," i.e., that the system overall works better if the system maintains a goodly proportionality to criminal charges and a reasonable distinction between the gross natures of the acts charged, when it comes to determining punishments or other resolutions of or procedures in cases -- and keeps descriptive general-usage words, and whatever sort of designations are used in regard to the cases they describe in bureaucratic cataloguing schemes, to the level and point of their factual natures.

I live in CA-US. I don't know where the responders to my post live, except, from his monicker, I assume Greg lives in GA. There is a considerable range in the style of writing criminal and civil codes, the charging crimes, proceding in courts on both criminal and civil cases, meting out punishments, and writing up any of these in newpapers -- in the various areas and states of the US.

Many CA-US newspapers don't meet the reporting standards of some newspapers in other parts of the country. I mostly read the SF Chronicle, which I believe to be rather intermediate in standards. The rest in northern CA, except for the Sacramento Bee, seem to be of lower quality in reporting standards. California legal codes have mostly lost such archaic wordings as are still found in New England codes, but codes copied from other states have been politically kneejerked into contexts of related CA codes in manners where they totally distort the original limited coherence of the law. Different counties in CA have considerably different policies in charging crimes or settling controversies. What I'm discussing here, however, is not issues as to whether counties and states should have the same laws or enforce them similarly, but rather the defective reporting of law enforcement and legal proceedings in newspapers, which practice prevents the local public from evaluating the nature of whatever sort of laws are locally on the books and whatever manner in which they are currently prosecuted -- so that they can decide whether the situation is what they want locally.

What I see from the press, so far, is that 'we don't know what's goin' on and the general public is stupider than us, so there's no problem.' Mostly the lawyers ain't talkin', but rather, counting their shekels. I get mostly the same message here in this thread so far. Well, reporters are paid to be quick and active and are not held out to be geniuses. A lot of lawyers, however, think they're up there somewhere. I don't see that from my perspective. . .and I sure ain't sitting on the top of everything. The US is dumbing itself down like crazy. . .all for a fast Yankee buck. And the general public has to either play the role of the idiot, or provide themselves as fodder to this system, or both.

Moonshine:

To paraphrase, he says, 'great post but what's the question?' First ¶: He relegates my OP to a complaint that the press doesn't "exactly" describe the "minut[i]ae" of the law. My point was that they use the words I mentioned, which, whether occurring in the federal, state or local codes or not, have wide ranges of meanings -- because, well, yeah, the public hears those words all the time, so those'll be good and they'll emote lots over my article that contains them, and my newspaper will keep me here. And yet, reporters will turn around and use all manner of esoteric, uncommon or archaic words that they think are "cultural" or alliterative or funny or make them points on their jobs or elsewhere or whatever.

Just about everthing today in CA-US is chargeable as a felony (which shows, in and of itself, failure of the proportionality principle in crime), but some things are still misdemeanors. Some misdemeanors in this state are generally described by, or even have in their codified verbiage, the very same words as quite serious felonies. When such misdemeanors are written up in newspapers, they often read as if they are the correlate serious felonies, because this puts more food on both the reporters' and thier bosses' plates. I was not complaining about absenses of "exact" differentiation of "minutae". Then MS says:

. . .and more to the point, most people don't care that much.

Proper reporting -- from the standpoint of the social order, not, perhaps, from that of journalistic or legal careers -- would not contain any more words or any more words the general public doesn't know the meaning of, particularly once decent report should be in place; it would merely contain less inflammatory words and words that are careful to place acts and charges in orderly context, from a practical social standpoint, along with numerical code sections at least where such words cannot be made to perform this task, given their abusive multiple duty within the laws themselves as written.

Have I posted an answer to totally the wrong question here?

Clearly not. But in your first paragraph you play the role of the target of the "dumbing down" that you then claim to object to in your second paragraph.

GregAtlanta:

I think you're looking for a complicated answer to a simple question.

Well, OK, I didn't get much complexity from the newsies I questioned on this. They just wanted to claim that the public's a bunch of idiots, so they write for idiots. That answer didn't show me much complexity. But I guess I don't look for a lot of complexity in news reporters; their fortes are more quickness and industriousness. I think any reasonable answer is quite simple, from a viewpoint not privy to what goes on behind the scenes in newspapers. (I used to smell a little of what went on there in the case of the SJ Mercury News, both before and after it became a Knight-Ridder rag -- which may not've made it any worse.)

I've worked in print media for many years, some of the best as a police reporter for a major newspaper, and I can tell you that we didn't provide the specifics you want for two reasons: a)most people don't care. b)most readers would not understand.

Hey, that's just more of the above. . .and a very [i]simple answer. So you say that I'm looking for a complex answer rather than the actual simple answer. . .that the press only feeds the numerically empowered public what they want to hear? And, furthermore, that's what it should do? Is that your definition of new in a democracy -- mob rule? That nothing educational in the interest of improvement of society should be allowed to creep into news reporting?

Are you telling me all these "most" people you write for would buy some other paper, if you printed two words, 'Xxx Code' and up to a maximum of 3 numerical/literal designators, the first one of up to 3 digits? How many cities do you think of today in th

[Temujin]

Hi Nano Byte,

As I understand your post, you are concerned that newspapers contribute to misunderstandings about the law, because newspaper journalists do not specifically state which statute is being used to charge individuals, and because newspapers do not use the statutory wording. Did I interpret your concerns correctly?

If so, I think you are under-estimating the common-sense intelligence of the crime-committing public, and over-estimating the role that newspaper readership plays in the lives of those who commit crimes.

Pretty much everybody knows what it means to ''rape'' a woman. And pretty much everyone knows it is illegal. So when a newspaper says a man is charged with ''rape,'' that is generally sufficient to communicate to the public which law has been broken.

The same can be said of ''murder,'' ''armed robbery,'' and most other crimes that appear in newspaper crime stories.

Often, when a person is formally charged with a felony, the prosecutor will file several counts, to cover various legal theories of the crime. This is especially true when a person dies during the commission of a felony. For example, it might happen if someone tries to commit a carjacking and in the process breaks through a car window and kills the driver accidently. In a case like this, the criminal complaint might contain several different variations on the murder charge. It's possible to explain each of these charges in depth in a newspaper article, but if that is done, the article ceases to be a news story about a pending murder trial and becomes, instead, a text on law.

Law textbooks are available, and any member of the reading public can educate himself about laws by going to the library. The primary duty of a newspaper, however, is to provide the news. If a newspaper article gets bogged down in a lengthy discussion about the various criminal charges possible in a specific case, it must do so at the expense of relaying the news. By doing this, the newspaper would lose an opportunity to educate the public about the real-life impact of the law.

You wrote:It is, for reporters, at least, I conclude, too much of a hassle for them to relate to legal codes.I think you're leaping to an erroneous conclusion here. It's not a hassle for reporters to cite specific legal codes. But doing what you appear to be suggesting (namely, turning news articles into scholarly discourses on the law) would detract from the journalist's ability to present the news. Generally, newspaper readers understand the crimes that have been committed.So, what say attorneys and others here about the nationwide, at least US, taboo on pinning down in print what exact federal, state or local codes are being charged, or are officially cited as applicable to any given dispute reported in a news article?I would say no such taboo exists. When a newspaper article reports that a man has been charged with ''first-degree murder'' and could face the death penalty, it's pretty clear to everyone which law has been violated.Often, the only vernacular verbal descriptions leave one without even knowing whether a charge is an infraction or a capital offense.Can you provide an example? I'm skeptical that any journalist for an urban newspaper would be careless enough to fudge the difference between a misdemeanor (which is what I assume you mean by ''infraction'') and a ''capital'' offense punishable by death.The real reason newsies don't want the code cites is that it's more work to get them out of cops, DAs or legal filings and to look them up to be sure they got them right, and how much sense they make in a given case.I'm quite sure you're mistaken. It's very easy for journalists to get such citations.Put one asterisk in each article where crimes are stated as having been charged, considered or whatever, and somewhere down at the bottom of the page, surrounded by all kinds of things that would drive away sports idiots. . .hide all relevant citations of legal codes. In a few cases, you might even have to use two or three asterisks to clarify how the codes relate to the story.There are at least two big problems with this: 1) The newspaper would have to dump out some other news to create the space. The other news might also be valuable to the public. Is the trade-off worth it? The answer is ''no,'' because: 2) even if the newspaper did this, it wouldn't help readers understand the crime better. The statutory citation doesn't help explain what is meant my ''rape'' or ''murder.''

To summarize, there is virtually no risk that the public will get confused about what they can and cannot do under the law, simply because a newspaper does not provide a statutory citation. Most members of the public know it is illegal to rape, murder, steal, stab someone, shoot someone, etc.

Your concern that newspapers confuse the public and erode the effectiveness of the law in our society is, in my opinion, unfounded.

(THAT should give you something to write about. ;) )

[GregAtlanta]

NanoByte, were you beaten with a rolled up newspaper as a child?
That last post was 3,403 words of ranting, with a whole lot of viciousness directed to a few people who just tried to answer your "why" question. Apparently, we're all idiots with ulterior motives if we disagree with you.
Move it to Great Debates or the BBQ Pit, where people will understand that you don't want an actual answer.
And I suggest you go start up your own newspaper, where every crime story will be about 10,000 words long and as longwinded as your posts. You can stand on the sidewalk and scream about how right you are as people refuse to buy your paper.
-- Greg, Atlanta

NANOBYTE -- First of all, let me say that your original question, if it is adequately set forth in the title of this thread, was completely lost in the depths of your verbose and, as you admit, "overly long" post. So I'll just attempt to respond to your second post, though I obviously cannot match you in length. You say:

Granted that I might be over-emotional to some intermediate violent crimes, were I a victim or close to a victim of one . . .

What, precisely, do you mean by an "intermediate violent crime"? What would the emotions of the victims/their familes have to do with the explication of crime in the newspapers?

. . .there was a fairly strong thrust in England along the lines that "the punishment should fit the crime," . . .

Are you arguing that the punishment generally does not fit the crime in the U.S.?

i.e., that the system overall works better if the system maintains a goodly proportionality to criminal charges and a reasonable distinction between the gross natures of the acts charged, when it comes to determining punishments or other resolutions of or procedures in cases . . .

Are you arguing that, in America, there are not even gross distinctions betweeen the nature of crimes? Do you seriously argue that the average American does not recognize the gross distinction between murder and rape, for example?

-- and keeps descriptive general-usage words, and whatever sort of designations are used in regard to the cases they describe in bureaucratic cataloguing schemes, to the level and point of their factual natures.

The problem here, of course, is that certain words have a legal meaning that corresponds to the "factual nature" -- i.e., the gravity -- of the crime in question (such as "aggravated," for example). Such words are necessary to convey the nature of the crime to those within the legal community -- the charging attorney, the defense attorney, the judge, the defendant, and the jury -- but will not necessarily convey a specific maeaning to a member of the public at large. Simply because the public at large does not fully understand it, are we to discard it despite its utility in the system of justice?

There is a considerable range in the style of writing criminal and civil codes, the charging crimes, proceding in courts on both criminal and civil cases, meting out punishments, and writing up any of these in newpapers -- in the various areas and states of the US.

Actually, there is not. The current trend within the law profession (your gross over-generalizations notwithstanding) is towards the usage of plain language that can be easily understood -- Plain English, as it is called. As codes in all jurisdictions are updated, archaic wording is removed in favor of plain English. This is especially true in the criminal codes, where the public is deemed to be on notice of what constitutes a particular crime and, therefore, it is especially important that the elements of the crime be understandable to a person of average intelligence. There are large sections of various state codes that are written in archaic, borderline-incomprehensible language, but these code sections tend to do with property laws (which are not fluid and do not change much) or esoteric laws that are not broadly applicable to the general public, such as the rules for recording deeds and wills.

Many CA-US newspapers don't meet the reporting standards of some newspapers in other parts of the country.

What "reporting standards" do you hold the newspapers to? It would, apparently, include citation to code sections, but without the recognition that (a) the vast majority of Americans would not bother to look up particular code sections and; (b) the small percentage of people who would may do so without the actual code section (which you may find in the index to the codes), so long as they know the specific crime that was charged.

California legal codes have mostly lost such archaic wordings as are still found in New England codes, but codes copied from other states have been politically kneejerked into contexts of related CA codes in manners where they totally distort the original limited coherence of the law.

Could you provide an example of this? Aside from your use of the word "knee-jerk" as a verb, I don't believe this is true. California codes are no more the subject of "importation" from other jurisdictions than most state codes and, in fact, this rarely happens. What does happen (as a modern legal trend) is the adoption by various states (including California) of "uniform" codes (such as the Uniform Commercial Code) that are virtually identical from state to state.

What I'm discussing here, however, is not issues as to whether counties and states should have the same laws or enforce them similarly . . .

With the exception of zoning regulations and other minor "housekeeping" matters, counties do not have the luxury of passing laws that apply to them only; laws (especially criminal laws) are passed by state legislatures and should be uniformly applied throughout the state. If a defendant can demonstrate that they are not, he or she has a wonderful equal protection claim to press in a law suit against the state.

. . . but rather the defective reporting of law enforcement and legal proceedings in newspapers, which practice prevents the local public from evaluating the nature of whatever sort of laws are locally on the books and whatever manner in which they are currently prosecuted -- so that they can decide whether the situation is what they want locally.

The "local public" does not have the luxury of determining what laws will and will not apply in their locality; the laws (as opposed to local regulations) apply equally to every citizen in a given state. If a particular citizen wants to know the exact crime charged in a particular case, he or she can look up the charging document (the information), which is public, and then go look up the law at the library.

What I see from the press, so far, is that 'we don't know what's goin' on and the general public is stupider than us, so there's no problem.'

I am not a member of the press, and so won't bother taking issue with your characterization of them.

Mostly the lawyers ain't talkin', but rather, counting their shekels.

Please explain the corrolation between the failure of the press to include specific code citations and the "counting of shekels" by the legal profession. In any event, if you can read and can use an index, you can look the law up yourself and don't need to ask a lawyer to do it for you.

My point was that they use the words I mentioned, which, whether occurring in the federal, state or local codes or not, have wide ranges of meanings -- because, well, yeah, the public hears those words all the time, so those'll be good and they'll emote lots over my article that contains them, and my newspaper will keep me here.

In fact, most the words you cited have very specific legal meanings. The fact that the public at large does not understand this, and therefore assi

Hi, Nano!

Good morning, boys and girls. Welcome to Mr. Roger's neighborhood. Todays word is "troll". Can you say troll? I knew you could.

Whenever I see a post that takes 2 min. 15 sec to scroll through without reading, I know that somebody's on a real rant.

But the first paragraph of your OP was absolutely incoherent!
Remember, brevity is the soul of wit. Try recasting you argument in only 2 paragraphs.
This will compel you to clarify and define the essential points you are trying to make, and even give you a new insight into your views.
Or...you could just go take your Lithium instead of flushing it when the psych ward nurse isn't looking. Just as a change of pace.
if yer gonna inundate us with your off-base ideas; at least make em coherent.

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YO-HO, ME HEARTIES! ALL HANDS ON DECK FOR THE MUSICAL BATTLE AT SEA!

Temujin:

As I understand your post, you are concerned that newspapers
contribute to misunderstandings about the law, because
newspaper journalists do not specifically state which statute is
being used to charge individuals,

Yes.

and because newspapers do not
use the statutory wording.

No.

If so, I think you are under-estimating the common-sense
intelligence of the crime-committing public, and over-estimating
the role that newspaper readership plays in the lives of those who
commit crimes.

Why do you select the "crime-committing public"? I'm talking about the general newspaper-reading public.

Pretty much everybody knows what it means to ''rape'' a woman.
And pretty much everyone knows it is illegal. So when a
newspaper says a man is charged with ''rape,'' that is generally
sufficient to communicate to the public which law has been
broken.

Well, I think that may be OK in CA-US at present, because I believe this state no longer uses the term 'statutory rape', but rather unlawful sex or something.

The same can be said of ''murder,'' ''armed robbery,'' and most
other crimes that appear in newspaper crime stories.

Well, it can't, and I think this is well pointed out in my overly long posts; but go look at any state's or province's laws and you'll soon realize you could have a very incorrect understanding of the actual content/nature of the charges filed, as they are often worded in newspapers, if you compared the texts of the code sections the pertinent court filings called out -- to the what is said about the charges in the news stories.

Often, when a person is formally charged with a felony, the
prosecutor will file several counts, to cover various legal theories
of the crime. This is especially true when a person dies during the
commission of a felony. For example, it might happen if someone
tries to commit a carjacking and in the process breaks through a
car window and kills the driver accidently. In a case like this, the
criminal complaint might contain several different variations on the
murder charge. It's possible to explain each of these charges in
depth in a newspaper article, but if that is done, the article
ceases to be a news story about a pending murder trial and
becomes, instead, a text on law.

Well, look, anyone can always argue in that mode; that's the same silly sort of attack as the following:

1. You can't right a chapter on what electricity is in your book, because we don't presently know everything we'll ever know about electricity.

2. You can't synopsize a usefully accurate and unambiguous statement of the case presented at this time against the defendant because you're not a lawyer.

3. We don't believe what's in your newspaper because the Grand and Glorious Dictator says your paper is illegal.

etc., etc. I could say this post of yours is not damn good because it exceeds the reasonable length for a post here, when, in actuality, both of our posts could be rewritten in reasonable length and still reasonably cover their territories to the extent needed for the purpose.

I'm not saying the reporter who is simply covering a crime story where the charges have been filed has to go into a legal dissertation; I'm simply saying that (s)he should be required to use descriptive words for usually all of the charges (because usually there aren't a lot of them), which words are sufficient to distinguish -- to the extent the general public would expect to distinguish same in their own words -- the particular charges from all other charges that could easily be confused with these if one just throws out a fistful of the ambiguous words I've twice mentioned. . .or else, if there is not space for even this, to cite, by number, the code sections charged. Preferably the reporter should do the latter in all cases. What I'm requesting is not something that takes up many column-inches, but it does take a little extra reference work on the part of the writer. If we're going to live in a society where people sling around words to make a mess of things, a decent newspaper should be responsible for unslinging an amount of them that will allow any reader to reconcile his/her notion of justice / law and order / public protection with what criminals / criminal suspects / criminal defendants do, and authorities do as a result of what they do.

Law textbooks are available, and any member of the reading public
can educate himself about laws by going to the library.

You just not connecting at all here. You're just saying I'm all wrong, when you can't even find the ballpark. MY POINT IS PRECISELY THAT, OFTEN, IN READING A NEWS STORY OF THIS NATURE, ONE CAN'T EVEN, ON A SIMPLE LEVEL BE SURE OF THE NATURE OR EXTENT OF THE CHARGES, SUCH THAT ONE COULD RELATE THE STATUTES OR ONE'S NOTIONS OF THEM TO THE PARTICULAR STORY. IF THE NEWS STORY IS SUFFICIENTLY DEFINITIVE AND ACCURATE AS TO THE CHARGES, AND/OR CITES THE SPECIFIC CODE SECTIONS, THE READER WOULD EITHER KNOW WHAT HE WANTS TO KNOW, TO THE DEPTH THAT HE WANTS TO KNOW IT. . .OR, IF NOT, HE COULD THEN GO TO THE CODES, OR CASES, IF HE SHOULD WANT, IN ORDER TO REFINE THINGS FURTHER. As it is, he's often confused or misled at the simplest level of understanding of the matter covered in the story, in which case, unless he had a strong interest, that would be the end of the matter -- ineffective informance of news. If he wished to go further, he is then obliged to go to the courthouse and sign out the case file, just to find out what the devil the charges were in the case. And then, many times, the file will be out somewhere, and he'll have to come back another time. But people like you apparently want our society to work in that miserable way. Are you a lawyer, law student or prospective one?

The primary duty of a newspaper, however, is to provide the news.

It is to provide the news to a useful and respectable standard of accuracy and unambiguity.

If a newspaper article gets bogged down in a lengthy discussion
about the various criminal charges possible in a specific case, it
must do so at the expense of relaying the news.

I said nothing about "charges possible"; I spoke only about charges filed Some charges may be later dropped, but no one knows that at present. All charges initially filed are charges filed, not charges possible, and they all (almost always few) should be mentioned adequately, unless they are far lesser than the most serious ones.


[quote]By doing this,
the newspaper would lose an opportunity to educate the public

"Actually, there is not." Yeah, sure, all those things are done just the same in every state of the Union. Give me a break, Lawyer. And then you contradict yourself by saying something like "the trend" is that they're all being changed to agree, by converting them all to Plain English. If they were all already the same, this trendy process wouldn't have anything to do, now would it? Now, I'm not even saying all these things should be the same in every state. There's state's right, you know, and laws can vary from one jurisdiction to the next without violating the federal Constitution.

There are
large sections of various state codes that are written in archaic,
borderline-incomprehensible language, but these code sections
tend to do with property laws (which are not fluid and do not
change much) or esoteric laws that are not broadly applicable to
the general public, such as the rules for recording deeds and wills.

This is getting off the subject quite a bit, but what you say here is simply not true. I don't know what state you're in, or probably practice law in, but I'm in CA. Most of the CA Penal Code has been modernized but some parts, while the archaic wording has been changed, still are grouped and otherwise slanted so as to create chaos -- and they do use these parts. But the problem with the CA Penal Code is not the archaic parts so much, but rather the overdone intracy of interreferenced ifs, ands and buts between its different parts, in inevitably inconsistent ways, and your "Plain English" words are redefined in and out and back and forth every paragraph or so, and copy-cat bills drawn up to fit with other states' codes have been incorporated without adequate adjustment to the CA Penal Code, so that an unprogrammed person of average intelligence can hardly get anywhere with it today. And then, have you looked at New England's criminal codes, at least Massachusetts? Common crimes are still written in almost the language used for burning witches in the 1600s. Only those relating to deeds and wills. . .my ###!

What "reporting standards" do you hold the newspapers to? It would, apparently, include citation to code sections,. . .

No, I'm not claiming any general circulation newspapers cite cod sections.

(a) the vast majority of Americans would not bother to look up particular code sections. . .

True, but they would get some feeling that they could do so and that, as a result, they maybe could trust the words in the article a little more in such case. And some persons would in a few cases they take an interest in, for whatever reason. I'm certainly not claiming trivia contests are going to switch to all crime and punishment.

. . .(b) the small
percentage of people who would may do so without the actual
code section (which you may find in the index to the codes), so
long as they know the specific crime that was charged.

Lawyer, you miss the whole cotten-picking point! If the newspaper doesn't print the code section, but uses words for the charge -- and you wonder, say, about whether that charge is reasonable, given the description in the article of the incident -- and you look up the words in the index to the appropriate code -- and you find several sections covering quite different crimes, or you find only one, but it happens that some word the reporter thought was appropriate in the vernacular only turns up in the wrong code. See my example above in this post in response to Temujin. So the reader, to get the scoop on the actual code charged, would then have to look at the police report or the accusatory court document.

of my quote: but
codes copied from other states have been politically
kneejerked into contexts of related CA codes in
manners where they totally distort the original limited
coherence of the law.


Could you provide an example of this?

Well, New Jersey's Megan Law, for one, but I'm sure there have been at least half a dozen in the last decade or less.

Aside from your use of the word "knee-jerk" as a verb, I don't believe this is true.

OK, so how many years do I get for using 'knee-jerk' as a verb? Is that a higher crime than the elliptical logic in this sentence of yours?

California codes are no more the subject of "importation" from other
jurisdictions than most state codes. . .

I didn't say they were. I just said that was done and that it is another means of fouling up the internal consistency and original intent of legal codes.

With the exception of zoning regulations and other minor
"housekeeping" matters, counties do not have the luxury of
passing laws that apply to them only; laws (especially criminal
laws) are passed by state legislatures and should be uniformly
applied throughout the state. If a defendant can demonstrate
that they are not, he or she has a wonderful equal protection
claim to press in a law suit against the state.

See my post on Berkeley's current nudity trial:
http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/002597.html

The City of Berkeley has a recently enacted anti-nudity ordinance. Some people who regularly like to express themselves on the streets of Berkeley in ad hoc performances have been cited under this ordinance and are challenging it under the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The relevant links from the above page are:
http://www.tsoft.net/~raych/NudityOnTrial.htm
http://www.tsoft.net/~raych/Nudity2.htm

This may support your statement somewhat, but I don't think so. Tune in, on Nov. 15, 1999, to the Berkeley Muni Court. There are a lot of jurisdictions in CA-US which have anti-nudity ordinances, mainly cities, and of course, other cities and counties don't have any. I think there's one in Santa Cruz that stood up under a First Amendment challenge. Is that "housekeeping"? I love lawyers, they can define their terms anyway they want to make their prior pronouncements ring true.

The "local public" does not have the luxury of determining what
laws will and will not apply in their locality; the laws (as opposed
to local regulations) apply equally to every citizen in a given
state. If a particular citizen wants to know the exact crime
charged in a particular case, he or she can look up the charging
document (the information), which is public, and then go look up
the law at the library.

Well, I should've phrased that better. If they any of most laws any different, yes they can only do this by getting together with the rest of the state, either through their state assemblymen or by way of state public initiativ

[Temujin]

Oh, man, you are a completely ridiculous person.I thought you were interested in discussing. If I had known you were interested in insulting, I'd have directed you to the BBQ pit.

The problem, Nano, is that you have no idea what you're talking about, but you're very emotional about it. You've grasped onto a non-issue the way a dog clamps down on a chew toy and waits for someone to come along and pull. Sorry, boy, you'll have to play with someone else.

[Moonshine]

Nano, I'm not sure if it's lawyers or journalists you hate the most, but the answer to your OP remains that the codes to crimes are not cited in the press because nobody cares, it simply isn't news. Sorry about the short answer but my eyes are beginning to bleed from reading through your last, toilet-roll length, post. Let us repair to the pit forthwith.

[pldennison]

If you want to know the codes for the specific charge, haul your lazy ass down to the fucking courthouse and sit through the arraignment or ask to see a copy of the charges. Cripes, they're public records.

The newspapers are not an arm of the courts, and in a capitalist society, their only responsibility is to sell more of themselves.

------------------
"I love God! He's so deliciously evil!" - Stewie Griffin, Family Guy

[NanoByte]

A concise synopsis:

The question (not a trolling):

Given that crime/lawsuit-related news articles often leave the reader unclear or misinformed as to a charge/prayer involved, why do not the these article include either 1) a concise wording of the charge/prayer that is accurate, unambiguous and understandable to most of the public or 2) in the case of a criminal charge, simply state the criminal code section of the specific charge filed or to be filed as a result of the incident subject of the article.

The answers given so far have been:

1) Either would take up too much column space.
2) Almost no one wants this information.
4) Most people wouldn't understand / be able to use such.
3) I don't need it.
4) People can tell the difference between murder and rape, etc
5) The reader can get what he needs in that respect at the library.
6) The reader can get same at the courthouse.
7) All law in the US is in Plain English. . .but we're still working on making it so.
8) Criminals couldn't figure it out.
9) The newspapers are not an arm of the courts and their only responsibility is to sell the maximum number of newspapers.

Do not post additional argument supporting one of these answers. If you want to support one, just state its above number in a post of yours.

I have put content and links in my posts to this thread. Others have put mostly unauthorized "authoritative" and directive comments in their posts.

The above question is posed from a standpoint external to the professions of journalism and law; it is not asking for information simply sourced in either of these professions. Do not be expected to be taken as an authority on the answer(s) to my question; this is part of the Straight Dope. "Straight" here should mean undistorted by authorities which claim more than they have the right to.

I would like now to add one item here that parallels a legal code citation, which item is implemented in newspapers, and is very faithfully done at present in the SF Chronicle:

Almost every news article in that paper, which is centered about a certain geographical location, either in the Bay Area, the state of CA, the US or somewhere else in the world, is accompanied by a small map of the surrounding area of that location, which also includes an inset showing where, within a larger natural or political entity, the large-scale mapped area is located. These maps, though small and of limited detail, take up considerable space in the news-story area of the newspaper.

Frequently, in previous weeks, there have been a number of maps of East Timor, showing the capital, Dili, and several other centers of population, as well as areas controlled by the factions there. Now, what percentage of Americans have people in East Timor or otherwise relate to the internal geography of it? How does the layout there help the average reader to understand more than that West Timor is part of Indonesia (formerly Dutch) and East Timor is the other half of the island (formerly Portuguese and later annexed by Indonesia)? (I would link one of these maps, but the Chron doesn't put them online, and my scanner ist kaputt.)

I appreciate such maps, but so many Americans tell me they can't even read maps. So why is not the Chronicle, now a Hearst paper, not selling off this map space to advertisers -- according to pldennison's theory?

Ray

[NanoByte]

Also, in regard to my admission -- to Temujin in re his comment that local jurisdictions could not create differences in criminal law among themselves, due to the Equal Protect Clause of the federal Constitution -- that there is a current federal constitutional challenge in a local Berkeley court case involving a city ordinance against public nudity, I neglected to point out that that challenge is only as to First Amendment rights of free speech/expression, not to the above Fourteenth Amendment clause.

This subject, of course, is technically off-topic here, but originated from this lawyer or paralegal's off-topic effort in this thread to impress us with his knowledge of the law.

Ray

Your 'concise synopsis' was a major improvement, stylistically.


Keep up the good work.
:)

------------------
YO-HO, ME HEARTIES! ALL HANDS ON DECK FOR THE MUSICAL BATTLE AT SEA!

[Temujin]

Not that it really matters, but I think you're confusing me with someone else, Nano.

I am still somewhat questioning your major premise somewhat. I don't think people really are misled or confused as to exactly what the charges are. Following are examples of lead pargraphs from this week in the local paper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, along with relevant cites from the Ohio Revised Code. I don't find them particularly confusing, and I doubt most other readers do, either.

Also, although you may want to argue that newspapers and their reporters carry a certain level of societal responsibility, you'd have a hard time convincing Mssrs. Hearst, Gannett, Murdoch, et al., of that.

Your map example does have some bearing on the matter, but I think it differs in a way I am unable to articulate at 9:30 in the morning. If I wanted to be cynical, I'd say it's because most readers have a general idea of things that are against the law, while most are woefully uninformed about world geography. Anyway, the examples promised:

1) A self-described handwriting expert pleaded guilty to perjury
yesterday for lying about his credentials when he testified for a
former public-housing executive.

F. Aurelius McKanze faces up to five years in prison.

Section 2921.11
General Assembly: 109.
Bill Number: House Bill 511
Effective Date: 1-1-74

(A) No person, in any official proceeding, shall knowingly make a
false statement under oath or affirmation, or knowingly swear or
affirm the truth of a false statement previously made, when either
statement is material.

(B) A falsification is material, regardless of its admissibility in
evidence, if it can affect the course or outcome of the proceeding. It
is no defense to a charge under this section that the offender
mistakenly believed a falsification to be immaterial.

(C) It is no defense to a charge under this section that the oath or
affirmation was administered or taken in an irregular manner.

(F) Whoever violates this section is guilty of perjury, a felony
of the third degree.

2)SOUTH EUCLID - After months of behind-the-scenes haggling,
David Bartolucci, who was caught aiming a video camera up a woman's
dress at a church carnival last July, waived his right to trial and
pleaded no contest yesterday to charges of voyeurism and possession of
criminal tools. South Euclid Municipal Judge Patricia Ann Kleri
accepted his plea and found him guilty.

If given the maximum penalty for both crimes, Bartolucci could serve
up to eight months in jail and owe the city of South Euclid $1,500 in
fines. He will be sentenced Dec. 2.

Section 2907.08
General Assembly: 122.
Bill Number: Sub. S.B. 82
Effective Date: 01/30/98

(A) No person, for the purpose of sexually arousing or gratifying the
person's self, shall commit trespass or otherwise surreptitiously
invade the privacy of another, to spy or eavesdrop upon another.

(B) No person, for the purpose of sexually arousing or gratifying the
person's self, shall commit trespass or otherwise surreptitiously
invade the privacy of another to photograph the other person in a
state of nudity.

(E)(1) Whoever violates this section is guilty of voyeurism.

(2) A violation of division (A) of this section is a misdemeanor of
the third degree.

(3) A violation of division (B) of this section is a misdemeanor of
the second degree.


Section 2923.24
General Assembly: 121
Bill Number: Amended. Sub. S.B. 2
Effective Date: 07/01/96

(A) No person shall possess or have under the person's control any
substance, device, instrument, or article, with purpose to use it
criminally.

(B) Each of the following constitutes prima-facie evidence of criminal purpose:

(1) Possession or control of any dangerous ordnance, or the materials
or parts for making dangerous ordnance, in the absence of
circumstances indicating the dangerous ordnance, materials, or parts
are intended for legitimate use;

(2) Possession or control of any substance, device, instrument, or
article designed or specially adapted for criminal use;


(C) Whoever violates this section is guilty of possessing criminal
tools. Except as otherwise provided in this division, possessing
criminal tools is a misdemeanor of the first degree. If the
circumstances indicate that the substance, device, instrument, or
article involved in the offense was intended for use in the commission
of a felony, possessing criminal tools is a felony of the fifth
degree.


3)A Cleveland man charged with rape and gross sexual imposition
involving a girl under 13 is being sought by the FBI and the
Cleveland/Cuyahoga Fugitive Task Force. The charges against Wayne
Lowe, 31, stem from offenses occurring during 1996 and 1997, said FBI
spokesman Robert L. Hawk. Lowe also is wanted on warrants charging him
with aggravated burglary, kidnapping and robbery, all arising from an
April 2 incident on W. 6th St., Hawk said.

Section 2907.05
General Assembly: 122
Bill Number: Amended. Sub. House Bill 32
Effective Date: 03/10/98

(A) No person shall have sexual contact with another, not the spouse
of the offender; cause another, not the spouse of the offender, to
have sexual contact with the offender; or cause two or more other
persons to have sexual contact when any of the following applies:

(1) The offender purposely compels the other person, or one of the
other persons, to submit by force or threat of force.

(4) The other person, or one of the other persons, is less than
thirteen years of age, whether or not the offender knows the age of
that person.

(B) Whoever violates this section is guilty of gross sexual
imposition. . . . A violation of division (A)(4) of this section is a
felony of the third degree.

(C) A victim need not prove physical resistance to the offender in
prosecutions under this section.

Section 2907.02
General Assembly: 122.
Bill Number: Amended Sub. House Bill 32
Effective Date: 03/10/98

(A)(1) No person shall engage in sexual conduct with another who is
not the spouse of the offender or who is the spouse of the offender
but is living separate and apart from the offender, when any of the
following applies:

(2) No person shall engage in sexual conduct with another when the
offender purposely compels the other person to submit by force or
threat of force.

(B) Whoever violates this section is guilty of rape, a felony of the
first degree. If the offender under division (A)(1)(a) of this section
substantially impairs the other person's judgment or control by
administering any controlled substance described in section 3719.41 of
the Revised Code to the other person surreptitiously or by force,
threat of force, or deception, the prison term imposed upon the
offender shall be one of the prison terms prescribed for a felony of
the first degree in section 2929.14 of the Revised Code that is not
less than five years. If the offender under division (A)(1)(b) of this
section purposely compels the victim to submit by force or threat of
force, whoever violates division (A)(1)(b) of this section shall be
imprisoned for life.

Section 2911.11
General Assembly: 121.
Bill Number: Amended Sub. S.B. 269
Effective Date: 07/01/96

(A) No person, by force, stealth, or deception, shall trespass in an
occupied structure or in a separately secured or separately occupied
portion of an occupied structure, when another person other than an
accomplice of the offender is present, with purpose to commit in the
structure or in the separately secured or separately occupied portion
of the structure any criminal offense, if any of the following apply:

(1) The offender inflicts, or attempts or threatens to inflict
physical harm on another;

(2) The offender has a deadly weapon or dangerous ordnance on or about
the offender's person or under the offender's control.

(B) Whoever violates this section is guilty of aggravated burglary,
a felony of the first degree.

(C) A

[Rysdad]

One Deobfuscator for sale. Cheap.

I once had a professor return a paper to me marked, "Remove the pretentious verbiage and resubmit."

I live by those words today.

And, Nano, if you should feel the need to flame me for this, go ahead, but know this: I will never see them because I refuse to slog through another of your excrutiatingly long posts in the hope of eventually gleaning a clue as to whatever the hell it is you're trying to say.

As to why newspapers don't cite...They don't have to, they don't need to, and very few people would care if they did.

Christ!

[Jodi]

NANO -- I say this respectfully because you have not had the opportunity to insult me as yet becase -- stay with me here -- I didn't read your post. Any time I scroll down through pages and pages of verbiage to find "continued in next post" and then see more pages and pages of verbiage, I don't bother to read it -- and, believe me, I'll read pretty much anything.

If you want to have a conversation, fine with me, but your posts have to (a) be comprehensible; (b) have a point; and (c) not be longer than the Complete (Unabridged) Works of William Shakespeare.

I truly don't mean to insult you, but if you post at the length and verbiage you've utilized here, you'll be lucky if anyone takes the time to read your posts at all, much less formulate an answer.

Temujin:

Yes, you're right: I did direct my comment, as to jodih's statement about what counties can do in the way of legislation imposing criminal penalties, in error, to you instead. I'm sorry.

pldennison:

Also, although you may want to argue that newspapers and their reporters carry a
certain level of societal responsibility, you'd have a hard time convincing Mssrs. Hearst, Gannett, Murdoch, et al., of that.

Well, they might give it lip service. At least, in the interest of public relations, I doubt they'd put the matter quite so bluntly as you did in your previous post. ;)

Your map example does have some bearing on the matter, but I think it differs in a way I am unable to articulate at 9:30 in the morning. If I wanted to be cynical, I'd
say it's because most readers have a general idea of things that are against the law,
while most are woefully uninformed about world geography.[/quote

Well, I certainly don't deny that "most readers have a general idea of things that are against the law," but I also certainly don't believe that even the best informed, other than those having professional connection to a broad expanse of the law, will have a good idea of what laws are indicated by certain short terms news writers will tend to use as to certain charges, sometimes in cases where the subject laws are written in conflict with common terminology used by the public and/or confusable, as so briefly termed, with a significantly different law. I gave the example of CA-US's PC §647.6(a) vs. PC§288(a). Also, if the news reading public is so ill-informed as to world geography, I would thing the papers -- if it be their role to take the low road -- ought only to show, say, that East Timor is in the East Indies (or whatever you call it these days) but not details of how far it's capital, Dili, is from the country's border with Indonesia. IOW, your logic seems backwards to me; from your stance, I would expect the public to be shown detailed maps only in the case that they be generally aware of world geography and how to read maps, and thus would want to see more detail than you could expect such persons to carry around in their heads. I'm generally aware of world geography, but I haven't been tuned in on the layout of East Timor's population centers, and thus welcomed the Chron's detailed map of it. I would assume that, if I only cared whether they had a soccer team, I wouldn't be interested in the detailed map. BTW, although I didn't include it, the Chron even shows street maps of locations within cities, where appropriate.

As to your quotations of Cleveland news stories and correlate OH criminal statutes, I'm assuming, in your examples, that the text you give from the newspaper, in each case, gives no further description of the charge(s), and that excerpts of OH law you give are taken from the criminal code of that state.

1. Yes, as to perjury, I believe that the public -- to the extent that 'lying under oath' describes it in all jurisdictions having English-style law, at least -- needs no further explication of the charge mentioned in your first example.

2. In the case of "voyeurism and possession of criminal tools," I would guess these descriptions wouldn't result in any ambiguity as to code sections, but I have never seen the word 'voyeurism' used to refer to a crime, only to the general behavior pattern, whether exercised as a crime or otherwise. Although, the implication of the term in regard to a crime would be obvious, the Plain Dealer might wish also to use some description more familiar to its out-of-state readers, such as peeping-Tomism. I just checked the CA-US Penal Code, because I didn't know how my state categorized this crime. It designates it, in a somewhat archaic hangover from an earlier organization of the CA Penal Code, as §647(k), within a code section listing various sorts of "disorderly conduct", within a chapter on "miscellaneous offenses", rather than in another chapter entitled "Invasion of Privacy", where I would've expected it. Both of these chapters are in a title called simply "Miscellaneous Crimes".

Although the description in the news article of the second charge in that case as "possession of criminal tools" seems sufficient, I'd just like to mention, in regard to the law itself, that I am bothered by such laws written so generally. It seems to me that, in a state with a law written as you quote it here, one could go down the list of all crimes and enhance most sentences under almost all of them by labeling something used in their commission that could be called a "criminal tool", since subsection (A) of this OH code section covers implements not necessarily, or even usually, dedicated to crime, including as here, innocuous things like cameras. For example, couldn't OH, in a case of written perjury, charge such criminal possession merely for the pen used in filling out and/or signing the document that is evidence of perjury?

3) I have also never before heard the term '(gross) sexual imposition', although, as I read in the code section quoted here, it covers both sex imposed by coercion, except in the case of that with a spouse, and also sex with a person of less than a certain age. I had to look up the OH rape statute, because you left out what comes after the colon in subsection (A). It appears to me that the gross sexual imposition section includes the rape section, except for a spouse, as victim, that resides elsewhere than at the residence of the offender. The two statutes also seem to imply that it's OK to engage in sexual conduct with your cohabitating spouse after drugging same surreptitiously or by force, threat of force, or deception. So maybe I don't know English as she is spoken in OH. Can I conclude that, because OH is charging both of these statutes, this guy was involved in two incidents with the same girl, once when she was not his spouse and once when she was but was not living with him? ;)

In any case, again, while the basic crime and nature of the charges are not basically ambiguous, as reported, out-of-staters (and maybe even OHers, if 'gross sexual imposition' has only recently been used in OH's revised codes) ought to get a definition of "GSI".

Interestingly, you include the text of laws charging 1) trespassing in a structure in order to commit rape/GSI and 2) removing of the intended victim to a different location in order to do same -- although you don't quote anything from the news article that says these charges were also filed. How do you know these charge were filed?

Apparently GSI is roughly equivalent to what CA calls simply 'unlawful sex'. I think it's an outrageous logical insult to include the word 'unlawful' in a statute, because that immediately makes the reasoning of the law unquestionably circular. But the State of CA is not much into logic and rationality, just hype PR. I once talked to some of the jokers who massage such wordings in Legislative Counsel's office in Sacramento, in respect to a medical-records bill. They just don't make much sense.

Rysdad:

[quote]They don't have to, they don't need to, and very few people would care if they did.

Christ!

I guess that would apply also to those who wish to filter out my posts. ;)

Jodih:

One of those who responds to posts he doesn't read. OK, whatever's right.

It was, of course, others who quoted most of my earlier posts who made my more recent post so long, through my quoting their posts in turn.

. . .your posts have to. . .not be longer than the Complete (Unabridged) Works of William Shakespeare.

Hey, you don't think my posts are better

[pldennison]

As to your quotations of Cleveland news stories and correlate OH criminal statutes, I'm assuming, in your examples, that the text you give from the newspaper, in each case, gives no further description of the charge(s),

In some cases it does, and in some it doesn't. I included only the first paragraph or two because one should assume (at least under the classic journalism "rules") that the most important information will be contained there. The perjury story, for example, goes on to expound upon some specifics; while the rape/kidnapping fugitive story basically includes little else.

and that excerpts of OH law you give are taken from the criminal code of that state.

Correct.

Although, the implication of the term in regard to a crime would be obvious, the Plain Dealer might wish also to use some description more familiar to its out-of-state readers, such as peeping-Tomism.

If you lived here, you would be as amazed as I am that the PD assumes its readers are well-versed enough to even know the word; but in this case, they did indeed use the word from the statute itself. Plus, this has been a pretty big deal case in the papers the last few months, so many people are already familiar with the specifics. Distracts us from the real issues like handouts to the NFL and a corrupt mayor.


Although the description in the news article of the second charge in that case as "possession of criminal tools" seems sufficient, I'd just like to mention, in regard to the law itself, that I am bothered by such laws written so generally. It seems to me that, in a state with a law written as you quote it here, one could go down the list of all crimes and enhance most sentences under almost all of them by labeling something used in their commission that could be called a "criminal tool", since subsection (A) of this OH code section covers implements not necessarily, or even usually, dedicated to crime, including as here, innocuous things like cameras.

Yep, this occurred to me as well. Seems like breaking a butterfly on a wheel, that one does.

In any case, again, while the basic crime and nature of the charges are not basically ambiguous, as reported, out-of-staters (and maybe even OHers, if 'gross sexual imposition' has only recently been used in OH's revised codes) ought to get a definition of "GSI".

Probably true--on that basis, I concur with your statements in this thread.

Can I conclude that, because OH is charging both of these statutes, this guy was involved in two incidents with the same girl, once when she was not his spouse and once when she was but was not living with him?

Actually, I think because a GSI charge can be specifically brought simply and only if the victim is under 13, while the rape charge cannot, he is being charged with both.

Interestingly, you include the text of laws charging 1) trespassing in a structure in order to commit rape/GSI and 2) removing of the intended victim to a different location in order to do same -- although you don't quote anything from the news article that says these charges were also filed. How do you know these charge were filed?

The last sentence refers to some kidnapping and agg. burglary charges for which the fugitive is wanted, so I quoted those as well. I don't know if they're related to the rape/GSI charge or separate incidents.

I think it's an outrageous logical insult to include the word 'unlawful' in a statute, because that immediately makes the reasoning of the law unquestionably circular. But the State of CA is not much into logic and rationality, just hype PR. I once talked to some of the jokers who massage such wordings in Legislative Counsel's office in Sacramento, in respect to a medical-records bill. They just don't make much sense.

I agree with you there--legislators often back themselves into a question-begging corner when writing these things.


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"I love God! He's so deliciously evil!" - Stewie Griffin, Family Guy