I remember hearing that some states have an additional penalty for wearing body armor in the course of another crime (e.g. bank robbery).
It seems like this should violate some legal principle, but my only study of the law is regularly reading popehat. Can somebody more familiar with this issue, or criminal justice in general, point me in the right direction, please? Or, in the likely event that my instincts are wrong, mention some cases where laws like that have been upheld against a challenge.
It seems to me that the prohibition is against doing something legal while doing something illegal.
For instance, I am allowed to walk down the street wearing a Halloween mask. There are no prohibitions against that.
I am not allowed to wear a mask while committing a crime. The wearing of the mask is entirely to make identification difficult.
Doing it for shits and giggles - not a problem. Doing it to commit a crime - not so much.
Just like, in the U.S., you are allowed to carry a gun. You are allowed to carry a gun into the bank. If you decide to rob the bank then the fact that you had a gun adds an aggravation to the charge.
You are allowed to do legal things legally but not to do legal things illegally.
Trivially, it’s only a conspiracy (in the legal sense) if you’re conspiring to commit another crime, so that’s a crime which has to co-occur with some other offense.
I think the OP is not asking about aggravating factors that take an offence into a more serious category, in the way that carrying a weapon turns robbery into armed robbery, but rather activity which will or can form the subject of a separate criminal charge.
Money laundering might be an example. Transactions which , in isolation, would be perfectly lawful become criminal if done to conceal the proceeds of a prior crime. Or harbouring a felon - you can’t harbour a felon unless there has been prior felony.
The whole category of “aiding and abetting”, including the aforementioned “harboring a felon”. Some countries have “criminal association”, which means “this fellow aids, abets and harbors those other dudes who actually did the hands-on part”.
Again, I think that’s not quite there in terms of the OP. Under the felony-murder rule, which is what I think you’re referring to, you’ve got a felony - burglary, say - and a homicide. And, because the homicide arises in the course of the burglary, it’s murder when it might otherwise have been manslaughter, and eveyone who is guilty of the felony is also guilty of the murder.
Harsh, perhaps. But you don’t have any behaviour which is fundamentally lawful, and is only criminalised because it occurs in the context of another crime. The homicide would have been unlawful in any event. What the felony-murder rule does is (a) elevate it to murder rather than some lesser degree of homicide, and (b) impute guilt to people only indirectly involved in the homicide. But they’re directly involved in the felony, so their behaviour would have been unlawful anyway.
Releasing true information about a third party to the press is perfectly legal. Threatening to do so, unless a consideration is paid, is illegal (blackmail).
I don’t think this qualifies, because it’s possible for a person to be part of the conspiracy without committing the other crime. It’s even possible to conspire without anyone committing the other crime, if, for instance, the police bust you before you can pull it off.
What legal principle would it violate? I really don’t understand why someone would have a problem with this category of crime, in fact I wish it was the standard for the law instead of broad prohibitions. What is your objection to a law making it illegal to use body armor (or a gun or whatever) while robbing a bank, but not prohibiting wearing body armor in general?
Vermont’s concealed carry law is an example of what you’re asking for. The law is that if you’re not prohibited from owning a gun, it’s legal for you to carry a gun unless you’re intending to commit a significant crime (there’s some cutoff, jaywalking doesn’t trigger it for example), and being convicted of the other crime is generally proof of intent. The law has been around for a long time, has seen regular use, and has never successfully been challenged on some kind of ‘you can’t make it illegal to do X while committing a crime’ basis.
In Missouri the law used to be (maybe it still is) that you couldn’t be stopped for not wearing a seatbelt, but could be ticketed for it if you were stopped for some other offense.
That’s a civil infraction, rather than a crime, and doesn’t really fit the OP anyway. There are quite a few traffic offenses that are considered secondary (meaning they don’t justify a traffic stop standing alone), but that doesn’t mean it’s lawful to do them if you don’t do anything else wrong.
It’s legal to drink, if you are over 21, and it’s legal to drive, but it’s not legal to do both at the same time.
It’s legal to have sex with someone, but if you force it on them in the course of an assault, it’s rape.
There are a lot of things that are petty crimes, but if you do them in the presence of your child become “contributing to the delinquency of a minor,” so while it isn’t illegal to do things with your child, it can make other crimes worse. They can even become outright child abuse.
Those don’t really count though. The question isn’t about combining two legal acts to make an illegal act if they’re done together, it’s about a legal act that becomes a crime on its own if (and only if) done while committing a separate crime.
How about a cite/real example and my interpretation (and I’m an expert 'cause I just finished serving on a jury the other day :p) So here’s how it’s written in a particular example: https://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/criminal/charges/weapons14.pdf . This is similar to an instructions page that a jury would receive, which is a summarization of the lawand what it actually means.
So what this shows us, is that in this case, it’s not an “additional penalty” as you put it, it’s actually a completely separate crime:
The jury I was just on had the same kind of element, an “armed criminal action” charge. So Count I was “assault in the first degree” (or second or third, but that’s irrelevant to this discussion) and Count II was “armed criminal action.” That charge read that IF the defendant was found guilty of assault as described in Count I, AND the jury finds beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant did so while in possession of a weapon, then defendant is guilty of the crime of “armed criminal action.” It’s a separate statute, a separate charge, but it’s predicated on being also found guilty of another charge. Just having the weapon isn’t necessarily illegal (if it is, such as “possession of a weapon by a felon,” “possession of an unlicensed weapon within city limits,” or “possession of a weapon inside a government facility” or some such, that would be yet another charge, another separate statute). Anyway, just having a weapon isn’t necessarily against the law, ie you can’t be found guilty of “armed criminal action” if you weren’t also found guilty of a defined “criminal action” at the same time.
Sooooo, in this kind of case, they wrote a law that made it a crime to wear a body vest in the commission of a certain set of other crimes. In order to be found guilty of “unlawful use of a body vest” you have to also be found guilty of a different charge of one of the applicable crimes:
(bolding mine)
Anyway, since on preview I see there’s still some discussion about legal + illegal makes the legal thing illegal. The point is that it’s (in this kind of case anyway) a separate law written in a specific way to make that combination of things illegal. There are reasons to make it illegal to wear body armor while committing a crime, so it’s a separate law that makes it illegal to wear body armor while committing a crime. The catch, and I suspect the confusion, is that the charge is predicated on having been found guilty of the “original” crime; so some see it as an “added penalty” for the additional action, as opposed to a separate law and additional criminal charge.
“unlawful use of body armor”? The “unlawful” says it all. It’s considered the same as carrying a weapon.
Which I find surprising. I read something that some state(s?) wanted to or were making use of armored vehicles illegal; basically, if you are involved in underworld shenanigans such that you need that level of protection, well, the state won’t allow it, sucks to be you with a target on your back. Similarly I thought they were outlawing ANY use of body armor by private citizens. There’s the added problem that when the gang types wear body armor, the other side will carry more powerful weapons that put everyone at risk.
I suppose the point with the OP is that most examples involve actions, otherwise legal, that help facilitate a crime or help in the concealment or evasion of justice. (Driving the getaway car, possession of burglary tools, destruction of evidence.)
Canada has/had(?) a law about “Living off the avails of prostitution”. If Lulu pays the rent for both of you, that’s OK or not - depending on how she earned the money. Pretty much the only way they could nail pimps when the girls don’t want to talk.
You can be convicted even it was your accomplice who died, from being shot by the police.
We had a case here in Minnesota where a young man drove a snowmobile onto a frozen lake, and past ‘no access - thin ice’ signs, and went through the ice, and he was rescued but his younger brother riding behind him died. The County Attorney (rightly) charged him with manslaughter for the death of his brother.
You don’t need to worry in Texas unless you’re