I don’t see how.
Also, it’s not illegal.
I went on vacation and when I returned there were two homemade (and luscious) pizzas gone from my freezer. Bet I know who did it - The Bottomless Pit, AKA my son.
I’d put another in there with some noxious substance on them and announce I was going away for a couple of days, but I’m not going to because revenge. . .
. . . is a dish best served cold. 
Ha, ha, beat you to it by two posts!
Are you seriously expressing disbelief that juries use circumstantial evidence to infer intent? Do you deny that people routinely get convicted of attempted crimes without a notarized affidavit expressing their intent offered in evidence?
I think he’s saying that in this case the chances are more likely that someone would add something to own food outweigh any circumstantial evidence the affected person might be able to produce.
Likely because they’re the ones who enjoy taking other people’s stuff.
Read this.
Standing in court, prove that “Joe-Bloggs” wrote “do not eat this” (as per TDN’s quote)on his ice cream container because he had a specific hope that the thief would eat it anyway. Prove that. Go on.
By the way, Joe Bloggs is in court right then. He says he wrote “Do not eat this” on his ice cream because he didnt want anybody else to eat his ice cream. A crazy notion 'tis true. Prove otherwise. Go on.
Why is laxative in his ice cream? He feels he needs to take laxatives. Why ice cream? He doesnt like the taste of laxatives, so mixes it with tasty ice cream. Why is it in the fridge? Its ice cream, needs to be kept cold. Wasnt he worried that somebody could take his laxative? Yes, a bit, so he decided to write “do not eat this” on the carton.
Thats his story. You feel you can prove a different intent? Go on then, PROVE HIM WRONG.
Thats right, you cant.
All this is SDMB rubbish anyway. Post a story about pulling a harmless prank and sure enough somebody will berate you for breaking the law and destroying society. Sheesh, is it always about the lawyers for you lot?
From the OP:
IN THE SHARED FREEZER. This is not privately stored.
I’ll agree with you about the habanero’s.
But I’d argue that ExLax could be defined as a deleterious substance if put into a food item. It does not belong in a food item and is not a food. It is an over the counter drug.
I call Joe Bloggs roomate to the stand.
Did you see Joe Bloggs write “do not eat this” on his ice cream?
“I did”
What did he say as he wrote it?
"He said, “this will serve that Goddamn ice cream thief right when he eats this and shits himself from here to Tuesday.”
Yes it i privately stored. The communal freezer exists for the storing of private property. That is the expectation. Jyust because something is in it does not mean that it is being provided for public distribution. There is no access being provded here. The container itself is private property, is labled as such and is reasonably undetrstood as such. I cannot believe how completely full of shit people are being about this.
Hearsay.
Are you arguing that someone who intends only to dose himself and accidentally doses someone else is innocent? That’s trivially true.
Or are you arguing that perjuring yourself might avoid conviction in a criminal case? Well duh. That doesn’t mean that committing a crime is legal.
As for the note - drunk drivers don’t intend to kill people, as a rule. They may in fact take great pains to drive as safely as possible given their condition. However, they can reasonably foresee the outcome that someone could get killed, therefore they have the necessary mens rea to be found guilty of homicide. In this case, the defendant would have more of a guilty intent, since they don’t just recklessly ignore the possibility of the food being taken, they are relying on it based on the evidence and history.
Look. Are food thieves jerks who deserve a case of the runs as punishment? Sure.
Could you dose a food thief and probably get away with it? Sure.
Is it *legal *to deliberately dose a food thief? Probably not.
Dio, that statement is excluded from hearsay because it’s a statement against the defendant’s interest.
You’re argument would fail. It is not deleterious, and it’s not your place to decide for others how they are able to imgest it. People mix medications with food all the fucking time. My job involves passing a lot of meds, and frequently certain kinds of meds – including laxatives – are specifically instructed to be mixed with food for specific individuals. Saying “you have no right to mix your laxative with ice cream” is a non-fucking starter.
Not that any of this would ever be charged anyway. It’s the sheerest fantasy that there would be a criminal trial.
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It’s not deliberate. It can only happen if the person steals the food. It’s not a crime to dose your own food with laxatives. If someone steals that item, then you are the victim.
Then it’s up to the jury whether to believe the roommate. It would be pretty easy just to say the roommate is full of shit. Not that I think there’s the slightest chance there would ever be a trial, or that I beleive it would be illegal even if you admitted that was your intent.
Certainly no jury would convict.
You don’t have to perjur yourself, by the way. You don’t have to testify at all. You just need your lawyer to ask the right questions.
I don’t know, but I have had people steal my food too. >:( There was one girl at my last place of employment who openly stole LOTS of people’s food, and didn’t even make an attempt to hide it. She would say, “Oh, yeah, those were good.” or “Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize that that was yours.” (Even when it had the name clearly written on it.) She never bothered to pay anyone back, of course. She stole money too. Recently she had her iPod stolen, and to be honest, I was pretty damn happy about it. I guess that makes me not a very good person.
Nope, you are factually wrong here. The freezer is accessible to the public. You have a duty to not put deleterious substances in areas where they might accidentally be ingested by innocent bystanders. For example, if you put poison in a jar labelled “candy”, and put it in a public place, you would not have a reasonable defense to say “it was my private poison in my private jar”
The law is phrased as it is to prevent people from doing exactly what is suggested. You may argue that a person might get away with it, but that is different from whether or not it is morally or legally correct.
You apparently don’t know what hearsay means. Here ya go:
In my example, the witness was testifying about WHAT HE HAD PERSONALLY HEARD. He was not relaying what someone else told him. Hearsay would be :
"I heard my friend Jim say that Joe Bloggs said ““this will serve that Goddamn ice cream thief right when he eats this and shits himself from here to Tuesday.””
Bullshit. Personally, I think that the satisfaction derived from such a plan is not worth the possible consequences.
Just because a lunch-pilferer has no moral high ground, that doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily going to shrug off being dosed with laxatives as “Ha ha, you got me.” The law doesn’t have a huge sense of humour about these things, either.
The wording of laws covering this sort of thing varies, naturally - but you’re not going to find a loophole that will get you off if the victim is a thieving bastard.
If someone has been taking your food from somewhere, and you leave adulterated food in that place, it’s reasonable to foresee that someone might consume it. (Otherwise, why put it there?) Congratulations, you’re a felon!
The OP asks for the best way to get revenge on a food thief. I’m pretty sure that the best way *doesn’t *expose you to significant legal liability.
No it isn’t. That’s not what it means to make something accessible. It’s a communal freezer intended for private storage. The individual comntainers are marked and understood as private property. The phrase in that statute that all the bleeding heart food thief defenders are pouncing on like oxygen refers to things like placing a bowl of candy out at Halloween.
No it isn’t. It’s phrased to stop people from putting out bowls of poisoned Halloween candy in public cases. It does not apply to things that are stolen.
No one is going to give a shit what Joe Bob says. That’s still not proof. Joe Bob is a fucking liar. Fuck Joe Bob.