Up until Lawrence v Texas I was indeed a repeat sexual offender. Probably so were you!
Well, underage sex I might agree with you. “Date Rape” I don’t think so
Actually I was thinking of the situation where both people were drunk–it’s fairly rare that one person gets drunk and the other doesn’t drink at all.
In high school, in the early 1980s, I pirated video games for the Apple II. Were those expensive enough to be a felony?
When I was young and was very low on money about 15-16 years ago I had a friend who I was helping throw trash out of his garage. He had a large Plasma screen HDTV (back when those were the best TV’s out there) just sitting in a corner of his garage. I asked him about it and he said that it just stopped working 3 years into its life and he had no idea how to fix it and was planning on throwing it out next time there was a free electronics recycling thing at the church nearby. He asked me if I wanted to go take a look at it and figure it out since I was somewhat mechanically skilled. So I wound up taking it home and within a month figured out the HDTV was still within warranty so I took it to an authorized repair center, paid a $50 cover, and within another week got the HDTV back repaired and good as new (or at least good as new for something sitting in a garage for a year).
Now, I should have just given it back to my friend and charged him the $100 or so for cover as well as time spent on figuring it out, but instead I just told him that I took it to a repair center and they said it was junk, and they allowed me to give it to them to recycle for free. So he said he didn’t mind as he had written it off anyway, and I wound up on Craigslist selling it for abut $400 or so to somebody on there. The only reason I did this was because I was always critically short of money at the time living alone for the first time and justified it on the basis of “He didn’t want it anyway, and he was going to throw it away without me”.
I don’t know if that was fraud or theft by deception, but sounds like small claims court material.
I’m guessing most people who’ve earned tips have underreported…
I saw Johnny Cash performing his San Quentin Blues at a State Fair once, where he told this story: A fan once asked him: If you shot a man in Reno, why are you doing time in San Quentin?
Call me crazy
But I did what I had to do
You can call me stupid
I just did what I had to do
I had to steal a little time baby
So I could spend it all on you
It’s the Folsom Prison Blues. It’s also in California so the question is valid.
The line is in response to the line that says his Momma told him not to play with guns. I interpret it as talking about his past in general not necessarily talking about the crime he was caught and imprisoned for.
Oh, you bet I was! I could have been convicted in several states.
And I also committed the crime of calling a cop a “fucking douchbag,” though he deserved it, and the judge agreed with me.
Along with some of the others mentioned.
Assault and battery on some of my siblings.
I remember when streaking was popular I was sleeping out in my friend’s backyard. We ran around the house naked. We did make sure there were no cars on the street. I assume that was breaking the law.
Trespassing inside my own building. I lived in an artist warehouse with mixed use on the ground floor and for a while, the place was a firetrap and a bunch of other stuff. One day a street-level door to the vacant ground floor was left unsecured, after dark, this in a neighborhood where anything left out gets stolen in 5-10 minutes. We could have had vagrants setting fires in there. I walked around inside there with a couple of guy friends with flashlights. It was surprisingly hard for me to transgress like that. Go where I wasn’t supposed to be.
I went through a shoplifting phase as a teen.
And there may have been a copyright violation or two (or two million) with downloading music, movies, and TV shows.
I mean, I can’t help the OP, but good luck to finding a completely law-abiding citizen. As for me…
Lots of drugs and underaged drinking.
Broke into the tunnel system under my university (and was caught and put on probation).
Some shoplifting as a young teenager, mostly Playboys and paperback books.
When I worked at a camp one summer after my freshman year of college, one of my duties was managing the camp store, which stocked the most delicious ice cream treats. Once in a while I’d get up in the middle of the night and, since I had the key, slip into the freezer and grab one. I always meant to pay for it the next day but never did. So that’s petty theft, I guess.
As a very young teen - probably 13 or 14 at most - I went exploring with my friend in a partially built house. I don’t think it occurred to either of us that what we were doing was trespassing. It was the sort of thing I’d done constantly in a different suburb, as a child living near a new development where the construction of houses was continuous; the neighborhood kids pretty much treated the development as an exciting playground, and never once did I hear of anyone getting into trouble for it.
However, the nosy biddy down the street saw us enter the unfinished house and called the builder. He came over and started screaming at us that he was going to call the cops. Realizing we were in trouble, we ran into the woods. I was able to get away but my friend was caught. I felt too guilty to let her take the rap so I went back and joined her. We got a sound verbal thrashing from the builder but that was it.
It seems my friend didn’t rat me out; she was refusing to say who her partner in crime* was. And I didn’t leave her there to take the blame alone. So we were good friends to each other that day. And I’ve always been glad I had the guts to go back.
*yes, I did read that thread.
“The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.” The other Kropotkin
All of my actual crimes and actual convictions (some overlap, but not the same sets) were when I was depressed (a condition that encompasses poor judgement). If not for that, and traffic offenses, I think I’d probably be crime free.
Very close to committing sex crimes when I was a teenager, but I don’t think I ever crossed the line.
Let’s see; breaking and entering, grand theft auto, assault and battery, drug use, evading arrest, . . . Nope, I don’t belong in this thread.
Oh yeah, all the usual minor ones, and one big vigilante thing that should have got me some prison time but didn’t.
Back when pot was illegal here, early '80s, a friend of mine Dave, was a grower/seller and through a personal misjudgment of mine a person who I thought was my friend told his other unsavory friend where Dave lived.
Well these two guys broke into his grow room and stole a bunch of pot, and forced his wife to get naked, and she had to escape through the woods with her baby. Bad thing! Dave, the grower, found a name somehow and a bunch of guys showed up at my house and wanted to know where to find the guy. I knew where and we all got in my car, heavily armed, and went to visit him. Dave beat him up pretty good and we recovered some of the pot, an axe used to break in and some other evidence, and then Dave the Dealer turned all of this evidence over to the police. Turned out to be a wise move.
So I got called to come in and talk to the District Attorney. They asked me about the other guys involved and I had never met any of them before and only knew first names on that night. The short of the rest of the story is that the two guys that stole the pot, broke into the house, abused his wife, went to state prison for a couple of years. And Dave was highly advised to move out of the county. No charges against Dave, me any, or the other guys. The DA was a tough on crime sort, the kind that you may have seen on even national news, and he was focused on the violence of the assault against the wife and baby.
Me, I never went to court, never testified at their trial, never had any repercussions at all. I imagine that the sheriffs kept an eye on me for awhile but I don’t know. A better outcome than prison or what I expected that night, which was to be the driver in what could have been basically a mob hit.
Nope. 