St. Louis police officers who used confiscated scalped tickets to attend the World Series last year won’t be prosecuted due to the lack of an applicable crime
Even though I trust that the legal opinions received by the City Attorney are valid, I’m just really curious as to how an act that’s obviously wrong and unethical and appears to fly in the face of the spirit of the law is not a violation.
Are there other “near-crimes” like this that are waiting to be committed?
Please read my question as: Are there other examples of legal anomalies like this in case law?
I missed the edit window, and want to make sure that my intent is clear.
One would think that they tampered with evidence in the least, committed theft at worst. (While the scalping part was illegal, the tickets were still the property of the scalper, right?)
Per the cited article, there needs to be physical change to the property for a tampering charge, and the tickets were scanned, but not torn. Also, for tampering the crime must be a felony, and this was just an ordinance violation.
Former prosecutor here. Sounds like the city attorney’s hands were tied, given the applicable Missouri law. Sometimes “cannot prosecute” is what you’re left with after evaluating a case. Besides, the officers were each busted down a rank and suspended for two weeks, losing $20K in pay as well as shamed before the community; that seems appropriate to me.
And for an urban legend “near crime,” see A Case of Cigarson | Snopes.com
How about something similar…
We’ve all seen movies where Some Guy is tormented and manipulated by someone to the point where they commit a murder. For example, Some Guy is convinced by The Bad Guy that Some Guy’s wife and kids were just murdered by Red Herring.
So, Some Guy, in a fit of rage, goes and kills Red Herring. Obviously, a murder was committed by Some Guy.
The Bad Guy didn’t kidnap, harm, molest, kill, or threaten anyone. It was all some sort of psychological mind game for the sake of screwing with Some Guy.
Obviously, Some Guy was pushed into it by The Bad Guy.
What crime did The Bad Guy commit?
-Joe
If the law supposes that, the law is a ass.
I’m also reminded of a movie where a woman is convicted of murdering The Bad Guy, and serves a prison term for the murder – only it turns out The Bad Guy actually survived the murder attempt.
So, when she gets out of jail and tracks The Bad Guy down, she’s allowed to kill him with no legal repercussions, because she’s already served time for murdering him.
It appears that it isn’t a matter of there not being a law to cover this situation. The problem is that the evidence needed to prove the crime occurred is inadmissable. It appears the officers admitted what they did at an internal affairs interrogation where they were told they had to answer the questions or they would lose their jobs. This means they were not given their right to remain silent and avoid self-incrimination. This is permissable at a job-related investigation but it isn’t allowed at a criminal investigation. So their confessions can’t be entered as evidence in court. And any other evidence that was derived from their confessions is also inadmissable - which is pretty much all the evidence there is.
If that’s the movie I’m thinking of (Double Jeopardy with Ashley Judd), the real world doesn’t work that way, as is explained in the Goofs page.
It’s not clear from your post whether or not you believe this is true. But in actuality it’s not. Double jeopardy means you can’t be tried twice for the same crime. But that doesn’t mean you can be tried again for breaking the same law in a different crime.
A person is charged with a specific violation of a law - for example, Jane Doe is charged with murdering John Smith in the library with a lead pipe on or about April 17, 2007. If she is convicted and the conviction is later overturned because Smith is actually alive, Doe isn’t owed a free murder. If she kills Smith, she’ll be charged and retried for the new crime of murdering Smith in the time and place where she did it.
If it were otherwise, a bank robber who was convicted once for robbing a specific bank could keep going back and robbing it again every week, safe in the knowledge that he could never again be charged for that crime.
To continue the hijack… Double jeopardy was explored in an excellent Staff Report by Bricker, and the following thread: Double jeopardy - Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports - Straight Dope Message Board
I know this isn’t GD, but can I submit that maybe it isn’t against the law because it isn’t wrong? As previously noted, the evidence was not tampered with and that’s the only thing that I can think of that might have been a problem with what these officers did.
Somebody might as well have enjoyed that World Series, cheered on the Redbirds, and put money in the beer man’s pockets. Nobody was hurt by the “crime” and – who knows? – maybe those officer’s cheers were the ones that broke the Tigers’ backs last October.
As for the basic issue – lots of immoral and unethical things may not constitute a crime. That’s because one of the strongest principles in law is that for something to constitute a criminal act, what it is must be defined by the law in such detail that one can know whether or not one’s contemplated act constitutes that crime. And it’s that way to avoid nebulous definitions like “to bring the President into disrepute constitutes criminal libel against him” – well, what if your statements are 100% true and the President’s acts are disreputable? (Not that there’s any relevance to the present day intended.) You need in such a law to nail down exactly what constitutes a crime – false statements that can be proven to harm his reputation, by evidence that can be placed before the court, for example. (And even there, issues of freedom of speech and of the press may supervene – but I’m using it as illustrative of the construction of criminal statutes.)
If petty larceny is stealing less than $1000, and grand larceny is stealing more than $1000, what crime is stealing exactly $1000? Ooops!
This is why some laws use “legal adverbs” like “intentionally, criminally, and feloniously” – they have specific legal meanings in relation to the criminal law, and can be used to distinguish between unfortunate accident and criminal intent where that’s relevant.
And, as noted, the P.D. inadvertently gave these cops the equivalent of use immunity, by requiring their testimony, under penalty of losing their jobs, at an internal affairs hearing. If you require a statement that may violate Fifth Amendment anti-self-incrimination rights, you lose all right to use that statement or anything derived from it in prosecuting those who are compelled to make such statements.
So, if a car has been impounded as evidence, there nothing wrong with a police officer borrowing it to run a few errands, as lng as they bring it back in the same condition?
I would think there’s a problem with police officers using stuff that has been taken for official purposes, and using it for their own private purposes.
Are confiscated vehicles legally and permanently considered police property? If so, I see no reason the police shouldn’t use them, presuming they don’t need to keep from getting their fingerprints on it or whatever. Of course, if the car still belongs to the suspect then the police shouldn’t use it for any reason except evidence. In any case, using a car obviously “tampers” with it in ways that scanning the UPC on a baseball ticket never will.
You have to follow that train of logic and see where it takes you.
If you argue that it’s not wrong for police officers to use scalped tickets, then you presumedly believe it’s not wrong for anybody to use scalped tickets. I’m assuming you don’t believe the police are entitled to any special privileges like that.
And if you believe it’s okay to buy scalped tickets, then you presumedly believe it’s okay to sell them. Because both halves of the transaction require the other.
So the argument becomes; should scalping tickets be illegal? And I would argue yes - it’s not up there with murder or rape or robbery but it is an action that hurts the general public. Scalpers exist by buying up thousands of tickets and then using the artificial scarcity they’ve created to resell the tickets for higher prices. The fans certainly don’t benefit by having to pay more money for their tickets. And the performers don’t benefit because they only got the money from the original legitimate price of the tickets.
Another file from the casebook of Little Nemo, Pretend Lawyer.
Okay, Some Guy would be charged with murder. He’ll make his defense based on his emotional duress in believing Red Herring killed his family. From a legal standpoint, he doesn’t have to prove Red Herring actually killed his family. He just has to convince a jury that a reasonable person would believe that under the circumstances that Some Guy faced at the time and that it’s possible that that knowledge would make a person so distraught that there were not legally responsible for their actions.
And now for Bad Guy. He did not technically commit any crime himself. But his actions caused a crime to happen. So assuming that the prosecutor can convince a jury that Bad Guy intended to drive Some Guy to murder by his actions, then Bad Guy can be convicted of murder as well. It would be the same degree of guilt as if Bad Guy had paid Some Guy to kill Red Herring - he didn’t directly commit the crime but he caused it to happen.
Oh, come on. IANAL, but, on its face, this appears to be clear-cut case of theft of service.
Theft of service is what they charge people who try to beat train fares and sneak into movies. The thief doesn’t steal the train or the movie, and he/she doesn’t overtly diminish the trainriding or moviewatching experience for others, but he/she nonetheless enriches his/herself without paying the provider for the enrichment.
So, just like you can’t put a trainride in a shoebox and say, “This guy stole this from my railroad,” you can’t put the baseball game (or even the tickets) on the table and say they were stolen. Still, you can prosecute the farebeater. Why can’t they prosecute the cops?
I suspect one or more of three things is at work here.
It was a badly written news report. Probably the real reason that the prosecutors’ hands are tied is what Little Nemo said in his/her first post (#10), and this operative point was simply buried in the piece because it wasn’t sexy enough to lead the story.
MLB was unwilling to press charges against the cops for theft of service.
The prosecutors want the PD to handle this case internally, and simply want it to go away. The whole song-and-dance by the Cicuit Attorney Joyce in the article is her way of saying, “The cops are going to handle this among themselves. We don’t want to get involved. Now go away and leave us all alone.”