Unethical I guess is not always illegal.
Well. Is it debate time? I certainly didn’t want to start that, but I think the GQ stuff is mostly out of the way here.
Personally – in general – I would say I don’t think scalping should be illegal. But I think that is irrelevant to this issue. The tickets weren’t scalped; they were confiscated. The officers in question didn’t exchange money for these tickets, but nevertheless acquired them legally. Therefore I don’t see why those highly sought-after seats in Busch Stadium should be left empty just because the previous owner of the tickets screwed up and got them taken away. The police, rightly in my opinion, recognized that there was value in those tickets that could either have gone to waste, or be utilized efficiently by themselves. Considering they didn’t try to bribe anybody, or scalp the tickets themselves, I don’t see how any harm was done by their choice to use them and watch the game.
P.S. stuyguy, it isn’t theft of service because the tickets were paid for legally. It just happens that said ticket-buyer broke the law after he bought them. If I bought a CD legally, and then killed somebody, would you say the cops were infringing copyrights if they listened to that CD while searching my house for evidence? It may or may not be right to listen to it, but in no way would it be copyright infringement, which I guess is a certain kind of theft of service.
Although I think the other posters have nailed the actual issue I wanted to respond to this part of your OP.
To consitute a crime the act must be:
Voluntary
Acts
Specified
In Advance
By Statute
Anything that does not meet ALL 5 criteria is not a crime. Thus, an involuntary act like a seizure cannot be a crime – even if you kill someone during it; thinking bad thoughts is not a crime – it’s not an act, nor can “being a drug addict” be a crime – it’s a status; “being a jerk” cannot be a crime – it’s too unspecific; laws normally cannot be applied retroactively to acts that were not a crime when committed; and the definitions of crimes must be enacted into law by legislatures, not just made up on the spot by enforcement.
My Criminal Law professor told me of a situation where a man was using hidden videocameras to video people using porto-potties. As it turned out, this creepy, invasive act did not meet the definition for any crime in the jurisdiction. (watching in person was a crime). No chargable offense… no crime took place.
Strange but true. While it is aggravating when patently unethical/creepy behavior slips through the statutory cracks, I think we can all agree that no element of the 5-part test can be taken away without a significant loss of liberty to the law-abiding public.
I’m going to pick nits here. The officer’s did not aquire the tickets by confiscation; the police department, in it’s official capacity of enforcing the law, aquired them. To me this is a very important distinction. If my company buys a computer, I, as an employee, am not free to take said computer home and do with it as I choose.
I think not enough attention was paid to this quote from the article
*Joyce said she concluded that there was no admissible evidence to support any charge, including stealing.
“The only evidence here is the officers’ statements to internal affairs, and that’s not admissible because it’s considered coerced. The officers are ordered to answer or face losing their jobs. I’m forbidden by the Constitution to use coerced evidence to prosecute, or even use for a jumping off point to an investigation.”*
In other words, there isn’t any legally admissible evidence to prove a charge. Doesn’t mean a charge of larceny or the equivalent might not be appropriate with a different set of facts- witnesses who saw the officers take the tickets, or records of when they were removed from the place evidence is kept and when they were returned. The prosecutor’s choice of words is important. She never says that they didn’t commit a crime, or that their actions were legal- just that she doesn’t have any evidence to support a charge. Later on, however, she very clearly said that they did not commit the crime of tampering with evidence. If she believes they did commit a crime, but knows she can’t prove it , all she really can say is that she has no evidence to support a charge.
I considered that possibility. But the tickets were legally purchased at some point, so the service (viewing the game) wasn’t being stolen, even if the viewers were not the people who purchased it. The scalpers may have been the owners of the services when they bought the tickets, but by trying to resell them in an illegal fashion they gave up their right to the service (it usually say right on the ticket that it’s a contract that can revoked).
I don’t know what the status becomes at that point. Does the service revoke back to the stadium (in effect, giving them the right to sell the seat to a new customer)? Or does it go to the “public” - a pretty nebulous entity in this case. I’m guessing that at the time that the game was played, nobody had a legal claim to the service. But the stadium specifically couldn’t claim it owned the service because it had explicitly sold it - so there could be no legal claim that the service was being stolen from them.
It appears I misunderstood the intent of your previous post. But I still think the police were wrong. The tickets were confiscated by the officers in the performance of their duties so they had the right to take them. But going to the baseball game was not part of their duties - when they took the tickets for that purpose they were acting as members of the genral public not as police officers. And that’s putting the best face on it - you could also argue that they abused their authority as police officers by taking tickets from an evidence room where members of the the general public would not have an opportunity to go.
How about this one?
Person A accuses Group B of gang-rape. If Group B is found guilty, they go to prison for a long time.
If Group B is found not guilty, it is only after spending millions on legal defense and having their reputations stained for the better part of a year.
Now, it turns out Person A lied about the charge and made it all up. Group B has been completely innocent from the start .
Nothing happens to Person A.
Sorry, didn’t finish my thought:
"Now, it turns out Person A lied about the charge and made it all up. Group B has been completely innocent from the start .
Nothing happens to Person A.
How has Person A not broken any laws?"
How about perjury, since presumably Person A testified in court at some point?
A bit of an aside, but I’ve only seen that movie once. Didn’t Ashley Judd actually desist in her quest to kill her husband, only to have him pull his gun on her and kill him in self defense? In which case the homicide in question was self defense and would of course, not be something for which she’d be sent to prison in any case.
I assume you’re talking about a completely hypothetical situation.
Person A could face criminal charges for filing false police reports. She could also face civil charges if Group B decides to sue her for defamation of character.
In addition to those noted above,
Criminal: Perjury is a crime, assuming A testified or gave other sworn statements that were false.
Civil: Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, Malicious Prosecution
I would say that upon trying to scalp the tickets, the tickets then became void (dont forget the ticket is only a temporary promise of admission that can be revoked). The stadium then has the right to resell the tickets, and probably would have if it had known and there had been customers.
On the other hand, adding another assumption to this hypothetical situation, if Person A was known to have severe psychological problems to the extent of being delusional, and an unscrupulous prosecutor decided to proceed on the basis of her report for political reasons, it might be entirely appropriate to press neither criminal charges nor a civil suit against Person A, and instead pursue Prosecutor N to the full extent of the law.
Speaking hypothetially, of course.
I agree. People have to remember that in addition to protecting the rights of the defendant, the legal system also gives extra weight to protecting the rights of the accuser. There’s an obvious societal benefit to assuring victims of a crime that they will be safe in reporting that crime. It’s easy to imagine the bad consequences if people were worried about the likelihood of facing criminal charges if when a person they accused of a crime was exonerated (for reasons that might have nothing to do with actual innocence) they were able to turn around and have their accuser arrested. So the laws about making false accusations of a crime are drawn very narrowly.
What if Person A was not known to have severe psychological problems to the extent of being delusional, and this was evidently a purely malicious complaint, and Person B, on remand awaiting trial, got shanked in the chow line at Big City Prison. Would Person A be liable to a more serious charge than perjury?
mm
Funny how this thread has taken on a life of its own. What part of: they committed a crime but we can’t prosecute because there is no admissible evidence did everyone not get? 
HubZilla’s irrelevant and indignation-fueled hijack of this otherwise fascinating thread with his allusion to the Duke lacrosse rape accusation case is utterly out of place here, in my opinion. He/she, and all those who wish to discuss that case, should take their musings to a new thread. Both cases are interesting enough, and unrelated enough, to support their own threads.
It is additionally annoying that HubZilla came to this thread, pissed on it with his hijack, and has not returned since.
That’s a reasonable speculation but: 1) I don’t think we got an actual cite for that and 2) I don’t think we got a handle on what crime it would be if the evidence was admissible.
I’m not clear on what the laws are for this sort of thing although I suspect they vary from state to state. On the one hand, there are laws against things like giving free lunch and other “gifts” to officers in some areas, but on the other hand there are some pretty arbitary confiscation powers of the police that they directly benefit from through auctions.
The problem with the police department or individual officers gaining from crime fighting is that it leads to corruption. Officers are supposed to be impartial and help everyone equally. They are not supposed to give extra protection to certain people because of their generosity (that’s what personal security is for) and they are not supposed to investigate certain people more vigilantly because they want their stuff. If we want to reward or respect officers it should be through salaries or special events or just having a good attitude towards them.