No, I don’t need answer fast! No specific jurisdiction is indicated - I’m curious as to whether there are any statutory or case law rules in any jurisdiction.
One interesting thing that turns up occasionally in discussion of laws on this forum is the crime of Obstruction of Justice. One of the classic examples of this crime is “Destroying evidence”. For example, if you murder someone with a knife and then clean the knife, depending on the jurisdiction, you could have committed a separate “Obstruction of Justice” violation by cleaning the knife of blood and whatnot.
Does “obstruction of justice” apply to destruction or disposal of contraband? For example, if someone is in possession of a sawed-off shotgun, 10 hits of Ecstasy, and 100 megabytes of child pornography and they decide one day that they don’t want to break the law any more and want to be a law abiding citizen, is there a way that they can dispose of that contraband such that:
They completely abandon possession to such an extent that they are no longer legally in possession of the contraband and thus are no longer breaking contraband law.
They avoid committing an additional offense of Obstruction of Justice or any other crime such as interfering with with police work, tampering with evidence, or distribution of contraband (e.g. if they abandon possession by giving it away)
Are there any jurisdictions that mandate certain processes to abandon contraband, such as a requirement that you turn it in to local police and if you don’t follow their procedure, that’s an additional crime?
The article is unclear on whether you need to know that the evidence is related to a crime and you are destroying crime-related evidence (i.e. intent).
Several other sources seem to suggest that intent is also a key issue. If you are just cleaning the house, if say you think the knife was used to clean some game after hunting, maybe you are clear. If you tell the guy in the next cell “I was trying to prevent the police from finding evidence my brother kills people” you’re doing time.
I suppose the issue with dealing with contraband - i.e. a sawed-off shotgun - is that mere possession is a crime, so if it comes into your possession and you don’t turn it in immediately, are you guilty? OTOH, if you find ammunition but no indication it was used in a crime, there would not be intent to obstruct. OTOH, once it is no longer in your possession, unless you admit you had it, the case might be difficult to prove. You need more than a dirty shovel and a buried weapon for a possession charge to stick, I hope - witnesses, etc.?
generally, I haven’t heard of “obstruction” in a case being charged against a perpetrator for disposing of the evidence afterward, but I suppose technically it can be charged. generally, as with Martha Stewart, they lay obstruction charges when they find the original case is pretty weak.
I recall one case in the news where the DA attempted to charge a fellow with obstruction for lying to his lawyers. The lawyers then told the police what the client had said. The police argued he knew when he told the lawyers, they would feed that misleading story to the police, so it was obstruction because he intended to mislead police. IIRC that argument got tossed by the judge almost immediately. Of course, part of that may have to do with (a) client privilege and (b) hearsay is not direct obstruction.
Which sort of means that if you have been intentionally, knowingly and illegally possessing a sawed off shotgun (or narcotics, or child pornography, or nuclear materials, or classified information, or anything else you are not allowed to have), the very fact that the item is in your possession (e.g. closet, under your bed, crawl space, trunk of car, etc.) is itself evidence of the crime you did/are committing. This leads to a potential conclusion that disposing of the contraband now would likely affect police’s ability to nail you for possession later (because otherwise you would keep on possessing it and police could find it later), and so disposing of contraband in some way constitutes “destroying evidence”. Has a court ever held this to be so? One way this could happen is if a non-police 3rd party witness testified that they 1) saw the defendant in possession of contraband AND 2) saw the defendant dispose of the contraband by burning, tossing in a dumpster, melting, chucking into a lake, etc.
The trouble with drugs or illegal porn is that once they are disposed of properly, it’s hard to prove there was a crime, if the only crime was their possesion. The word of another person does not guarantee that was not a baggie of flour or icing sugar and you were pulling a sick joke (not illegal).
As for a shotgun - they would have to prove the gun they found in the lake is the same one that someone saw in your garage - not that easy unless they have a witness who saw you right at the palce it was found. if it’s found in 30 pieces, they would have to prove you were the one who sawed it to bits and when, where, etc.
So it will all boil down to the degree of evidence, and credibility of the witness(es).
What would happen if I bought a house, and the basement/attic/whatever contained illegal narcotics ( for example), but i didn’t discover it until a couple of years later when i finally decided to clear out said room. How would I get rid? Inform the police?
Again, if you’ve done nothing wrong and things are obviously illegal, calling the police would be your best bet. Given how some jurisdictions are, perhaps calling a good lawyer and then having him run the whole transaction would probably be the best approach, just in case the police decide to pick on the nearest target.
Again, if nobody is around and nobody knows, why not just flush the mess (carefully, don’t plug the toilet) and ignore it? For all you know, some bozo left several plastic bags full of drywall plaster in the attic so you trashed it.
Again, possession of X being illegal means that inadvertantly coming in possession of X is not necessarily a crime, provided you didn’t know what it was and don’t try to keep it. The trick is to ensure the authorities know and believe this.
AFAIK most of the laws state possession is illegal, do not require you to report the material. Presumably disposing of it when you realize what it is could be possession, if they can prove you knew you had an illegal substance. Obviously if you buy and then sell a car with 200 lb of heroin still welded into the rocker panels, they might have a hard time proving you would know it was there. (If you knew it contained a million dollars of drugs, why sell the car for the gold book price?)