This happens in every single ‘real life’ cop show ever. Usually it’s because they have to get permission to show unblurred faces. It’s not at all strange.
ETA: This was actually addressed in the description of Glitter Bomb 2.0:
ANSWER TO FAQ- The reason some peoples faces are not blurred out is because those people signed releases allowing me to show their face. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_TSR_v07m0&t=310s
If I had stolen packages I sure as hell wouldn’t want my face shown on Youtube. People are weird.
Live PD didn’t blur faces on their live shows, but the exact same episode or highlights from the episode, which would re-run a few times throughout the week, would have faces blurred. I eventually found out the live nature of the show put it in the “News” category as opposed to something like entertainment, and blurring of faces wasn’t required.
What I always wondered about is if you have an expectation of privacy when you’re in a public spot but a representative/agent for the government, the police in this case, won’t allow you to leave that area.
That is, if I’m out on the street it’s legal to film me since I have no expectation of privacy. However, if I’m being detained by the police, I don’t have the option of walking away from the person with the camera and going somewhere that they can’t film me.
They may have signed the release in exchange for Mark not pressing charges or even making the police aware of the situation.
As far as what Mark gets out of it, because just not having to blur their face doesn’t seem like a big enough incentive for him, maybe the release also states that they won’t sue him for any of the fallout from this. Be it privacy issues or claiming no one will hire them etc.
I had thought that but discounted it for exactly that reason. I guess it’s Jerry Springer syndrome – people crave that 15 minutes of fame.
I think the definition of entrapment is even stricter than that - for it to be entrapment it would have to catch people who didn’t want to commit the crime. “It’s easy to steal that car” would only work on someone who wants to steal a car, so it wouldn’t be entrapment. “Steal that car, or I’ll beat you up,” or “I forgot my glasses, please move my car for me” would both be entrapment.
By this logic I can build a bomb that goes off when it loses WiFi connection to my house for more than 5 mins.
I doubt that anyone will sue the “boobytrap builder”, I do not doubt that if the porch pirate crashes into a gaggle of toddlers the boobytrap builder is at least partly responsible.
I don’t think either of those would be entrapment. The first would be coercion, and the second simply not a crime.
I agree with you, but I think in the latter example, the person asking someone to move their car wasn’t the owner.
IOW, if I point at a random car, ask you to move it and the police show up while you’re doing it, I feel like one of is getting arrested.
You may not have knowingly committed a crime, but you still did enter someone’s car and start driving it without their permission. Joyriding maybe? Now you’d have to convince the police or judge that you were under the impression in was my car. If you could, what would I be charged with? False Representation, or something along those lines, maybe with an attempted car theft charge tossed in.
You wouldn’t be guilty (if the trier of fact believed you)
Mens Rea refers to criminal intent. The literal translation from Latin is “guilty mind.” The plural of mens rea is mentes reae . A mens rea refers to the state of mind statutorily required in order to convict a particular defendant of a particular crime. See, e.g. Staples v. United States, 511 US 600 (1994). Establishing the mens rea of an offender is usually necessary to prove guilt in a criminal trial. The prosecution typically must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the offense with a culpable state of mind. Justice Holmes famously illustrated the concept of intent when he said “even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked.”
The mens rea requirement is premised upon the idea that one must possess a guilty state of mind and be aware of his or her misconduct; however, a defendant need not know that their conduct is illegal to be guilty of a crime. Rather, the defendant must be conscious of the “facts that make his conduct fit the definition of the offense.”
In your example, the car thief is unaware the person who gave him permission to move the car was not the lawful owner.
Coercion is an element of entrapment. Entrapment is when a government agent induces a citizen who is not inclined to do the crime to do the crime. Most of the examples given involve trickery rather than brute force, but it meets the definition Justice Manual | 645. Entrapment—Elements | United States Department of Justice
The second example was meant as an equivalent to “Could you hold this bag for a second while I tie my shoe? Surprise, the bag had illegal drugs, that’s possession,” but I think you are right about mens rea changing the example.
I should have made it explicit, but I intended the quotes to be read as though police officers or other government officials said them.
I suppose a threat to beat someone up could amount to coercion of the kind that could support an entrapment defense, if it did not rise to the level necessary for a duress defense. A really serious, imminent threat would be duress – basically the person has no choice. But if it’s not that serious, or not imminent, so the person could have gone to the police but didn’t, I suppose it could be entrapment in that case. Note your linked explanation says “mild coercion.”
I think a clearer example is more like, “Hey, that car with the keys in it belongs to my buddy, who wants it to be stolen because it’s a lemon and he’s insured. There’s a bag of cash on the seat that you could keep if you took the car and dumped it in the lake. You get cash, he gets a new car – win/win.”
I don’t think that would work, because then you are agreeing to insurance fraud.
Um, sure. The entrapped person is tempted to commit a crime or crimes they would not otherwise do.
Yes, but there’s no inducement, there’s only solicitation. Offering to pay someone to commit a crime wouldn’t overcome a law abiding citizen’s resistance to committing a crime, money is already the incentive to commit crime.
Here’s the Washington pattern jury instruction on entrapment. It’s not going to apply in very many cases
Entrapment is a defense to a charge of (fill in crime) if the criminal design originated in the mind of law enforcement officials, or any person acting under their direction, and the defendant was lured or induced to commit a crime that the defendant had not otherwise intended to commit.
The defense is not established if the law enforcement officials did no more than afford the defendant an opportunity to commit a crime. The use of a reasonable amount of persuasion to overcome reluctance does not constitute entrapment.
The defendant has the burden of proving this defense by a preponderance of the evidence. Preponderance of the evidence means that you must be persuaded, considering all the evidence in the case, that it is more probably true than not true. If you find that the defendant has established this defense, it will be your duty to return a verdict of not guilty [as to this charge].
I recall reading a story, some years ago, about a woman who was asked by a cop to move her car, which was partially obstructing a driveway. She said she couldn’t, because she’d been drinking, and was a little drunk. The cop assured her it would be okay, because she was just moving it a few feet along the curb. So she got in, reversed into a garbage can, and was immediately arrested for DUI.
That, I think, would be entrapment.
Legal Eagle tackled this today in a very good 19 minute video:
“Wait, what? I thought you said this was legal!” --Mark Rober
I was just getting ready to link to this. Seems pretty cut and dried, at least if you trust Legal Eagle. There were multiple defenses, but the biggest one was about the legal right to defend your property with non-lethal means. Because the glitter bombs are using non-lethal means and the fact he’s not forcing people to take them (or going into their houses or apartments and doing this directly), he’s pretty much in the clear. You can watch the video Bo linked to and go to 8:16 of the video just to see the Mark section of this. There is also an interview between the two after he goes through the legal arguments.