I came across this article, discussing a man who broke into the home of another man, discovered pictures of naked children, and then turned both himself and the pictures in to police.
Full text of article from Dayton Daily News here
The article says this 20 year old man showed the pictures to a maintenance man who convinced him to go to police, but also that the person who lived there was a reigsetered sex offender, so it raised the question in my mind about whether this guy broke in knowing the occupant was a sex offender and hoped to find evidence.
Is this a possible case of vigilantism? Should what the burglar found be considered in the case of burglary? Lawyers on the board, is that considered a mitigating circumstance?
My opinion would be that it sends the wrong message if this burglar isn’t prosecuted for what he did. I think that it would send a message that breaking into someone’s house is OK as long as you think that person’s a criminal, and that kind of attitude would not be something that police and prosecutors would want to encourage.
It seems a bad idea to give leniency here, as if that were approval for ‘taking the law into one’s own hands.’