Yeah, he had a simple plan.
I think the lesson here, Army of Darkness, and Jackie Brown, is never take a role in which your character is married or having sex with to Bridget Fonda.
Stranger
WtF?! If I, as a honest citizen and Good Samaritan “got frisked and had my IDs run” I’d be pissed beyond belief. Complaints would be filed.
It may have been part of the same mindset that led to the NYPD’s controversial Stop and Frisk program. Police were aggressively stopping and frisking people, especially (allegedly) minority group members. Reportedly, stopping and frisking has fallen significantly under the new mayor. But a lot of minority group members were equally angry at what they considered unjustified stopping and frisking.
Police are now issuing Stop and Frisks receipts. (I’m not making this up.)
Hang on here there’s more to this… I recall reading a thread here a while back talking about how pawn shops operate, how they (and presumably regular people) can buy and sell stolen items perfectly legally (provided certain circumstances are in place… such as they can’t know it’s stolen), and how no, your previously stolen property that you discover later in the possession of someone else does not have to be returned to you (except certain types of property and under certain circumstances). I don’t have the cite but the point is that it’s not automatic that something once stolen from you must be returned if found, or that someone else can’t end up legally possessing your stolen property. I think the thread was along the lines of why you can’t just take back your stolen watch from the pawn shop you later discover it in… it’s actually theirs now and you have to buy it back
How this would apply to being in possession of government currency vs other types of material possessions I don’t know. Of course there’s the whole case of the prosecuters having to prove that money the ex-felon has actually is the same that was stolen years ago (rather than the lottery winnings he won yesterday). In the modern day it would probably be pretty easy to trace the cash you had or any kind of electronicly stored money. I guess you’d have to launder the money properly to be safe.
I think the answer to the OP is that NO - the ex-crook isn’t free to retrieve the stolen money and keep/spend it; that’s a separate crime from the act of stealing it he already got busted for. But depending on circumstances it could be pretty hard to prove the money he uses later in life was in fact stolen years earlier. Also, it’d have to have been a pretty big amount for the authorities to actually follow the guy around checking. I doubt they’d bother if it was $500 worth of stolen quarters.
Good point. That would apply to stuff you pick up at yard sales also I guess.
Yes that would help. A strongly worded letter to The Times would be in order as well.
Our government, in its infinite wisdom and/or avarice, seems to have determined that the very possession of a large amount of cash is, in itself, sufficient evidence to suspect and presume that said cash was wrongfully gained and/or is being used in the commission of crimes – typically drug crimes – and is thus subject to immediate forfeiture.
No, what you do is, after you get out of prison and establish your new life, you loudly and publicly pray to Offler the Crocodile God, and let him give you a “revelation” of where to dig to find long-abandoned buried treasure.
If someone gives value for an item and has no reason to believe that it is not being bought from the person who has true title to it, then (at least generally) the buyer receives title. The previous owner has the recourse of suing the person who stole it and had value given to them, but that’s often not a realistic option with stolen articles.
Additionally, there is a difference in law between items that are abandoned and items that are mislaid. In the former, the previous owner has given up all title and whoever picks it up acquires title. In the latter, the finder only has a better claim to the item than the rest of the world, but not over the true owner. It’s those cases where you are supposed to do what you can to determine who the true owner is and return it to them. Turning it over to the state in some form is likely required. Generally, anything found in the trash is assumed to be abandoned, and any item that it clearly valuable that is not found in the trash is assumed to be mislaid. The real question is how you know whether something is mislaid or abandoned in ambiguous situations, such as finding a clearly valuable item in the trash or finding an object of indeterminate value somewhere it might have been left either intentionally or accidentally.
For example, suppose you leave a restaurant and left on the table a business card. The restaurant may assume that you abandoned it (and are trying to advertise or something), but you may have actually just received it from the person listed on the card and meant to take it with you. I believe that if the restaurant were to throw the business card out, you would have no recourse against them for disposing of your mislaid property, because the restaurant had good reason to believe that you had abandoned it. Don’t quote me on that though, I just made it up and could be completely wrong.
I am not a lawyer, just an accountant who learned some of this stuff for the CPA exam.
It didn’t work out well for Matthew Broderick in The Road to Wellville, Ian McKellen in Scandal, or Steven Webber in Single White Female either.
In the USA, if police find you with a large amount of cash on you they can just sieze it without having to even arrest you. See Civil forfeiture law.
And it always surprises ME that people who are otherwise apparently intelligent are totally incapable of reading. I already mentioned those laws well before you came into this thread.
If, on the other hand, the restaurant decided to keep or sell the business card, they’d have to do, at least, restitution, which is a real pain in the ass. So it’s much simpler to just throw the damn stuff out.
[Flyer]: lighten up. I didn’t read your post as a specific reference to “Theft by finding”