Stretching out consideration this far would mean that virtually any indirect benefit could be considered consideration, which would in turn eliminate the requirement of consideration under a contract altogether. No matter what, without adding facts or coming up with increasingly far-fetched scenarios, you can’t get around the pre-existing duty rule.
For instance, if California offered to pay convicted felons a monthly wage if they simply agreed not to break the law again, this would not be an enforceable contract. They already have a pre-existing duty not to break the law, even though it may be cheaper, depending on the monthly wage, to pay repeat offenders money rather than continually have to pay the attending law enforcement wages, court and lawyer costs, and prison costs associated with arresting, convicting, and imprisoning a given offender.
It’s very different. If you go somewhere for the promise of being able to sell stolen goods, nobody promised you you were immune to being arrested. But if the police tell you “it’s okay to do this and we promise you we won’t arrest you” and you do it and they then arrest you, it’s wrong.
Here’s an example. You’re driving along a road and you want to get on the expressway. You see the ramp (which is one way) and turn on to it, when you suddenly realize you’re on the wrong ramp - this one will put you on the southbound expressway not the northbound one you want. And you know there’s not a lot of exits on this expressway - if you get on the southbound, you’re going to have to drive twenty miles to the next exit in order to get off and get back on the northbound (and then drive twenty miles back to the point you’re at now). As you’re contemplating this, a police officer pulls up. You explain the mistake you made and how you really don’t want to drive forty miles out of your way. So the police officer says, “Well, tell you what. It’s a one way ramp but you’re only about twenty feet onto it. And there’s no traffic around besides you and me. So go ahead and just back off the ramp and go get on the right turn. I’ll let you do it this time.”
So you back down off the ramp but before you can drive over to the correct ramp, the police officer puts up his hand to stop you. He then walks over and hands you a ticket for driving the wrong way on a one-way street, which is going to be a five hundred dollar fine. And you say “But you told me it was okay! You said you were going to let me do it! It was even your idea for me to do it!” And the police officer says “Sure I told you to do it. I figured that way you’d do it and I could write you a ticket. I lied about the part where I said it was okay and I’d let you do it.”
Do you feel this was good police work? Sure, the officer lied but he did catch you breaking the law as a result of his lie. And it’s true that maybe you wouldn’t have broken the law unless the officer had told you it was okay. But I’m pretty sure most of those parole violators wouldn’t have gone to the police station that day unless the police hadn’t promised them they wouldn’t be arrested either.
Well, of course it’ll be pointed out that the guys who went to the police station had a duty to turn themselves in anyway, having already broken the law.
I don’t think there’s any question that the parole absconders in question should have been caught, or that they had any right to expect to be treated differently than they were. And there’s certainly no question that the police could do it – again , to me it’s a question of whether they should. I’d still to argue that even if it is technically correct, it could potentially create a bad impression among the public the police is supposed to be serving.
I’m curious why the Colorado DA’s actions did breach the line, then. As far as I can tell – and you don’t appear to disagree – he didn’t bring about any material damage to anyone involved – it boiled down to the fact that his tricksy actions had the potential to damage the profession’s image among the public at large.
By the way, don’t you all think that if authorities set up a similar scheme to arrest people who are doing things just as illegal, the hue and cry would be deafening?
Imagine if an “amnesty” were officially offered to illegal immigrants, who, once they gathered at the designated facilities, were told “surprise! you’re being deported!” Now that would be a firecracker.
What you seem to be overlooking is that these people aren’t being arrested for going to the police station. Going to the police station is not breaking the law. They are being arrested for violating parole, a crime that happened *before *any promises were made. As such, no entrapment is possible.
I think it’s really evil to offer amnesty and then renege on it.
I mean, I’m a pretty unsympathetic person, and, I think that if a crook needs tricking to get him in, have at it. BUT, as was pointed out earlier, it was a flag of truce. There are some rules that may not be broken, and the flag of truce is one of them. Isn’t there something in the Geneva Convention/Rules of War that covers that?
My point is that morality is based on what you’re doing not who you’re doing it to. If it’s wrong for the police to break a promise of immunity, then it’s wrong. It doesn’t become okay if the guy who they promised immunity to was a bad guy who deserved it. Integrity isn’t about doing the right thing when it’s convenient. Integrity is about whether you still do the right thing when it makes your life more difficult.
Eh, at what point do you stop saving the only-works-once tactic and use it to go after real life bad people?
So future criminals will be less likely to fall for it, and future real offers by the government will be viewed with more suspicion. But so what? We were able to use it and catch a lot of bad guys.
I say use the tactic to catch as many as you can, then move on to something else when it becomes useless.
While I agree entirely with this, it wasn’t your point. Your point was that the police were arresting people for an activity that had police approval. Of course that isn’t the case.
How about “never”. Does never work for you?
So what is that we are less likely to ever be able to use this for real amnesties in future.
You don’t seem to understand that the state offers real amnesties all the time. The aforementioned firearms amnesties, no-check immigrant health services and needle exchanges being some of the more obvious.
If the state uses these amnesties to “catch a lot of bad guys” and as a result it “only-works-once” and then criminals stop trusting amnesties, we destroy these programs and all the good they do. We will have drug addicts sharing needles, immigrant communities acting as reservoirs of diseases like typhoid and tuberculosis and a proliferation of firearms.
Unfortunately, there is a defense to the scenario you pose here that isn’t available to our friendly parole violators: estoppel by reliance. When authority tells you you may do something, you cannot generally be prosecuted for doing it. There are limits to the defense; your reliance must be objectively reasonable.
But that defense doesn’t work for the violators, because they are not being prosecuted for relying on the officials’ word to show up at the police station. They are being prosecuted for the earlier crimes of parole violation, which happened before the police told them a thing.
Once again, estoppel by reliance would come into play here. In these cases, the people are being told, “Do action X, and we won’t arrest you for doing it, even though it’s illegal.”
The parole violators were not arrested for showing up. They were arrested for actions that happened before the sting began.
I don’t really see the distinction between the two cases. In the gun buyback program, the owners aren’t guilty of showing up, they’re guilty of illegally owning a firearm.
They seem the same:
If you have violated parole, you will be granted amnesty for parole violations.
If you illegally own a gun, you will be granted amnesty for illegal gun ownership.
It’s their own fault if they don’t take advantage of the government’s real offers. It’s a legitimate tactic to trick criminals into being captured. And it is a legitimate program that offers amnesty to less violent criminals for minor offenses. Why should the government be the one to make sure those programs are differentiated? Let those who would partake in the programs do their own damn research
That’s a funny, bitter reply to a legal tactic that works. WTF is wrong with you to make the jump from “program that is good and takes criminals off the streets but makes it harder for real programs to help people” to an illegal coverup and conspiracy?
Perhaps I am being uncecessarily nitpicky, but to me the wording of the “amnesty” offer matters.
I don’t think it would be immoral to say, for example:
*Dear Crimnal Dumbass:
The state of California is offering a program to assist in clearing our dockets of parole violators. Under this amnesty, qualified applicants can receive a cash reward up to $200 and a full pardon of their convictions.
Those who wish to apply for these benefits are invited to a special event at your nearest police station. Punch and cookies will be served.
Love and kisses,
The California Police*
I wouldn’t say that one of the qualifications for the amnesty is that you must have led a blameless life for at least the last thirty five years.
Then Felonious Stupidhead shows up, the po-pos say, “sorry, you don’t qualify”, click goes the handcuffs, and everybody is happy except FS.
Well, there’s still a distinction: “parole violation” is not a crime the same way “illegally owning a firearm” is a crime.
A person on parole has already been convicted of illegal conduct. He has agreed to certain conditions in return for an early release. Those conditions include checking in with his parole officer. It’s an affirmative obligation.
Illegally possessing a forearm, on the other hand, is a crime created when the police entice you to come to the station to turn the gun in. But for their conduct, you’re not guilty of the offense. Now, perhaps you might be guilty of some other offense, like possession of an unregistered firearm. Or maybe not – maybe you used this opportunity to get rid of Uncle Clem’s sawed-off shotgun, which, until the event, you never had constructive possession of. It doesn’t matter, because the conduct the police are nabbing you for is the conduct they created by their offer.
I wouldn’t do this, were I in charge of the legal authorities in CA.
To me, it’s tantamount to telling an arrested suspect that he or she has no right to an attorney. Or negotiating a plea agreement and reneging. I’m okay with police lying about what evidence they may have collected, but this goes beyond, into lying about legal outcomes.
“If you do A, then you’ll be legally okay.” “Ha ha, just kidding.”
I’m surprised that an attorney’s canons of ethics don’t ban this kind of behavior.
Because if the police are allowed to lie about immunity why shouldn’t they be allowed to lie about something else?
Suppose the police show up at your house and want to search it. They show you a warrant so you let them in. They find whatever evidence they were looking for and arrest you. Then you find out they didn’t have a real warrant; they just printed up something that looked real and showed it to you. You don’t know what a real warrent looks like so you believed it was real. And the police say “Sucker, it’s your own fault for trusting us and letting us come in and search when we didn’t have a real warrant to do so.”