What is the most serious crime anyone ever got away with because of a legal loophole or technicality

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

Colonel Blood stolen the Crown Jewels of England, was caught fleeing with them, & was released by the King, & given land & an income, for reasons unknown.

[Flyer]

@Chefguy

Don’t be coy, just spit it out.

I see no reason to do your thinking for you. In any case, the answer should be obvious.

[md2000]

@Chefguy

War crimes are generally for those who give the orders, although in Germany’s case, there were enough Nazi officers who were personally involved in the holocaust to satisfy any tribunal. Hitler was dead, but his #2, Goering, was sentenced to death at Nuremburg for war crimes. There were indeed war crimes trials for Japanese officers and officials. See Wiki for a very long article. For some reason Hirohito was not one of those tried, and continued to rule Japan until 1989.

@Flyer

You may wish to reflect upon the degree of power that Hirohito possessed, relative to the power that Hitler possessed. I think that you will find such an exercise most instructive.

IIRC, the one condition in Japan’s “unconditional” surrender was that they touch the emperor.

[PatrickLondon]

@Jackmannii

The case I thought of was Anthony Erthel Williams, a self-styled minister who on Xmas eve 1968 sexually assaulted and murdered a ten-year-old girl in a YMCA washroom in Des Moines.

He surrendered to authorities in Davenport, and on the drive back to Des Moines with two detectives, one of them gave what’s come to be known as the “Christian burial speech”, telling Williams it’d be a shame if snowfall hid the body and it couldn’t be recovered. Williams led them to the body and was convicted of murder. The conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court which ruled that the “Christian burial speech” constituted illegal interrogation without a lawyer present.

Ah, now there has been a very similar case in England recently:

'I caught a serial killer,' says detective suspended over Becky Godden case...

It made no material difference to the eventual fate of the killer in the case because of the clear and untainted evidence of one murder, and in any case he could still be prosecuted for the other murder if new evidence were to emerge.

So in a way this question turns on quite what is meant by “getting away with” a crime: innocence isn’t necessarily proven in law, the question merely remains in abeyance.

[boffking]

@Loach

You have to do better than that. What has he said and more importantly what law do you think he broke? I don’t know the ins and outs of Maine law but in my state it has to be a credible threat that leads to a reasonable belief that the threat is real. Just shaking your fist and saying “I’m gonna kill you” isn’t enough for terroristic threats.

He challenged Rep Gattine to a duel.
He also threatened to shoot a cartoonist and hang multiple state legislators.

[Colibri]

@Flyer

I see no reason to do your thinking for you. In any case, the answer should be obvious.

Moderator Note

No, it’s not obvious what exactly you mean. If you are going to make such statements in GQ, you should be prepared to explain them if asked.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

[Colibri]

@watchwolf49

Speaking of war crimes … what about those folks held in Gitmo … they’re not “prisoners of war” because the United States never declared war against Afghanistan … thus a loophole so we can keep them locked up forever … without trial … [insert snarky political jab here]

Moderator Note

Let’s not insert snarky political jabs in GQ.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

[PatrickLondon]

@Personal

We had a recent case near here where a man arrested for murder was talking with his lawyer at the jail, and he told the lawyer where the murder weapon was. Problem was that there were prosecutors listening in on the conversation. They told the police, and the cops retrieved the weapon. The court ended up suppressing the weapon as evidence. I don’t know if the trial has been held yet, so I’m unsure of the ultimate verdict.

That’s interesting. IANAL, but I seem to recall it being very common for evidence to be introduced in the UK with “acting on information received”, X, Y or Z was discovered. It may have been inadmissible, in view of the eavesdropping, to tell the court the accused knew where the gun was, but the existence of X, Y or Z (or in this case the weapon) and their relationship to the crime would be an absolute fact independent of how the police came by the information on where to look, surely?

[Boyo_Jim]

Is “trading up” on defendants a technicality. Sammy the Bull Gravano comes to mind, who got a fantastic deal on 19 murders in exchange for testimony to put John Gotti away.

[Boyo_Jim]

@PatrickLondon

That’s interesting. IANAL, but I seem to recall it being very common for evidence to be introduced in the UK with “acting on information received”, X, Y or Z was discovered. It may have been inadmissible, in view of the eavesdropping, to tell the court the accused knew where the gun was, but the existence of X, Y or Z (or in this case the weapon) and their relationship to the crime would be an absolute fact independent of how the police came by the information on where to look, surely?

How do you figure this? If the police wouldn’t have any evidence where the gun is, surely any evidence gathered from it would be inadmissible to it too.

[Asimovian]

@Boyo_Jim

How do you figure this? If the police wouldn’t have any evidence where the gun is, surely any evidence gathered from it would be inadmissible to it too.

I think what is being suggested is that the police could “find” the murder weapon without revealing how they figured out where it was. If they don’t reveal that it was from eavesdropping (“solid detective work and a bit of luck was all, I guess”), then noting prevents them from using the information or evidence.

[Shodan]

IANAL, but I thought the weapon would be admissible if the police could show they would have found it anyway.

Regards,
Shodan

[Northern_Piper]

@Asimovian

I think what is being suggested is that the police could “find” the murder weapon without revealing how they figured out where it was. If they don’t reveal that it was from eavesdropping (“solid detective work and a bit of luck was all, I guess”), then noting prevents them from using the information or evidence.

In Canada, that would be a breach of the Crown disclosure rules. A Crown prosecutor who connived at hiding the origins of the weapon could face professional sanctions and a conviction could be overturned if the information came out.

[Asimovian]

@Northern_Piper

In Canada, that would be a breach of the Crown disclosure rules. A Crown prosecutor who connived at hiding the origins of the weapon could face professional sanctions and a conviction could be overturned if the information came out.

I’m fairly certain that’s true in the States, as well. I was just trying to interpret PatrickLondon’s comment, and I may not have done so correctly.

[Bricker]

@boffking

He challenged Rep Gattine to a duel.

You made a similar claim (that this represented the crime of being a death threat) in this thread in August.

The claim was rebutted, with cites, in that thread.

Why are you continuing to offer up this act as a crime, when you know, or should know from the previous thread, that it is not?

He also threatened to shoot a cartoonist and hang multiple state legislators.

Same question.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Shodan

IANAL, but I thought the weapon would be admissible if the police could show they would have found it anyway.

In the US, yes. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments generally require that illegally obtained evidence be excluded from evidence (the “exclusionary rule”), and that any evidence derived from the originally illegally obtained evidence be excluded (even if the latter is obtained through a valid warrant, interrogation, etc.) This is the well-known “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine.

There are two main ways for the state to avoid the effect of FPT: independent discovery and inevitable discovery. Independent discovery typically means that some other agency - or occasionally, a part of the same agency that is not involved in the direct investigation - also discovers the “tainted” evidence without the benefit of the original, illegally obtained information. Say, for example, a state trooper pulls over the defendant during a routine traffic stop and finds something in his car that ultimately results in his conviction.

Inevitable discovery means the police were going to find out anyway, and derives from Nix v. Williams, the case Jackmanni mentioned earlier in the thread (though he got the perp’s name slightly wrong). In that case, the suspect was illegally coerced into telling police where the body of his victim was. In dicta, SCOTUS noted that the body might have been admissible evidence anyway because it was left out in the open and its discovery was potentially inevitable. Ultimately, Williams’ second trial proceeded under that theory and he was convicted.

There is also a “good faith” exception to the exclusionary rule generally which basically means it’s okay for the government to illegally search if they don’t know they are searching illegally (for example, if the warrant is defective on some technical basis).

[Throatwarbler_Mangrove]

@Martin_Hyde

Now, I won’t assert to being an authority on legal “technicalities” or “loopholes”, but at least in my “common usage” understanding of those terms almost none of the cases mentioned in this thread are examples of either. You’re all mostly just talking about people who have gotten outright acquitted, or entities that for various reasons were/are above the law (maybe unfairly, but that’s not really a technicality.) Nixon for example was pardoned, no criminal case against him was ever processed and was never “thrown out” due to a technicality.

To me a technicality generally means someone got off despite compelling evidence of guilt because the civil authorities made some minor legal or procedural mistake that required the case either be thrown out, or resulted in an acquittal.

Justice William J. Brennan in his career had discussed the concept of “legal” technicalities. To take an egregious example (not from Brennan, but just my own imagining), a police officer serving a normal search warrant (not a special “no-knock” warrant) forgets to knock on the door and just walks in, and finds evidence of a serious crime. Due to the police officers technical mistake in executing the warrant, all evidence found is “fruit of the poisonous tree”, and thrown out, lacking any other evidence, a serious criminal goes unpunished. Justice Brennan explained that incidents like these aren’t “technicalities” they’re “due process.” But I do think this is what people are talking about when they talk about technicalities–violations of due process that probably weren’t malicious, probably weren’t “major” (like say, beating a confession out of someone), but nonetheless they deprived someone of due process and even when they are obviously guilty our legal system requires we rectify due process violations.

There’s a ton of serious cases over the many years we’ve had our legal system where obviously guilty men have avoided punishment due to technical errors in warrant filings, interview procedures, evidence handling or etc. I can’t think of any super notable ones off the top of my head. I do know that Ted Bundy’s first murder trial, the case of Caryn Campbell, lots of the evidence against him was thrown out as inadmissible. If that case had been allowed to proceed as it was, he was highly likely to prevail and get an acquittal–and he was one of the worst murderers we’ve ever had. [Bundy was in prison because he had already been convicted of kidnapping, but he got a relatively short sentence, he was working as his own attorney in the Campbell murder trial, and if he had been acquitted he’d likely have been out of prison in a few years on the kidnapping charges. Instead Bundy escaped out of the law library and went on to do more murders, and far more evidence was available in the Florida murders, of which he was ultimately convicted and for which he was executed.]

A loophole is an instance of the law being written with a certain intention, but a weird case allows for someone to do something that people “assume should be illegal” but ends up not being.

An example of the loophole would be “rape by deception.” Rape by deception is if I sneak into a woman’s house, and it’s pitch black, and initiate sex with her while she’s asleep. She has a boyfriend, and assumes I’m him, and reciprocates. The next morning she finds out her boyfriend never came over that night–I’ve committed rape, by deceiving the woman. I can’t remember if the law has subsequently been changed, but there was an infamous California case called People v. Morales, Julio Morales broke into a woman’s home and impersonated her boyfriend and had sex with her. [A wrinkle in this–she realized some time after vaginal intercourse had began that Morales was not her boyfriend and attempted to physically stop him, and he forcefully continued–which is a much more traditional rape.] The prosecutors presented two theories to the jury–one was that Morales had initiated sex with a sleeping person (who could not give consent), and the other was that Morales improperly obtained consent by impersonating her boyfriend. The jury convicted Morales. On appeal, his conviction was overturned because one of the two theories was legally impermissible in this case–under California law at the time, rape by deception is only illegal if perpetrated against a married woman.

Why? Because the law dates back to the 19th century, and back then it was only proper for a married woman to have sex at all, and improper for one to be having casual sex outside of a marriage with a beau. Due to 19th century views on rape, a woman who had sex with a man she wasn’t married to, even if they were “together” in our modern understanding, was a woman of loose morals, and not entitled to the protection of a married woman who could “properly” have sex, but only with her husband (and thus the deceiver was violating both the husband/wife’s marital union.)

Morales was ordered a retrial–and was convicted again. But this is still an example of a loophole in the law.

The first or close to first case we learn about in law school is Keeler, in whcih Keeler assaulted his ex-wife with the express intention of killing the fetus she was pregnant with, but under California law killing a fetus is not murder.

[Personal]

@Personal

We had a recent case near here where a man arrested for murder was talking with his lawyer at the jail, and he told the lawyer where the murder weapon was. Problem was that there were prosecutors listening in on the conversation. They told the police, and the cops retrieved the weapon. The court ended up suppressing the weapon as evidence. I don’t know if the trial has been held yet, so I’m unsure of the ultimate verdict.

There have been a few posts about this regarding my initial post. Rather than multi-quote, I’m just going to respond to the initial post. A better summary is here.

Because I was posting from memory, I inadvertently left out that not only was there a prosecutor listening in, there were police officers, and what was discussed was not only the location of the weapon, but all aspects of the case. The trial court judge threw out the weapon as evidence, and threw out the testimony of the officers, which would set the foundation for the State’s exhibits.

The suppression order made it to the state’s supreme court, which ruled that a blanket suppression of all of the officers’ testimony was unnecessary. Rather, the State was required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that each officer’s testimony was not tainted by the eavesdropping – that there was a separate, independent source for anything each may have found.

The case is still pending, with trial set for April, 2017.

[Emerald_Hawk]

@Martin_Hyde

To me a technicality generally means someone got off despite compelling evidence of guilt because the civil authorities made some minor legal or procedural mistake that required the case either be thrown out, or resulted in an acquittal.

Another example of a technicality in my opinion is when the jury unanimously agrees that the defendant is guilty of a lesser offense, but is prohibited from that verdict because the prosecutor and judge have demanded they only consider a more serious charge. The jury thus votes for acquittal, and the prosecutor is now barred from re-trying the case due to double jeopardy.

I understand that the state does not want juries the to always compromise on a lesser offense just to get back to their lives. But this does lead to defendants getting off due to a tactical blunder by the prosecution, rather than their actual innocence or a failure to prove they are guilty of something.

I would argue that this happened in the Ammon Bundy Oregon standoff case.

From Juror 4:

“All 12 agreed that impeding existed, even if as an effect of the occupation. But we were not asked to judge on bullets and hurt feelings, rather to decide if any agreement was made with an illegal object in mind. It seemed this basic, high standard of proof was lost upon the prosecution throughout.”

[Velocity]

Something that had baffled me was how illegitimate evidence disqualifies *legitimate *evidence - if I’m understanding this correctly.

There can be DNA evidence linking Suspect X to a murder, video/photographic evidence, witness testimony, fingerprints on the murder weapon, but if Suspect X wasn’t read his Miranda rights, all of that goes out the window?