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from the things-are-not-always-as-they-appear dept.
[IANAL]
In the US, courts assess guilt or innocence before a conviction, then after that the appellate courts focus solely on fairness. The Atlantic has an exposé on some people who are wrongly convicted are pressured to accept Alford Plea Deals in lieu of exonerations — that more or less means to plead guilty for a verbal guarantee from the courts to both speed things up and give a much lighter or minimal sentence. But how many do this is not known: this situation is not tracked there are no formal statistics. However, in Baltimore City and County alone, there were at least 10 cases in the last 19 years in which defendants with viable innocence claims ended up signing Alford pleas. These can translate to the occasional innocent person being stigmatized, unable to sue the state, and that no one re-investigates the crime meaning that the real perpetrator is never brought to justice.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 11 2017, @03:21PM (2 children)
The fact that you wrote a check that isn't covered is proof that you did SOMETHING wrong. The question is, intent. You can "cheat" someone out of something, with intent, or without intent. There are extenuating and mitigating circumstances to consider. An individual who writes dozens of checks, on accounts that don't even exist, with full intent to defraud business owners out of large sums of money isn't in the same class as some dumbass who failed to balance his checkbook properly.
That is why I told the DA that he would have to get his conviction in front of a jury. There are no "prima facie" convictions, especially whan the defense can farm potential jurors just as easily as the prosecution can.
(Score: 5, Informative) by NotSanguine on Monday September 11 2017, @06:34PM (1 child)
While I'm loathe to say it, Runaway makes an important point.
There's a difference (in US state and federal criminal law at least) between laws that contain a strict liability [wikipedia.org] standard and those that do not. Laws that do not have strict liability clauses are adjudged based upon Mens Rea (Latin for "guilty mind") [wikipedia.org].
From the Wikipedia "Strict Liability" page:
The difference is striking: with strict liability, it is irrelevant whether or not the person charged intended to commit a crime or not. Proving that the defendant committed the act itself is enough for conviction. On the other hand, if the particular law uses Mens Rea as a standard, it is not enough just to show that the act was committed, there must also have been intent to commit a crime.
I'm not sure what jurisdiction (or what specific law) under which Runaway was charged, but very few laws (in US Federal and state legal codes)have a strict liability standard. I'd be quite surprised if "check fraud" or whatever law was cited has a strict liability standard. As such, it's unlikely (assuming it was, in fact, an error in judgement or an honest mistake, rather than an attempt to defraud) that a prosecutor could muster the requisite Mens Rea for a conviction.
That doesn't mean it's a good idea to bounce checks, but as with most laws (in the US at least), doing so without the requisite intent is not a crime.
It may well be a Civil Tort [wikipedia.org] and, as such, Runaway could be sued by those who suffered for his bad behavior.
N.B.: IANAL
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday September 12 2017, @04:28AM
Of course check fraud isn't strict liability! Strict liability is only for very petty offenses, like traffic tickets and ... uh ... statutory rape ...
Yeah okay we need some legal reform to make it so strict liability is actually only for very petty offenses, like it's supposed to be, but it's not so bad it's gotten to check fraud yet.