This article heavily references this one.

Last week, I wrote all about the stupidity of city gun buyback programs. They are a waste of taxpayer money. When governments give out money, people will take advantage of it. Just about everything I wrote last week has proven to be true in a story that I came across this morning. Evidently, a NRA-based shooting camp for kids used the gun buyback money for upgrading their weapons! Let me explain further:

The first point I made in the original post was that these buyback programs are not “no questions asked” as they are advertised.

Despite the no-questions-asked policy of the buyback, police officials asked Guns Save Life members where they got their guns, Boch said. Still, the police officials allowed them to turn in their guns, he said.

What if they hadn’t given an sufficient answer to the officers about where they got their multitude of guns? Doesn’t this automatically violate a “no questions asked” policy? Yes, it does. Since criminals know that cops are often setting up sting operations and thereby engaging in false advertising, it is not hard to conclude that they should not be trusted and that no thugs emptied their gun stashes during the buy back, which was my second point.

My third, fourth, and fifth points in the original post all relate to the fact that the rewards for the forfeiture of the guns is often worth more than the guns themselves. Therefore, the events will seem to be successful, but it is really just a way for people to update their weaponry.

This was rusty, non-firing junk that we turned in, Boch said.

Vandermyde said he was told one suburban gun dealer imported junk rifles for less than $50 each and received $100 gift cards for each of them.

I point out all of these things to remind you of how ineffective the government is…not to toot my own horn. It wasn’t very hard to see this coming. But, Chicago officials didn’t see it coming, I guess:

We host the gun turn-in event on an annual basis to encourage residents to turn in their guns so we can take guns off the street and it’s unfortunate that this group is abusing a program intended to increase the safety of our communities, said Melissa Stratton, a police spokeswoman.

Boo hoo! They act like this is the first time anyone has ever taken advantage of a government program. Right!

We live in a society where the law affects nearly every aspect of our lives. Unfortunately, much of what we think we know about the law is actually a myth or misconception.

I thought we lived in a society where you could not be tried for the same crime twice. I thought, technically, that was illegal according to the Constitution. Unfortunately, much of what we think we know about the law is not accurate. We are only protected against this in certain circumstances, and mistrials make everything convoluted. The above quote is from the amazon.com description of Michael Cicchini’s book, “But, They Didn’t Read Me My Rights!: Myths, Oddities, and Lies About Our Legal System.” Michael is a defense attorney, and if I am ever accused of a crime, I am going to wish that I lived in the Kenosha, Wisconsin area so that he could represent me.

Anyway, the Supreme Court of the United States recently decided that people could be retried on the same charges even if they were rejected by a jury that was later deadlocked. The story is not completely cut and dried, but the details go like this: In 2007, a 1-year old boy suffered a head injury and died while in the care of his mother’s boyfriend, Alex Blueford.

Mr. Blueford was charged under four theories, in decreasing order of seriousness: capital murder (though the state did not seek the death penalty), first-degree murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide.

The jurors were instructed to consider the most serious charge first and move to the next only if they unanimously agreed that Mr. Blueford was not guilty. In this way, they were to work their way down to the appropriate conviction, or to an acquittal.

After a few hours of deliberation, the jurors announced that they were deadlocked. The forewoman told the judge that the jury had unanimously agreed that Mr. Blueford was not guilty of capital or first-degree murder, but she said it was divided, 9 to 3, in favor of guilt on the manslaughter charge.

The jury deliberated for an additional half-hour but could not reach a verdict. The court declared a mistrial.

Prosecutors sought to retry Mr. Blueford on all four charges. His lawyers agreed that he could be retried on the less serious ones but said double jeopardy principles should preclude his retrial on the charges of capital murder and first-degree murder.

It turns out that the Supreme Court agreed with the prosecutors in this case even though the jury wasn’t divided until the first two (most serious) charges were thrown out. This seems outrageous to me. First of all, I’m no legal expert, and maybe I should write Mr. Cicchini first, but why is it OK to be charged with all of those crimes when only one incident occurred? Shouldn’t the state have to pick a charge and choose a jury to see if it sticks? Why can they charge you with four things and hope one of them sticks? I suppose this is common place, but I didn’t know about it, and I don’t like it.  Secondly, before the jury got stuck, they at least had decided that he should not be charged with capital or first-degree murder.  Why should another jury have to decide the same thing?

But, the SCOTUS sees it differently.

Mr. Blueford’s lawyers also argued that the trial judge should not have declared a mistrial without first asking the jury whether, in the end, the defendant had been found not guilty of some charges. Chief Justice Roberts said the judge had acted appropriately, as “the jury’s options in this case were limited to two: either convict on one of the offenses, or acquit on all.”

It is scary indeed when you have to convict on one charge or acquit on all when only one incident occurred that could have either been a crime or an accident.  Why does a person have to dodge four bullets for one supposed crime? Not only that, he has to now dodge four more as he will most-likely be retried on all of these charges. At least the SCOTUS was not unanimous in this decision:

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the majority had improperly given prosecutors “the proverbial second bite at the apple.”

“The forewoman’s announcement in open court that the jury was ‘unanimous against’ conviction on capital and first-degree murder,” she wrote, “was an acquittal for double jeopardy purposes.”

Giving prosecutors the second bite of the apple should be illegal. I thought it was. The sad thing is that most people will probably agree with this decision. We are too obsessed with safety and catching the bad guys that we think having someone’s Constitutional rights violated is a small price to pay to possibly convict someone who committed a crime.

*Note — Some of the links in this article  have been updated/changed from their original sources. The current links should work, but may not be as relevant as the originals, which were removed by their owners.

We should not support any violation of the fourth amendment, even if it is being used for a cause we support or even if it is being administered in order to keep us safer.  No matter what our safety concern may be, it is not as problematic as clear violation of our rights done by those in charge.  Who will keep us safe from that once the precedent is in place?

Most people are against drunk driving.  It’s dangerous and stupid.  It’s also immoral in my opinion.  However, I still do not support DUI checkpoints.  The fourth amendment states that a person should be safe from unreasonable search and seizure.  I consider it unreasonable to make me stop and answer questions (even my name) when there is no reason for the stop other than checking everyone.

However, these sobriety checkpoints have been affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States as being permissible because they are effective in combating the crime of drunken driving.  However, just because something is effective, doesn’t mean it is moral.  No matter what the courts say, the fact is that the Constitution doesn’t make exceptions.  It doesn’t protect freedom of religion except in the case of Catholics.  It doesn’t allow for freedom of assembly except on school property.  It doesn’t allow for a free press except in the case of newspapers.  It doesn’t protect your free speech unless you happen to be talking about politics.  It also doesn’t protect against search and seizure except in the case that they know what’s best for you and other drivers on the road.  No matter how small, we should not be prepared to give up any rights in order to receive so-called protection from the government.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court has made this exemption to the Constitution, eleven states did not abide by the decision. These states found that sobriety checkpoints violate their constitution or outlawed them. People in these states have more protections against unreasonable searches and police DUI roadblocks are prohibited.  Source.

So, now that I’m finished with that rant, I have to discuss an article I saw this morning.  Police are now able to use ethanol-detecting flashlights (link no longer available) in their DUI checkpoints.  Of course, you already know how I feel about the checkpoint in the first place, but now they are able to supposedly point a light at a person and determine that they were drinking?

First of all, out of almost 600 people who were stopped, they only caught 6.  That is a 1% success rate.  I wouldn’t call that effective.  Of course, the Mothers Against Drunk Drivers area chapter manager disagrees with me:

She said getting even one intoxicated person off the road makes a difference.

“I’ve been coming out for the last 12 years,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve been to one where I haven’t seen someone who was intoxicated.”

But more than anything, McKee said, checkpoints deter others from driving drunk. Police agree.

“It’s two-fold,” said Ferguson Township police Sgt. Ryan Hendrick. “We’re going to get every impaired driver on this roadway tonight. Every person not impaired is reminded this can happen on any road in State College.”

According to the article, the flash lights made it possible to spend less time talking to each driver.  Instead, they each were required to take a de-facto breathalyzer test without their consent by having a flashlight pointed in their face.  How is that better?  I have a problem with this.

I’m not the only one who has a problem with it.  The Centre County Alcohol Task Force leader does, too.  You see, it’s just not aggressive enough.  Even with the flashlights, they’re not able to catch everyone:

It’s been a while, but some of you may remember me writing about the man in Idaho who was forbidden by police from wearing his bunny suit in public.  Now, I read a story about police in Florida dressing in bunny suits in order to check traffic for people not wearing their seat belts.  Don’t they know that could frighten children?  And what about the fact that so many new rules and regulations are foisted upon us in the name of safety?  Isn’t a giant bunny on the side of the road at least as much (if not more) of a distraction as eating or talking on the phone?  The article indicates that the program has been very successful so far.

In just two hours, 50 motorists were cited.

Maybe that will make up for the salary of the undercover officer and the cost of the bunny suit itself.

Florida Highway Patrol wrote over 200 citations in less than one month’s time on a stretch of road in Plant City, Florida (SR-60).  There is some construction going on in that area, and police presence is magnified as a result.  The problem is that the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) has been covering the speed limit signs with black plastic bags (like a trash bag or something similar).  Covering the signs in this manner is a violation of federal guidelines that suggest putting speed limit signs near every major intersection.  Typically, in construction zones, there are new speed limit signs erected. I’m not sure so they are justifying not having any. I think that construction workers should be safe, but this is an obvious trap.  There’s no reason for them not to have signs posted for miles.

Florida Highway Patrol has been written about previously on this blog when they were giving motorists bogus tickets for flashing their headlights to warn of speed traps.

I have maintained for some time that part of the reason so many things are illegal and why the average citizen supports these laws is because, as a society, we are voyeuristic.  Let me give you an example.  The average person generally supports police stings to bust prostitutes and those that hire them because it makes for good television when an undercover cop gets involved.  We like to see the look on their faces when they are busted. We don’t stop to think about whether that law is just or whether it’s fair for the police to lie while regular citizens face huge penalties for lying to them — even if the “crime” they’re lying about isn’t considered a serious one.

These shows have been around for years.  If they were not supported by the general public, they wouldn’t be on television.  The police are always trying to make a good reputation for themselves in the community even if this requires a lot of PR work.  Obviously, they believe these shows are one example of them putting their best foot forward to catch the bad guys.

Voyeuristic shows like this tend to bring out the worst in humanity.  We are proud that we would never do something like that.  We take pleasure in another person’s pain.  We enjoy seeing them suffer through the ordeal.  We judge the criminal for being so immoral even though what we are doing is at least as bad…if not worse.

For these reasons, I avoid voyeuristic shows on principal.  This includes shows like Cheaters where no law is specifically being violated.  The show is set up to spy on people who are suspected of cheating on their significant others.  Besides the fact that it is probably staged, it is sick in the same way that the other shows are — it sets up a situation where we take pleasure in watching someone get in trouble.  As a society, if we enjoy watching people get in trouble, we will get to the point where we support every new law (as long as we don’t think it will affect us). 

Watching this kind of thing puts us in a position of looking down on someone else.  We put ourselves on a pedestal that we’re not the one getting busted.  We start to set up categories in our minds that people get filtered through.  With the number of laws on the books, we can do this for almost any scenario now.  We used to just have neighbors.  We didn’t know what their personal lives and habits were like unless or their interaction with law enforcement unless they murdered someone.  Now we have neighbors who cheat, neighbors who poach, neighbors who don’t file taxes, neighbors who fail to recycle their cat litter, neighbors who are registered sex offenders (sometimes for unjust reasons), neighbors who endanger animals, neighbors who smoke pot, etc.  We only have these categories for our neighbors because the laws exist.  And we generally take the side of the “authorities” because we are conditioned to trust them. 

All of this came up today because I read that Cheaters has opened an online store.  They now sell surveillance items for those people who suspect their lovers of cheating on them but are unable to get a spot on the show.  The interesting discussion on the referenced article is the fact that most of the items they sell may be illegal to use. 

This is a new one for me.  I learned yesterday that a man in New York was fined for having “untaxed cigarettes” in his possession.  In New York, this is a misdemeanor charge.  I guess this brand, Seneca, is owned by The Seneca Nation (Indian Tribe), and they are able to sell them without charging taxes.  I’m not sure about the exact law, but I’ve been told that people can go to the reservation to buy these cigarettes, but legally cannot buy more than a few cartons at a time.

It should be noted that this man was stopped at a sobriety checkpoint.  Evidently, they weren’t only checking for sobriety.  The article casually mentions that the man was also charged with aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle.  I don’t know what that’s all about, but I do know that fining someone for not paying taxes on a product that they can go down the street and buy is pretty stupid.  If they have a problem with the Seneca people not collecting taxes, it should be taken up with them, not the consumer.  Evidently, they have been sparring about this for some time.

I learned yesterday that it violates Facebook’s rules to “like” a page in reference to a giveaway or promotion.  Whoops.  I guess my recent promotional event/giveaway breaks the rules.  That’s typical for me — do something I think is perfectly legit and then get informed that it’s some kind of a violation.  Of course, it’s not, technically, illegal to do that, but you can have your facebook page taken down because of it.

I also heard about a similar thing yesterday.  It turns out that the Department of Justice wants to make it a crime to give false information online — like using a fake name on facebook or lying about your weight on match.com. They say this is because the users agree to a terms of service, and if you lie, you are violating the terms of service.  Of course, the Department of Justice routinely lies to the public without consequence.  But, I doubt “terms of service” is the real reason they’re interested in this matter.  These social websites make it easy for them to find information.  But, the information is only good if it’s true.

It seems like they are really grasping at straws with this one.  In Indiana, I had to put my weight on my driver’s license.  They didn’t put me on a scale, they just asked me what my weight was.  Of course, my driver’s license has rarely been accurate in this area.  If the Indiana state government doesn’t mind inaccuracies on their driver’s licenses, I can’t imagine that the federal government really expects to have full and true disclosure on social networking sites.

I once got called for jury duty.  You can read all about that experience here.  The short version is that it was a sexual pedophile case against a man.  He was supposedly caught soliciting a minor in a chat room.  Of course, the person in the chat room was really a detective and the detective actually solicited the man.  Anyway, I’m sure these things will continue to occur because the rules rarely apply to the rule makers.

In my opinion, many police have a serious attitude problem these days.  Maybe it’s the quotas that they have pressure to fill, or maybe it’s the suspicious attitude everyone has these days.  Anyway, it’s making it hard to trust that they are the neighborhood friend they claim to be.

When I was researching for my book, a friend emailed me with a few possible things to include in my writing.  One of the things absolutely astounded me.  She said that she once found a wallet and decided to turn it in at the police station.  As part of the procedure for turning it in, they asked her for identification and ran her name through their database just to make sure a wanted criminal wasn’t standing in their station.  To me, this is unacceptable.  The police should have to have a good reason for checking your identification and running your information like that.  This is what they do when they stop someone for a traffic violation.  They take your identification back to their car and run it through their system. At least in that case they have a decent reason (you were violating the traffic law, presumably).  This behavior (of running identification through their system without suspicion) ends up being a disincentive to either trust the police or do the right thing (by turning in the wallet).

Recently, a man asked a police officer for directions to Wal-Mart.  Guess what.  That’s a good enough reason to run the guy’s license plates and take him in on a bench warrant (for failure to appear in court).  Of course, this man obviously has other problems (the article doesn’t say what they are), but he was supposed to appear in court for something and didn’t do it.  We don’t know what the charges are or what the reason was for him failing to appear.  But, we do know that if something happens to us where we have a little run-in with the law (believe me, this is more and more possible with how much regulation there is in our lives…maybe this guy accidentally transported a woodpecker across county lines or something), we should never, ever talk to the police under any circumstances.  If we find a wallet, just keep it.

I picked on California yesterday.  So today I’m going to give them some good attention.  I read this morning about a town in California that decided to reduce the number of moving violations for which they issue citations.  In the past year, they have reduced the number by 84%.  So, I’m sure that their budget has suffered somewhat.  But, guess what hasn’t suffered — safety.

Since they reduced the  number of tickets they issue, their accident rate has gone down by 7%.  I spend a lot of time complaining on this blog that laws are misused or how the punishment doesn’t fit the crime or how the law has no validity (it doesn’t prevent what it intends to), etc.   Normally, safety is cited as the reason behind many laws, but they often don’t address safety as they intend to.  Finally, I’m glad to report that safety is actually valued over money for once.

A few days ago, I posted about people in Florida being ticketed for warning oncoming motorists about speed traps.  Those officers were definitely valuing money over safety.  Today’s article is a refreshing change.