Comments on: Prison for unauthorized use of “Smokey Bear” image

By: doug

doug — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:36:05 +0000

Ron, if you follow the links back about Unser, you will read that it is quite possible that Unser was screwed over.

By: antiredistributionist

antiredistributionist — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 03:24:35 +0000

Watch the piece linked by this site back when the story was first posted.

By: Ron Miller

Ron Miller — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 02:22:15 +0000

How was he threatened? And how do you actually know this? Who threatened him? Where? Was the threat the max penalty of 6 months in jail? (Max penalties are used to help defendants, not hurt them.) If things don’t add up – potential jail time turns into $75 fine – you might want to ask some questions and get some verification.

There are no questions every government in human history has overstepped in bounds and we have to watch them. This will never change. Ever. Anywhere. But if someone dug deeper and told me this Wall Street Journal article had a narrative and ignored the other side of these stories, I would hardly be surprised.

By: antiredistributionist

antiredistributionist — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 18:52:21 +0000

The fact that Unser was threatened with jail time apparently doesn’t bother Mr. Miller. I mean, it’s not like he slipped on a wet spot on a supermarket floor.

By: PointOfLaw Forum

PointOfLaw Forum — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:00:12 +0000

Federal criminal laws run amuck…

The best mainstream media discussion of the problem of overcriminalization appeared in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, with example after example of innocents ensnared by ignorance of obscure federal regulations and laws. “Ignorance of the law is no …

By: Ron Miller

Ron Miller — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 01:56:05 +0000

“Mr. Unser says he was charged after he went to authorities for help finding his abandoned snowmobile. “The criminal doesn’t usually call the police for help,” he says.”

Actually, the dumb ones do. And he paid a $75 fine. Really? This is criminal law run amok?

PR tip folks: don’t make Unser your poster boy.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 19:52:05 +0000

Forgive me for throwing in an Ayn Rand quote,

“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

By: VMS

VMS — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 18:44:08 +0000

I always thought it was unconstitutional to have a strict liability offense where the penalty was anything other than a fine or very minor sentence. In particular something is wrong with significant sentences for acts with no mens rea. In fact the Model Penal Code of the American Law Institute has only two categories of strict liability offenses: 1) violations; and 2) statutory rape of a girl under 10.

The Supreme Court in Leocal v. Ashcroft (2004) in fact held that the conviction of the underlying crime of DUI cannot form the basis for deportation because the DUI statute at issue lacks a mens rea component.

SCOTUS will soon revisit whether Missouri v Holland is still good law and whether treaties are really the “supreme law of the land.”

By: Mannie

Mannie — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 17:16:24 +0000

It’s a lottery. If a vast number of things are illegal, and no one knows what they are, then it doesn’t matter what you do. Pi$$ on the law, just don’t get caught.

Only exaggerating a tiny bit.

By: Clark

Clark — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:03:02 +0000

To nhrpolitic13
One of the points that the article is making is that a reasonably intelligent person can’t help but be ignorant of a law, which they may be violating.
If those that are in charge of enforcing criminal laws can’t even say how many federal criminal laws there are, thus demonstrating their very own ignorance of some laws, then the average citizen couldn’t possibly know all of the behaviors that could result in a criminal prosecution.