On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 04:36:29 GMT, "Landshark"
wrote:

Doesn't change the acts he may or may not done? If he's
done something wrong, found guilty then he's a criminal.
If he done nothing wrong, went to court and was found
not guilty, he should still be labeled a criminal because
he's being accused?

What if he's done the acts he was accused of, but because of an
inability for the state to prove it, or the credibility of the
witnesses becomes cloudy and he walks, what does THAT make him?


It make's him not guilty in a criminal court of law, sucks
but that the law.

In this case, I am not concerned with the determination of the law,
but with the truth. A criminal who beats the rap, is still a criminal
in my eyes. Note that I'm not talking about a truly innocent person
here, but one that I know is guilty and who beat the rap due to a
technicality or some other mitigating circumstance.

A criminal might fool the flawed legal system, but he still has to
face his maker one day.


Think before you answer, are you there? sitting in
the jury box? listening to the testimony? following
the judges orders concerning what type of evidence
you are going to hear? not formulating any opinion
until you and the rest of your fellow jurors are
deliberating the case? Of course not, so how can
you say because someone here is running a 1000
watts and talking on the freeband is a criminal?

If you witness someone killing another, do you need a jury verdict
before you know that that person is a murderer?

Yup, right now he's only a killer, but after the court
rules he's guilty, then he's a murderer.

What? Are you really going to play these word games?


I heard someone on 2 meters last night, swearing, threating
people, is he guilty of violating FCC rules?

Absolutely!


If the law defines a particular act as criminal, then if you engage in
that act, you are engaging in a criminal activity. Being labeled as
such by a court is only a formality and a convenient excuse for people
who want to thumb their nose at the law, and wish to ease their guilty
conscience, by trying to convince themselves that their activities
aren't really criminal because they haven't been caught yet..

No, it's a fact. Going around chasing speeders, j-walkers,
litterbugs etc etc and calling them criminals will change
nothing.

Nor will stating that a person clearly engaging in a particular
criminal activity isn't really a criminal because they haven't been
caught or convicted of it yet.


???, so you are saying that they are a suspect, good.
Cause they can't be a criminal unless they have been
convicted of doing that criminal act.

Again, you are wrapping yourself in the semantics of the law and
lulling yourself into a false sense of security. If you do the crime,
but don't get caught, you are still technically a criminal, whether or
not that "badge" can be legally applied to you.


You'll have to start calling 4 out of 10 people
you know criminals then, because by a national survey
that's the percentage that speed.

Speeding is not considered a criminal offense.

Sure it is, going 100 mph is construed as a misdemeanor,
thus punishable by up to 1 year in the county jail and/or
fine.

I'm not sure that's the law in every state. Even if it is though, your
earlier ratio of 4 out of 10 people no longer applies since most
speeders don't exceed the speed limit by more than 20 MPH


Operating a radio
transmitter without a license is. Interesting that you lump illegally
operating a radio transmitter in with such trivial summary offenses as
jay-walking, speeding and simple littering.

You consider 1 year in jail and $1000.00 fine as trivial?

I've never known anyone who went to jail for simple speeding,
jay-walking or littering. Now if the speeding charge was in
conjunction with something else like a DUI or a vehicular homicide,
well, that's a different story.


Those summary offenses do
not carry criminal penalties.

Both excessive speed and litter are misdemeanors and carry severe penalties

Not in my state. Littering carries a $300 max fine, and no jail time.


Maybe in a legal sense, but that's a poor justification for engaging
in criminal behavior, and saying; "you can't call me a criminal
because a jury didn't convict me yet".

Might be, but is correct.



A well known business man is accused by his ex-wife of
being a child molester. DA says that he won't prosecute
because lack of evidence and it doesn't look like he
really did anything. You start calling him a child molester
and criminal to friends and people that you know, that will
leave you open for a slander lawsuit, that's why you don't
run around accusing people of being criminals.

Ah, but there is a fine difference. A person accused is presumed
innocent until proven guilty.

Correct and you still go on defending calling people
criminals that haven't had their day in court? Doesn't
make sense.

If you are willingly engaging in a criminal activity, then you are
technically a criminal regardless whether you've been caught yet.
Again, you are arguing semantics. A conviction only makes it official
in the eyes of the law. Conversely, not being caught does not diminish
the severity of the criminal activity you have chosen to undertake.


But you know as well as I do that the
system is flawed, and many times guilty people walk for various
reasons.

Correct, and they can then be sued in civil court, but they
still won't be construed as a criminal.

I don't want to get side tracked by the seeming conflict in the
evidentiary methods to determine civil liability versus criminal
liability. If one is cleared of a criminal charge, then they should
not be liable civilly either. But we both know that this is not the
case. In the O.J Simpson case, he was criminally found not guilty, but
in a civil court he was found to be responsible for the "wrongful
death" of Ron Goldman and Nicole. So here we have a guy who's not a
criminal, but still responsible for the death of 2 people. Logically
that just doesn't make sense.


Conversely, some innocent people are wrongly convicted. But
if I witness a crime, I don't need a jury to tell me that the perp is a
criminal

Did the alleged "child molester" brag to a bunch of people on an
internet forum that he did indeed molest children? Admitting to an
unlawful activity is the same thing in principle to pleading guilty in
a trial. It may be "unofficial" but that's all I need to see to make
up my mind.

He might be one of those people that confess about everything,
it makes them fell important. That still doesn't make them a
criminal.

It does if he was telling the truth.


If I arbitrarily call you a federal lawbreaking criminal for violation
of FCC rules on freebanding or power levels, and I can't prove it, it
becomes libel (Assuming you really aren't doing it).

If, on the other hand, I monitor you doing it, or you brag to other
people that you do it, then you are engaging in a criminal activity.

To which I am just a suspect, not a criminal.

You would be clearly committing a criminal act. Again, I don't need a
jury verdict to convince me.

If you conscience bothers you, yes.

If you are of sound moral principles, then it should. If not, then you
start bordering on sociopathic tendencies.

Oh please Dave, that's crazy talk, sociopath tendencies.

What's crazy about it? Sociopaths exhibit a clear lack of conscience.
That is well documented. But like most things in life, human
psychology is not a black and white issue. Most of us have varying
degrees of personality traits which fall on a scale somewhere. We are
considered "normal" if those traits fall into line with established
norms. A sociopath has little remorse, or guilt for the things that
they do. Other people are troubled by the simplest transgression that
they may inadvertently do. Someone who falls closer to the sociopath
on the conscience scale (Sociopathic tendencies) would be less
troubled by transgressions against society.

Once again, this is to accommodate a person's presumption of innocence
in the course of due process . And once again, if you witness a crime,
you don't need a jury to tell you what your senses already did.


Why is it that when a records check is done on a person,
they an arrest record & criminal record? why not just one?
Because it is just that, one is different from the other.

Exactly. Any time a police officer is called to your house, an
incident report is filed. Every time a person is arrested a report is
filed. That is just SOP.

I think you are still missing the point a bit. I'm not talking about
accusing an innocent person of a crime. I'm talking about people who
are clearly and willingly engaging in criminal activity, who try to
justify their criminal behavior by claiming that they're not really
criminals because they've managed to evade prosecution. As if that
makes it ok. But the act is the same whether they're caught or not.


Oh, by the way, that ham operator using the foul language
and threating people, his callsign he was using was N3CVJ.
By you're logic, that alone should brand you a criminal.

No, since I did not do it, and the distance between us makes it very
unlikely that you heard me. Now, if I stated that I did it and/or you
witnessed ME doing it, and you could positively identify me, then you
could factually make that statement.


Gheez Dave, exactly what I've been saying with the exception
of the record of conviction.

But the difference is that I'm not here bragging about all the people
I jam on a nightly basis on ham radio. I'm not involved in criminal
activities. The people I make reference to as "federal criminals" are
those who admit to running in violation of FCC rules. I have never
accused anyone who hasn't claimed the same.

Yes, it's deliberately done with a bit of a shock value. It's to
counter the rampant mindset that someone isn't really doing anything
wrong simply because the FCC is too incompetent and understaffed to
catch them yet.

Dave