[Puffer Fish]

Some of you will not see anything remarkable about this story. It seems justice was served and it was the correct decision for the circumstances. But it does illustrate something notable about the law. The law often doesn't work like people think it works. Rather the law works how those wielding the law want to make it work.
And that is the important point being illustrated here. It's not the outcome, or whether justice was done, but the legal principles involved which I would like you to look at.

A man was sentenced to 4 years prison because his DNA was found in a car.

Of course the car had been stolen from a woman who was murdered.

The car apparently was stolen for only a very short length of time before being abandoned nearby the house where the owner of the car had been murdered.

After being charged with murder, the man did not say anything to authorities for some time but eventually claimed that another man had sold him the car.

So it was believed that this man could have been the murderer, but they could not know for sure.

Presumably, at the very least, this man had knowingly bought a stolen car.
The fact that his DNA was found inside it, and the fact that this man had a long history of committing crimes, and then the fact that car was found abandoned suggesting that the man did not pay very much money for it or was concerned about getting caught, strongly indicated that this man must have had strong reason to believe the car was stolen.

But that is not even what he ended up finally pleading guilty to.
The single charge he was eventually charged with and pled guilty to was "misprision of a felony", which means a person knows a crime which is classified as a felony has been committed but fails to inform the authorities about it.

People often believe that a defendant is punished for the crime they are actually convicted of, punished based on the law they actually broke, but I think it is obvious that is not the case here.

Presumably the legal logic would be that this man failed to inform authorities about the car having been stolen, when based on the circumstances, he had very strong reason to believe the car had been stolen by the person he was buying it from.

Allegedly breaking this law is the excuse they used to punish him.
I think we can see that the punishment was actually for buying a car he had reason to believe was stolen, and then the possibility that he might have been the murderer.

There was also a possibility he might have been a partner in a home burglary that police believe took place that led to the murder and knew that the murder had taken place but didn't report it. So if this possibility were true, then the law he was convicted of would be appropriate. (The criminal charge does not say whether the crime he did not report to authorities was theft or murder)

Otherwise, four years is kind of a long time to be punishing someone for briefly stealing a car but then quickly abandoning it nearby where it was stolen. Which I would say is the only "real crime" for which there is substantial evidence for.

So when we look at this, the legal logic behind the punishment is actually a little bit complex.
Many of the strange laws that exist, like "misprision of a felony" just make it easier for prosecutors to have a way to charge someone when the evidence that they may have committed other crimes is not the most solid.

This story illustrates that the law does not always work in the simple way which most people imagine it to work. The path of logic behind convicting persons of crimes is not always the most simple.
In this case the amount of punishment probably was appropriate, given the circumstances, but the fact that a law was used in a strange sort of way can help give a look at how laws could be abused, if a prosecutor wanted to try to use laws in way that was not in furtherance of justice.

Another little interesting fact of this story was that the DNA test was not done until 30 years after the murder.

The man's name is Brian Munns.
The victim, an 80-year-old woman named Alice Haynsworth Ryan, was stabbed to death inside her mansion in 1988 in Greenville, South Carolina.
Police believe another man, Lamar Green, who had a record of committing burglaries, may have been the murderer, but he died only a few months after the murder (after being shot by his mother-in-law while he was pointing a gun at other members of his family). Brian Munns and Lamar Green were both seen together on the same day as the murder.

https://lawandcrime.com/crime/this-all- ... s-kitchen/
Colin Kalmbacher, December 16, 2021

[Potemkin]

Given the circumstances, this seems reasonable to me. They couldn’t build a murder case against him, and taking a vehicle without consent doesn’t even qualify as theft. They charged him with something which would lead to jail time. Given the fact that he was actually probably an accomplice to murder, I approve of this.

[Red_Army]

Obviously laws are selectively enforced. The US is a country where it was legal to own people for half of its existence. Afterwards it was "legal" to extrajudicially murder certain people on the assumption of guilt when they were accused. Nothing about the criminal system here is consistent or even moral. Look up the cash bail system wherein 2 people accused of the same crime can either: pay to go home and sleep in their bed or rot in jail for months and even years awaiting sentencing.

[Rich]

I don't find it particularly useful trying to discuss category theory with those who can't do basic algebra, similarly its not particularly fulfilling trying to discuss racism with people who are not familiar with the effects on the tails of a normal (and similar) distribution of changes to the mean. Likewise i often feel its a bit of a waste of my time trying to discuss deeper aspects of jurisprudence with those who are too stupid to understand that Khalid Sheik Mohammed should have been given due process and hence should be immediately released and compensated for his immoral enslavement and torture.

Anyway the issue this case touches upon is the difference between the right to silence in trial and the right to silence before trial. The former is really essential in an adversarial justice system, although it has been totally ripped up in Britain, the latter is not really a sound principle.

As some of you will be aware, I oppose both Cultural Marxism and Orthodox Marxism, however I am an avowed historical materialist. And in this context, that means you can't begin to understand our judicial systems without understanding the socio / economic conditions under which they arose. It wouldn't be correct to say that the elite didn't care about justice for the lower classes, but the system inevitably was designed / evolved to fulfil the needs of the upper classes, and then the middle classes with the lower classes a distant third.

But the key thing to grasp if you actually really interested in a a mature grown up discussion about jurisprudence is that there is no way that the extreme ideals of judicial protection that were promised could ever be delivered to the mass of people. Even if in the past they were to some significant degree, delivered to the upper classes and to a lesser degree to the middle classes.

[Potemkin]

But the key thing to grasp if you actually really interested in a a mature grown up discussion about jurisprudence is that there is no way that the extreme ideals of judicial protection that were promised could ever be delivered to the mass of people. Even if in the past they were to some significant degree, delivered to the upper classes and to a lesser degree to the middle classes.

Precisely right. And the same can be said of almost all of the legal and social "guarantees" which the bourgeois liberal system makes to its citizens. Empty promises, meaningless formalisms. The only people in a position to enjoy these "guarantees" are the wealthy and the well-connected. I am reminded of a project to create a modern water supply in La Paz, Bolivia. Because of complaints that the water was being delivered only to the wealthy districts of the city, an official spokeswoman of the American corporation constructing the water supply asserted that the water was being "delivered" to everyone on an equal basis. On further investigation, it transpired that it was being "delivered" only in the sense that the water pipe passed along the streets in which poor people lived, but there was no way for them to get access to that water. The programme then cut to footage of the Bolivian people themselves breaking open the water pipes and helping themselves to the water they needed to live. A kind of "revolution" in miniature, if you will. Lol.

[Puffer Fish]

Given the circumstances, this seems reasonable to me. They couldn’t build a murder case against him, and taking a vehicle without consent doesn’t even qualify as theft. They charged him with something which would lead to jail time. Given the fact that he was actually probably an accomplice to murder, I approve of this.

The point is, they punished him for something he was not actually convicted of, and for which they did not really have very solid evidence.

By finding him guilty under a different law, they were able to do this.

But under normal circumstances, wouldn't you say it would be ridiculous to convict a man of the crime of not reporting a car theft, 30 years after the fact, and essentially based only on a single piece of DNA evidence, and then sentence him to 4 years for that?

[Unthinking Majority]

In my city they don't investigate car thefts. They just hope it turns up abandoned somewhere. Even if they have video of it happening. Good job police.

[Puffer Fish]

Anyway the issue this case touches upon is the difference between the right to silence in trial and the right to silence before trial. The former is really essential in an adversarial justice system, although it has been totally ripped up in Britain, the latter is not really a sound principle.

I just wanted to say I think that is an excellent and interesting point you are making, although a point not many will be able to understand.

(I can tell by just that one comment that you are an intelligent person. Something that I have found to be all too often lacking in these political forum discussions)

They are punishing him for not having given information to the authorities (even though that was 30 years ago), but at the same time, the right not to give information to authorities is seen as a critical right while someone is being officially accused and criminally charged. Should the Fifth Amendment right of a man to not "be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" apply in such a situation, where there is a requirement in the law to report a crime?
I guess yet another ambiguity in the wording of the Constitution and its interpretation?

I personally see some huge liberties issues with government requiring individuals to give information.
(Probably the topic for a different discussion)

[Puffer Fish]

As some of you will be aware, I oppose both Cultural Marxism and Orthodox Marxism, however I am an avowed historical materialist. And in this context, that means you can't begin to understand our judicial systems without understanding the socio / economic conditions under which they arose. It wouldn't be correct to say that the elite didn't care about justice for the lower classes, but the system inevitably was designed / evolved to fulfil the needs of the upper classes, and then the middle classes with the lower classes a distant third.

But the key thing to grasp if you actually really interested in a a mature grown up discussion about jurisprudence is that there is no way that the extreme ideals of judicial protection that were promised could ever be delivered to the mass of people. Even if in the past they were to some significant degree, delivered to the upper classes and to a lesser degree to the middle classes.

That is an interesting perspective. I'm not sure I entirely agree with it, but probably a discussion for another thread topic.


Anyway, I do not disagree with the decision made here, but at the same time I see something very disturbing about it. Or that it represents a big problem. Yes, the decision may have been the right one, and yes, it was technically allowed by the law, but the decision was not based on the law in the right sort of way. The legal logic to understand the punishment is not so straightforward. They are punishing the man for something he shouldn't be punished for (which the law allows) so they can punish him for something else which maybe he should be punished for but the law does not allow. If that makes sense.

[Puffer Fish]

In my city they don't investigate car thefts. They just hope it turns up abandoned somewhere. Even if they have video of it happening. Good job police.

I have a personal experience with that. Called three different separate police divisions. They all didn't want to be bothered and tried to claim the crime wasn't really in their jurisdiction. None of them wanted to touch it. I finally told the guy at the third division I called, after he tried to send me back to the first division, that they had told me to call the second division and the second division had told me to call the division he was in. He referred to an online website to fill out an automated crime report form. I got a feeling all those automated reports just go to a computer and probably no one ever looks at them. I never even got any response back confirming that they had received the report. All three police on the phone I talked to acted like they really didn't care or couldn't be bothered. I even had a suspect and a license plate number of a person in the parking lot that I thought might have been the thief, but they were not going to bother themselves to investigate unless I knew for absolute certain who the thief was and could hand the evidence to them on a silver platter.

A crime like a break-in just is not important enough for police to spend any effort investigating. A police officer would have to see the criminal breaking into a car right in front of him for him to do anything about it.

They could have checked the security camera footage at the electronics store where someone bought an expensive big screen television using my stolen credit card, but no... that would have been too much work for them to have to do...


I'm not going to say that all police are lazy though. I have another unbelievable story that comes from a family member, a police officer returned a pair of very expensive sunglasses less than two hours later before this family member was even aware it had been stolen from the car in the driveway. That's just the type of amazing little act of law enforcement you would never expect. Apparently, they caught the thief down the road, trying to pry into other cars. I guess the officer made the thief confess which house he had stolen from? I don't know.
Of course this family member lives in a neighborhood with very little crime where the police really don't have much to do yet have plenty of funding, so that might have something to do with this story.