For the OP and interested others, if you're interested in reading about true histories of recent federal overreach (from my post a few months back):
Three Felonies A Day
If you enjoy reading about the underbelly of federal prosecution tactics and are concerned about defendant rights and/or the overreaching “arm of the (federal) law,” this is the book for you.
I just finished reading “Three Felonies A Day: How The Feds Target The Innocent.”
The book description on Amazon states: The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague.
This is not what the book is about, it isn’t about any one of us potentially committing three felonies a day, which I thought was the case when I borrowed the book from the library. It is about federal prosecutors expanding the scope and reach of federal law beyond what the plain words in the law can be interpreted to mean by reasonably intelligent readers, how judges go along with this, and how use of contempt of court charges infringe on our valued “Fourth Estate” (in a later chapter in the book). Actual cases and actual quotes from judges are used throughout. There’s one case where two federal courts and two federal appellate courts found a defendant not guilty; the feds caused a full seating of the Boston (?) appellate court, which found the defendant guilty. In the statement provided by the majority (5 of 7), they said the federal prosecutors’ interpretation of the law was not ambiguous. But it WAS sufficiently ambiguous to confound over a half dozen judges. AND, the feds argued against using the law on the West Coast, and then argued for using the same law on the East Coast. Some unbelievable stories in the book.
This is a slanted, opinionated work written by a civil rights / criminal defense attorney in that there is no space given to the good that federal prosecutors do; however, this does not detract from the actuality of federal misconduct and judicial malfeasance (or idiocy), which are documented. Better to let ten guilty men go free than convict one innocent man.
In some of the cases an intent to do wrong is not needed for a finding of guilt! In a couple cases it was proved there was no intent; the judge informed the jury they could find the defendant guilty even though he intended to do the right thing.
The probability of this happening to any one of us is vanishingly small, we being too “small” to interest the feds; however it should be of concern to all of us who value a just judicial system.
This is a very informative read, and a good read from the first word through the last.
From the Amazon website:
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556
An accurate review:
http://shaneatwellblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/review-three-felonies-day-by-harvey.html
Lex
"Good boy, that's what we want you to do..." :|
