« I Can't Get the Freakin' Comment Thing to Post | Main | I Watched This Yesterday »
May 04, 2009
Ever Feel Like the Law's on Everyone Else's Side?
Well, sometimes you should.
An illegal immigrant who uses false identification papers must know they belonged to another person to be convicted of identity theft, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday.
Apparently anybody can be you...as long as they "don't know it".
This is gonna make defense lawyers real happy ~ spend five minutes rehearsing the "I know nozzink No sé nada" line...
...and you're done.
Next!
Posted by tree hugging sister at May 4, 2009 09:52 PM
Comments
Can we deport 'em for being willfully stupid, then? And their lawyers, too. (Yes, even if they're US citizens...they should still be deported.)
It pisses me off to see some of the people I've known who have spent years and effort and money to immigrate the "right" way....and then people come in illegally and get all the goodies right away, without following the rules.
Posted by: ricki at May 4, 2009 10:27 PM
Well, it's not fair to blame the judge in this case. You should blame the legislatures. If they make intent an element of the crime, then the accused would have to not only know that the ID isn't his, he would have to know that it belongs to someone else. If the prosecution can't show that he knew that it's not an arbitrary set of names and numbers that don't correspond to a real person, then it's just fraud and not identity theft.
Posted by: Skyler at May 4, 2009 11:40 PM