True Crime --- Where do you stand.

[Sagacious]

I thought I'd start a thread dealing with some situations that might arise in the lives of ZGeekers relating to the Criminal Law.

Whilst the tales I am about to tell are not intended for anyone specific they are instructive in what not to do and who not to trust.

Tale #1

This is less of a true story and more of an interesting aside from a conversation a colleague of mine had with a District Court Judge not long ago.

On the subject of copping a feel on a pissy night out the Judge told my colleague that what used to be an accepted part of drunken relations between boys and girls can now lead to very serious consequences.

The Judge said that digital rape (that is the insertion of the finger into the vagina of a woman) even once carries with it a base minimum sentence guideline of 5 months imprisonment. That means if you are accused of digitally raping a person and you plead guilty early, have great references, cooperate with police, have a job and all that good stuff you can expect to serve 5 months inside.

If you don't have all of those factors in your favour you're looking at longer.

Tale #2

A couple of years ago my firm represented one of 2 co-accused in a rape case. The boys were charged with rape on a woman who on her own admission had no recollection of events and could not discount the possibility that she may have consented to what the boys said happened.

The only reason the boys were charged with anything was because they big noted themselves in the police interviews.

Ultimately we had a 10 day trial in the district court and they were both acquitted. THe Jury took about 90 minutes to each their decision.

If the accused had not spoken to the police and declined to participate in a record of interview then there would have been no evidence of anything and they would not even have been charged.

The moral of the story: When asked to participate in an electronic record of interview with Police --- lawyer up before you say a word. When conducting investigations into the possible commission of a crime the police are not your friend and want only to get information from you that they can then use against you or someone else. Say Nothing and if they have information sufficient to charge you let them charge away but do not give them the ammunition with which to shoot you.

Here endeth the Rant.

[tikdoph]

I like the way you advise people to cover their ass after the wrongdoing, instead of advising them not to commit an offense in the first place. Typical lawyer. :rolleyes:

The moral of the story: Don't commit rape.

[Sagacious]

I like the way you advise people to cover their ass after the wrongdoing, instead of advising them not to commit an offense in the first place. Typical lawyer. :rolleyes:

The moral of the story: Don't commit rape.

I don't know what you mean tikdoph neither story ivolved any advice about concealing wrongdoing.

The second story involves an example of the sort of troubel people can get into through lying or exagerating a situation with the police.

Another situation, particularly young people and indiginous people, find themselves in is problems arising from too readily agreeing with the Police when interviewed because they are intimidated or feel pressured to do so by the Police.

I am familiar with cases of people agreeing that they may have or might have or in fact have done things constituting offences that they never have done. This is particularly prevalent among indiginous Australians who will agree with ppropositions merely because the propositions come from people in positions of percieved authority. There is a name for that behaviour I think they call it 'defferential acquiescence' most practitioners agree it should be called 'buying into trouble'.

At least if you refuse the interview nothing you say can be held against you and the facts have to otherwise speak for themselves.

But at the and of the day what you say is correct Tikdoph..don't go around raping people.

[Al]

Yeah, my ex's sister was the public defender in the youth courts here in SA. She'd always get these calls from the offenders and tell them to say nothing. When she got there they'd confessed to everything under the sun and then expected her to get them off.

Moral of the story? If you're stupid enough to get yourself in a position for the police to be asking you questions that can get you in trouble, be smart enough to shut the fuck up until your lawyer arrives.

[Reprobate]

In the mid to late nineties there was a rape/murder in Lithgow. Not sure if anyone here is aware of it.

Young woman abducted, raped, killed and buried in a sandpit (the long jump pit at a sports oval).

Well I know a guy who fucked her that very night. Met her at a nightclub, sweet talked her, took her somewhere secluded and done the deed. A few hours later she was dead.

This guy, we'll call him Spanky shall we (as I see Spanky the Monkey emoticon squirting seminal emissions on the right of my screen), had a girlfriend. He was cheating on her when he threw a fuck up the soon to be murder victim.

Spanky was at hockey the next day. He was quite the sportsman. And the police turned up. Not sure if they actually arrested him or just escorted him to the police station. Spanky was the number one suspect. The girls body had been found. She wasn't buried all that well in the sandpit.

I'm not EXACTLY sure what went on in that police 'interview' but the the coppers were convinced that Spanky had killed her. He had admitted to having had sex with her. Which is far enough. That's the truth.

But they put the heavy on Spanky. He actually was going to admit to having murdered the girl. That's how much they broke him.

And he wasn't responsible.

They caught the fucker who done it. Actually it may have been more than one involved. But it certainly wasn't Spanky.

All he was guilty of was cheating on his girlfriend. Who of course found out. The whole fucking town found out.

Imagine living in a country town, and a large one at that, but where everyone knows everybody. And you get known as the guy who cheated on your girlfriend and had sex with a girl who ended up dead soon after.

Last I heard Spanky moved to Far North Queensland. He might have come back since then, but he moved as far away as he could to somewhere where no one knew him.

It's an unfortunate situation. And the saddest bit was that the cops almost managed to get an admission of guilt out of him. For something that he didn't do. For something that was as serious as murder (as well as rape).

I hope Spanky is doing alright now. I knew his mum. And his sister was teh hotness.

[dozer]

i think thats called the phonebook technique

[Sagacious]

In Queensland before the Fitzgerald Inquiry into official corruption which brought down the Bijelke-Petersen National Party government which had exercised a stranglehold on the Queensland electorate for over 20 years Police used to combine the phonebook technique with a practice known as verbaling:

Verbaling:

A person in custody would be interviewed by police investigating a crime. An officer would sit down at a typewriter, then a question and answer statement between himself and the prisoner would be recorded on the typewriter.

The whole statement, or part thereof, would be a work of fiction and, of course, amounted to an admission of guilt by the prisoner.

This practice has been largely overcome by the use at police stations of video cameras.

It is commonplace at courts to see these interviews replayed to the court.

If these interviews are not so recorded and made available to the court then the court would no doubt rule any such statements of admission as inadmissible.

[Aurelius]

I found myself in a similar situation that Sagacious mentions in tale #2. Not in terms of bragging to the cops, but in that I was accused of something, and because it was in the media, and it was a high profile case, I went to the police. Being the son of a lifelong copper, I had been indoctrinated with the concept that if you haven't done anything wrong, you admit what you've done, give the cops the details, and it'll all be cool. Now, because lawyers cost a shiteload of money, and I did not have said shiteload, I did it without a law-talkin-guy present.
Because it was a technological incident, I had to explain to the cops what had actually happened, and came across as more knowledgable than them during the interview. But all I was doing was explaining things.
Later on, I was charged. And the interview I gave - not the words I said, but the "attitude" I displayed, was one of my main enemies in the case. I was portrayed as arrogant and conceited. Just because I knew more than the cops about the technology involved. And was trying to help them by explaining my role, and why it was an innocent act.
Sagacious says nothing wiser than never talk to a cop dude without a law-talkin-guy present.
So I have decided to become a law-talkin-guy, and until then, if they wanna ask for a breath test, I'm giving the name of my lawyer. They're a pack of fact-twisting twat-holes. Every cop is a cunt. Anyone who tells you different is also a cunt.