Abner Schoenwetter had been in the commercial seafood business since 1986. Over the years, Schoenwetter built a successful company distributing seafood across the country, including lobster tails imported from overseas. As far as Schoenwetter knew, all of his business transactions were perfectly legal and he had no reason to believe that he or any of his business partners were breaking any laws. But at 7 a.m. one morning in 1999, armed agents from the FBI, IRS and National Marine Fishery Service (NMFS) showed up at his south Florida home with …
Chapter 5 of One Nation Under Arrest is titled “Criminalizing Kids.” This chapter includes stories demonstrating that it is not just adults who face the dangers of overcriminalization. The prevailing mindset among most legislators and government policy makers is that criminal law and criminal punishment are generally the best tools to “solve” any important problem. As a result, more and more children have been victimized by overcriminalization. The Boy Scout motto is “Be Prepared,” but not even Miles Rankin’s Scout Master could have prepared Miles for the injustice this twelve-year-old …
This afternoon, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Skilling v. U.S. Most media coverage so far seems to be focusing on former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling’s request for an entirely new trial based on claims that the District Court where he was convicted failed to ensure an impartial jury when they refused to transfer the trial out of Houston. While every American’s Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury is important, many limited government conservatives (and civil libertarian liberals) are much more concerned with the fate of Skilling’s …
Let’s say you decide tomorrow that you want to attend the inauguration the week after next. And let’s assume that, like most Americans, you do not have any political ‘in’ with the new administration or any of the congressional offices handing tickets out to donors and supporters. What are your options? So far as I can tell, you’ve got three. If your elected representatives have any not yet allocated, you could get on their lists—but it’s a longshot. Second, you may still be able to buy a set of four …
(Post by Heritage Senior Legal Research Fellow Brian Walsh) A new year, a new Congress, and already the march of overcriminalization is underway. Without engaging this Congress in debate or meaningful committee oversight, Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) is trying to ram through legislation–the Presidential Library Donation Reform Act of 2009 (H.R. 36)–that would make it a federal crime to fail to report a donation as small as $200 to a presidential library. The punishment? Up to five years (!) in federal prison. If this is the precedent that the 111th …
Jury selection begins today in the trial of Lori Drew, indicted by federal prosecutors for using false information to create a MySpace account. Yes, that’s right: she’s not charged (pdf) with “cyber-bullying” or harassment or even causing the death of Megan Meier, the teen who committed suicide after she received mean messages from the accounted that Drew created. (Drew’s daughter, among others, had access to the account, too, and are believed to have sent the messages in question.) Lori Drew faces years in jail, under a federal anti-hacking statute, because …
Forget the over-hyped bogeymen net neutrality and the ever-more-omniscient Googleplex. The real threat to Internet freedom comes from plain old criminal law. In three weeks time, Missouri housewife Lori Drew will face trial for entering false personal details when she signed up for a MySpace account. Her indictment alone, whether or not she is convicted, should frighten anyone who’s ever filled out a form online. The case, which captured the tabloid media when it broke last year, turns on unusual facts. Drew, posting as a teenage boy, created the MySpace …
