Wikipedia actually says that they were used after that, until 1800 almost.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
It refers to a Bill of Pains and Penalties, which is not technically an attainder. Attainders declare someone a criminal, Pains and Penalties, merely can . Also, according to Wikipedia, in 1870, Attainders ceased to become part of criminal punishment, so I don't see how they could have applied to Fred Goodwin. Likewise, they were rarely used after the end of the seventeenth century (most were used for people who had fled the country or died prior to arrest), and there is no record (that I know of), of them being used in the build up to the American Declaration of Independence.
Edited by 86.147.124.95
Following was deleted:
- The infamous "lite-brite" scandal
. Want to know why the police were so antsy that day? They'd just found a real pipe bomb in someone's desk, put there as a prank by a coworker. So why did they go after the Belarusian stoner? It turns out that while there are laws against starting a bomb hoax, planting real (legitimately obtained) explosives as a prank, without intent to detonate, was not actually illegal in Massachusetts.
- Starting a bomb-hoax is considered a part of psychological warfare and a terror act in itself (although Berdovsky never intended to do so). Planting an legally acquired but unarmed bomb is a breach of munitions storage protocol at worst.
Deleted because entry mis-characterizes the whole nature of the 2007 Boston bomb hoax. No bomb threat was ever made by anyone. The entire hoax arose when paranoid people, ignorant of what they were looking at, called police and assumed that they were looking at bombs. Law enforcement tried to justify this by saying "well, they had a power source, a circuit board, and wires, all components in an IED," but in fact, that description could fit a lot of things seen at the side of the road. The guy who started the ad campaign did nothing illegal or immoral - at worst he put up a logo that most people didn't recognize. It was the general public who turned it into a hoax/bomb threat.
Edited by 68.228.180.150
Sorcerer in training
- In CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, a man and wife are partners in extreme backpacking and survival. Because he didn't want his wife to beat his own time through a course, the man altered her map to make her take a longer way around. This caused her to become trapped in a thunderstorm and drown. Because there was no intent to kill, it was ruled as an accident. Nick Stokes tells that man that what he did wasn't a crime, but it was criminal in his opinion.
- In that case, the man should have been charged at least involuntary manslaughter. There are laws concerning this sort of thing, and it's a reckless killing like those used in law school tests. You could even get him in most states for Depraved Heart Murder because messing with maps for a desert endurance trip with the minimum amount of supplies is pretty callous.
I figured Nick didn't know that there were applicable laws. As a forensic specialist, it wouldn't be his final call to prosecute anyway. It'd be up to the DA -and they'd have a slam-dunk case. (And Nick's statement isn't binding, any more then any detective's would be. It's up to the lawyers.)
About Nick not knowing: In the US, felonies like first degree murder and forcible rape are all agreed to be horrible and definitely should stay illegal. But when you get into the finer points and the definitions of lesser crimes, things can get really really sticky. Nick may not have realized that the state had a law(s) covering what the perp did.
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry Pratchett
there should be a law.. That an Employer cannot force you to take vacation time just so they can balance their books
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Read Notalwaysright. You'd be surprised what some people get away with.
The really infuriating part? A lot of it is illegal -but it has to be reported for someone to know. And then evidence has to be gathered.
(Thank goodness for smartphones. But in some states, the person has to report first, or they can't legally record someone without their consent.)
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry Pratchett
A comment on the Fred Goodwin point in the Real Life section, while in Britain Parliament can (theoretically) pass an Act of Attainder, the last Act passed was in 1696, over thirty years before George Washington was born, so I don't see how it could have caused the American War of Independence.
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