Fox News published a very thought-provoking article on Tuesday by Brian W. Walsh of the Heritage Foundation. It examined how the explosive growth of Federal laws has criminalized some actions and activities that most of us might engage in without a second thought. The consequences for our future might be disastrous.
A few excerpts:
Federal law in particular now criminalizes entire categories of activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. This is an inevitable result of the fact that the criminal law is no longer restricted to punishing inherently wrongful conduct -- such as murder, rape, robbery, and the like.
Moreover, under these new laws, the government can often secure a conviction without having to prove that the person accused even intended to commit a bad act, historically a protection against wrongful conviction.
Laws like this are dangerous in the hands of social engineers and ambitious lawmakers -- not to mention overzealous prosecutors -- bent on using government's greatest civilian power to punish any activity they dislike. So many thousands of criminal offenses are now in federal law that a prominent federal appeals court judge titled his recent essay on this overcriminalization problem, "You're (Probably) a Federal Criminal."
. . .
The Lacey Act is an example of the dangerous overbreadth of federal criminal law. Incredibly, Congress has made it a federal crime to violate any fish or wildlife law or regulation of any nation on earth.
. . .
Federal criminal law did not get so badly broken overnight, and it will take hard work to get it fixed. It is encouraging that members of Congress such as Reps. Scott and Gohmert are now paying attention to the toll overcriminalization takes on ordinary Americans. Congress needs to begin fixing the damage it has done by starting to restore a more reasonable, limited and just federal criminal law.
It's worth reading the whole thing. Recommended.
Peter
When someone asks me, "Of course, you want to prohibit convicted felons from having fireamrs, right?" I reply, "Of course not." This article is the reason why.
ReplyDeleteAlso notable from the article: "With such a broad law, the second jury didn't have much of a choice..." It's now widely (and wrongly) believed that jurors have to judge only the facts of the case, and are not allowed to judge the law itself. A jury that knew its rights may have exonerated him.