5 Appalling Legal Loopholes That Enabled Dangerous Criminals

in #life6 years ago

Lawmakers have the noble but difficult task of crafting deterrents and responses to wrongdoing. These statutory safeguards are largely successful in preventing society from devolving into a crime-plagued, Hobbesian hellscape.

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  1. The UK’s Ironic Legal Aid Liability: The UK’s 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act sought to financially defang crooks by freezing their assets and prohibiting their use to pay defense bills in criminal trials. The purpose of the law was clear: to prevent the disgustingly rich and ruthless from buying their way out of punishment with dirty money. But the law unintentionally gave savvy crooks a new way to evade justice. With their assets inaccessible, millionaires could claim financial difficulty, forcing the state to pay their legal costs. In addition, most of the wealthy wrongdoers who are convicted usually refuse to compensate their victims or repay court fees afterward. Thankfully, this all changed in June 2015.

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2.New Mexico’s Lewd-Image Omission: In 2013, New Mexico resident Pete Lopez Jr. ran blatantly afoul of the law. He had coped with a breakup by relentlessly hounding his ex-girlfriend in true stalker fashion. But what sets Lopez apart from the typical stalker is that when his ex-ignored his unhinged advances, he began sending her 11-year-old son digital photos of male genitalia. Authorities sought to convict Lopez of criminal sexual communication with a child, which is a fourth-degree felony and a sex crime. But the charges wouldn’t stick. Surprisingly, New Mexico’s prohibition on adults bombarding children with penis pics only applied to people sharing their own privates. Exposing kids to someone else’s was completely legal. Throughout New Mexico, would-be child rapists tried to prepare children for unspeakable abuses by providing photographic primers on the human anatomy in various carnal capacities.

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3.The UK’s Abuse-Denial Loophole: Evidence of a caretaker perpetrating grotesque violence against a child or helpless adult should be enough to file criminal charges, regardless of whether the suspect admits guilt or points fingers. But until 2012, that would have been wishful thinking in the UK. In 2010 alone, at least 133 instances of child abuse and 20 cases of criminal cruelty against vulnerable adults went unprosecuted because the caretakers refused to play ball with authorities. Without that loophole, the tragic and highly publicized story of Baby Peter in 2007 might have ended differently. Peter was subjected to months of agonizing abuse by his parents, even as social workers paid regular visits to assess the child’s well-being.

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4.The US’s House-Stealing Loophole: Common sense might tell you that as long as you purchase a house and have the appropriate paperwork, you own it. But throughout the United States—from the gritty streets of New York and Chicago to the cities and counties of Missouri—people are discovering that it’s incredibly easy for dishonest interlopers to swoop in and claim their houses. Fail-safes against processing fraudulent real estate deeds are often nonexistent. When a person walks into a recorder’s office with a notarized title, there’s no vigilant authenticator waiting in the wings to assess the document’s legitimacy. The law in most US locations prohibits county employees from performing title searches or other checks. However, if they know a transaction is fraudulent, they can obviously call the police. In cities like New York, some notaries have joined law enforcement in a united front against fraud. But elsewhere, deed and notary fraud seem to be virtually unstoppable, meaning that untold numbers of homeowners may be Hos in the making.

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5.Costa Rica’s Shark-Finning Allowances:Humankind’s taste for shark fin soup spawned the brutal business of shark finning, where a fisherman amputates a shark’s dorsal fin before dumping the helpless animal back in the water to die. It saves cargo room in commercial fishing boats but kills tens of millions of sharks annually. Rampant shark finning went unchecked in Costa Rica for roughly 20 years before being banned in 2005. But in the post-ban period, money-hungry gangs and seamen hailing from China, Taiwan, and Indonesia found ways to skirt the law. Costa Rica’s shark-finning ban requires shark fins to be attached to the body when transported for sale or export but doesn’t define the term “body.”Disturbingly, a Costa Rican judge declined to rule on the legality of shark spining and agreed with the rest of Tseng’s defense. The government was ordered to pay her $6,500 for the confiscated fins.

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