Do I Have To Register If My Crime Was Before The Law Pass

When it comes to the law, there is possibly no other surface area that is as widely misunderstood, misrepresented, and mythologized in pop culture quite like criminal constabulary. Crimes, punishments, and the procedures surrounding the criminal justice process are pop topics in movies, television, and books, and criminal cases are constantly in the news. Crime sells, and the public's fascination with it never seems to terminate.

Unfortunately, the popular delineation of constabulary procedures, trials, and other facets of the criminal justice process have given ascension to persistent legal myths. While many of these popular misconceptions are beneficial, some are far from it. If relied upon, these myths can significantly damage your ability to protect yourself and your rights.

As with any give-and-take of legal issues, you need to consult a lawyer if you ever need guidance regarding criminal law. A good understanding of bones legal concepts will ever do good you, merely applying the concepts to your state of affairs and individual needs is something you can just exercise if you receive guidance from an attorney.

Legal Myths in America Y'all Didn't Know About

1. The Police Must Read You lot Your Rights

The image of a police officer reading a criminal doubtable his or her rights is one of the most usually seen tropes in movies and television. If y'all know zero else about criminal constabulary, you lot know that police force have to read you lot your rights. If they don't, a courtroom will throw out your case.

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Unfortunately, while the idea that the police must read you your rights whenever they talk to you lot or question you is common, it is woefully inaccurate. The rights the police read (or the warnings they give) are known as the Miranda warning because they arose after the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Miranda v. Arizona. In that example, the court stated that police have to permit a criminal defendant know what his or her rights are, but just after the constabulary accept that person into custody, and if they want to ask the detainee questions. If the police violate the Miranda requirement, they cannot use the data they acquire against you in a criminal case.

However, most interactions police have with people are not custodial, pregnant the police have non taken you into custody and are not preventing you from leaving. In these situations yous are gratuitous to become, then even if the police ask you questions, they are not under obligation to give you a Miranda alarm. For instance, if a law officeholder approaches y'all while y'all're sitting in a coffee shop and starts chatting, the officer is under no obligation to read y'all your rights. Though annihilation you say to the officer can all the same be used against yous, you are not in custody, and are non entitled to exist read your rights before the officer conducts an interrogation.

2. Yous Have to Talk to the Law

If you choose to brand a statement to the police or reply their questions, you accept to be honest and cannot lie or mislead them, lest yous be prosecuted for obstruction or similar crimes. However, refusing to respond questions or refusing to cooperate with an investigation is non the same as lying or misleading a criminal investigation, and does not rise to the level of obstruction.

As a full general rule, yous are under no legal obligation to respond the questions asked to yous by police or prosecutors, nor must you lot always talk to the police if they want to talk to y'all. Further, if the police force take you into custody and interrogate you, y'all have the correct to talk to your attorney earlier you answer any questions, and the correct to refuse to answer any questions they ask.

However, while you lot generally are not obligated to answer questions or help investigators gather evidence that can exist used against you, there are some limited situations in which yous may be legally obligated to provide law with certain kinds of information when asked. For example, about one-half of all states take "cease and place" laws that require you to provide police with sure identifying information, such as your name and address, when asked to exercise so. While the law have to have a reasonable suspicion that you have committed, are committing, or will commit a crime in order to need such identifying information from you, refusing to provide such information when demanded can be a criminal offence. Similarly, if you are driving a vehicle and are pulled over, land laws let officers to need that yous to evidence your driver's license and proof of insurance.

Across that, all states have mandatory reporting laws that require some people (such as teachers, childcare providers, and medical professionals) to written report suspected instances of kid abuse or maltreatment to constabulary or state officials. If yous are obligated to report such suspected abuse and fail to exercise so, you tin can exist charged with a criminal offence.

Furthermore, some states, such equally Texas and Ohio, have laws that require you to written report crimes. For example, in Texas, it is a misdemeanor criminal offense to fail to report a felony that has resulted in serious actual injury, while in Ohio it is a misdemeanor criminal offence to fail to study any felony.

3. You Have the Right to a Phone Call

In general, if you are arrested, you have no recognized constitutional right to brand a phone telephone call. While the police are obligated to accept sure actions, allowing you lot a phone telephone call is not ever ane of them. For case, if you're arrested, the police must tell you what you are being arrested for, prove you whatsoever arrest warrant issued against you, and bring you before a court every bit soon as reasonably possible. None of these requirements impose on the constabulary an obligation to allow you to utilize a telephone or make any other communication with others outside of jail.

However, there are a number of states – including Alaska, California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada, New United mexican states, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island – that exercise take laws that specifically grant an arrestee the right to make a phone call, or at least the correct to communicate with counsel or friends post-obit an arrest. In other states, procedures or rules adopted past county or municipal police force enforcement agencies may beget arrestees the opportunity to make phone calls, even if at that place are no statewide laws that require them to do so.

four. You Tin't Be Convicted If Police Prevarication to You

People often mistakenly presume that constabulary enforcement officers accept to be honest. Lying to the constabulary or criminal investigators is a crime – yet the police lying to y'all is not. While constabulary and all witnesses are sworn to tell the truth when testifying or presenting prove, they are nether no such obligation when they are investigating crimes, conducting interrogations, or otherwise performing their duties.

The Supreme Court has long upheld the government's right to utilise deceptions and make faux claims as they enforce the law. While constabulary cannot threaten you lot or others or make promises to induce you to confess, they are largely free to say any they desire if they believe it will help them gather evidence.

For instance, say a detective approaches you and tells you she wants to enquire yous questions about a friend of yours. She asks nearly a potential law-breaking your friend might have committed, what you know well-nigh the friend, and where yous were when the offense took place. In such a scenario, it's entirely possible that the detective is not interested in your friend at all, but is actually asking you lot questions considering she suspects that y'all have committed a crime. If she lies and tells you she's only asking about your friend, she has washed null illegal.

Annihilation y'all say to the constabulary can be used every bit evidence against you to convict you lot of a criminal offence – even if the constabulary lie to you to get you to respond questions. This is true even if the police force tell you they are not actually cops (such as clandestine officers denying they are police), tell y'all your conversation is "off the record," or claim that y'all won't become into trouble if you confess and admit to committing a crime.

Once again, you lot are under no legal obligation to speak to the police, help them get together evidence that can be used against you, or to make statements of any kind. The United States Constitution guarantees that you take the right to remain silent. While the Supreme Court has ruled that, in some situations, you must invoke your right to remain silent if yous want to exist sure that your silence is not held confronting yous, you are still immune to remain silent before, during, and after an abort, even if y'all practise not have an chaser.

5. All Deception Past the Police Is Entrapment

Entrapment is a recognized affirmative legal defence force. This means that if you tin prove entrapment, you cannot be convicted of a law-breaking – despite the fact that the state has proven you lot have committed the criminal offense for which you lot've been accused. In an entrapment defense, y'all effectively say that, yes, you committed the crime, just were forced or coerced to do so by the land, and would not take committed it otherwise. Therefore, you cannot exist held liable.

Entrapment is very difficult to prove, and though it's widely known, information technology isn't frequently used equally a legal defence force. Information technology is also often misunderstood to mean that you lot can't be convicted of a crime if the police prevarication to you, deceive yous, or try to trick you in some way. This is not the case.

For example, say you take prescription painkillers. A friend comes to you and asks you to sell him some pills. You concord and are apace arrested because the friend was working every bit an informant for the police. This is non entrapment, considering you chose to commit a crime just because the opportunity arose. You were non coerced or forced to commit the crime, and did and so of your ain free volition.

Even so, if instead of the friend merely asking you lot to sell him the pills, he claims that he needs them for his ailing mother who is suffering from cancer. He says that she cannot beget the medication herself, and if she doesn't get it, your friend fears that she volition suffer terribly. Y'all refuse initially, but the friend persists. You lot eventually hold and are arrested. This is a archetype example of entrapment: If your friend had not gone to slap-up lengths to become you to commit the offense, you would never have done then. You fabricated the illegal sale solely because of coercive emotional appeals.

The loftier standards y'all have to meet to show entrapment ways that the law can do a lot without their actions existence considered entrapment. For instance, the law tin can ask yous to commit a offense (such as selling beer to an officer posing as an hush-hush teen), aid y'all commit a crime (such as selling y'all parts to make a bomb), and let you lot commit a crime or fail to prevent you from committing a crime (such as watching you smoke a joint without telling you lot that it'due south illegal) without entrapping you.

6. Y'all Can't Be Charged With a Crime If Nobody Presses Charges

The thought of "pressing charges" is perhaps the unmarried most misunderstood concept when it comes to criminal law. The concept seems simple: An boilerplate denizen or average person tin cull – or refuse – to accept someone charged with a crime.

While it is true that prosecutors may be less likely to printing charges if a witness is unwilling to cooperate with an investigation, this in no way means that average people get to determine when prosecutors do or do non file charges. The determination of whether someone gets charged with a crime is always up to a prosecutor.

Prosecutors have discretion in the kinds of charges they file, when they file those charges, and who they desire to accuse with a crime – but the final decision is always theirs. Average citizens accept almost no control over a prosecutor's determination to charge someone with a crime. Furthermore, citizens typically cannot file criminal charges on their own, nor tin they finish prosecutors from filing criminal charges.

seven. Evidence Tin't Be Used If Police force Didn't Have a Search Warrant

Under the Quaternary Subpoena to the United States Constitution, the people are complimentary from unreasonable searches and seizures. The amendment provides, in part, that the state cannot obtain a search warrant unless information technology is able to show probable cause. In practical terms, this ways that if constabulary want to search you, your habitation, or your holding, they must first go before a judge, show that they take reason to believe you've committed a criminal offence, and ask the judge to effect a search warrant.

Withal, these warrant requirements are field of study to some fundamental exceptions, and in many situations the police can search you without a warrant and not be in violation of your rights. In that location are a number of exceptions to the search warrant requirement, merely some are more commonly encountered than others. These include, for instance, consent to the search, plain or open view, stop-and-frisk (or "Terry" stops), machine or mobile conveyance search, exigent or emergency circumstances, and searches post-obit an arrest. Each exception has its own legal standards and requirements, and if the state is unable to testify that it met the requirements prior to conducting the search, a court will not allow evidence from that search to be used.

For example, the plain view doctrine allows police to use prove they come across in their daily routine. Then, if a constabulary officer comes to your door to ask you some questions and, while there, notices illegal drugs inside your house, the officeholder does not demand to obtain a search warrant to seize that bear witness and arrest y'all. In an car or mobile conveyance search, the constabulary tin can perform a search of your vehicle if they have likely cause to believe that the vehicle contains evidence of a criminal offense. For instance, if yous are pulled over and the officer notices smoke coming from under your seat and smells marijuana, the officer can search your vehicle without first obtaining a search warrant.

Some other commonly encountered exception to the search warrant requirement is the stop-and-frisk, too known as a Terry terminate. With a stop-and-frisk, if the police accept a reasonable suspicion that you are engaged in some kind of criminal activity, they can stop and frisk you and your clothes for evidence of weapons or annihilation illegal.

Across the exceptions where an officer can conduct a search based on the circumstances of the interaction, granting an officeholder your consent to search also removes the warrant requirement. And so, for example, if you lot are pulled over and the officer does not have any evidence to suspect that yous've committed a crime or that your vehicle contains prove of a law-breaking, any evidence gathered from a search of your vehicle will not be admitted by a court. However, if yous grant permission to the officer to search your vehicle and the officeholder subsequently finds prove of a law-breaking, that evidence is admissible because you lot granted consent.

Therefore, while it is a full general rule that police force must take a search warrant if they want to carry a search, there are pregnant exceptions to this rule that brand many non-warrant-based searches entirely legal.

8. Y'all Tin't Be Bedevilled Without Fingerprints, Deoxyribonucleic acid, or Video Evidence

The image of the brightly lit modern crime lab with scientific forensic instruments, lab technicians in white coats, and technologically advanced criminal offence-fighting and investigative methods is the staff of life and butter of many pop depictions of the criminal justice arrangement. The notion that investigators can solve crimes past using fingerprints analysis, voice recognition, or Deoxyribonucleic acid tin requite rise to the belief that, without such evidence being nowadays, you cannot be convicted. But this myth is entirely wrong.

Many cases involve no forensic or scientific evidence of whatever kind, and rely solely on the testimony of witnesses and criminal investigators. In fact, the testimony of either a single police officer who investigated the case or the victim of a crime who tin identify the perpetrator is normally enough for the prosecution to secure a conviction. The popular depiction of scientific experts giving testimony most the validity of evidence or technicians performing complicated analyses of criminal offense scenes is a function of some cases – just those cases are the exception, not the norm.

nine. Your Spouse Can't Evidence Against You

Spousal immunity is a protection that prevents prosecutors from forcing the spouse of a married defendant to testify against that defendant in any criminal prosecution. Similarly, the country cannot forcefulness spouses to divulge confidential communications shared between the 2, a concept known as the marital communication privilege.

However, while spousal amnesty is a recognized and important legal principle, it is not a coating protection. Like other legal principles, it has limits and exceptions.

Outset, and perhaps most importantly, spousal amnesty rights can be waived. If the spouse of a criminal defendant chooses to practise so, he or she can willingly appear and provide testimony that can be used against the defendant spouse. The criminal defendant cannot, on his or her own, prevent the spouse from testifying if that spouse chooses to do and then, nor force the spouse to go along silent.

Also, spousal amnesty only applies to couples who are currently married at the fourth dimension the prosecution takes place. If a couple divorces before ane of the spouses is charged, the ex-spouse does not have the ability to take advantage of spousal amnesty privileges, and can be forced to prove confronting his or her old spouse. Beyond that, and depending on state law, the spousal immunity privilege may not utilize when one spouse is charged with committing a crime confronting the other, when one spouse is charged with a crime confronting one of their children, or when the communications between the two took place prior to the couple entering into matrimony.

10. Cases Always Go to Trial

Criminal trials are dramatic, engaging, and incredibly pop subjects both for entertainment and news purposes. Still, the trials that accept place in the public centre and in popular entertainment can requite the impression that most, if non all, criminal cases go to trial, and that all trials are long and complicated diplomacy. The reality is so unlike every bit to make the popular depiction practically meaningless.

The vast bulk of criminal cases in the Usa are resolved through plea deal agreements between the prosecution and defense force. Additionally, some criminal cases that don't become to trial are dismissed, while others involve defendants who die. According to the Authoritative Part of the U.S. Court, more than than 90% of federal criminal cases practise not attain the trial phase. For country cases, the percent may be even higher.

The pocket-sized number of cases that actually do arrive to trial stand for just a fraction of the total number of cases going on at whatsoever 1 fourth dimension. Of those, simply a fraction ever receive any significant media or pop attention.

Final Word

Above all, the biggest, most dangerous myth regarding criminal law is that you know what you lot have to do to protect yourself, win your case, and ensure you don't get into problem. Criminal law tin be an incredibly complicated field, and what might seem reasonable or logical to y'all might be completely incorrect.

Without even considering the significant legal differences between the individual states, as well as betwixt u.s. and the federal criminal organization, your ability to defend your rights and protect yourself is limited because your knowledge is limited. If yous rely on the popular depiction of the constabulary and the criminal justice system, y'all may be at an even greater disadvantage.

Knowing your rights and obligations prior to making whatsoever decisions (or whatsoever potentially incriminating statements) is ever in your best interests. Therefore, if faced with a criminal law situation, always consult an attorney.

What additional legal myths practise y'all know of?