New York Criminal Attorney Blog

As criminal defense lawyers most of the time we represent the rights of the accused but sometimes we are called upon to represents the right of a victim. In the typical case, the victim report a crime to the police, the police investigate, make an arrest and the case is referred to the District Attorney's Office. The victim needs no lawyer because the prosecutor will prosecute the case and often assist the victim in getting compensation from the perpetrator or the Crime Victim's Assistance Fund.

However, all too often, especially in New York City, criminal cases are not handled in the typical way leaving victim's to fend for themselves. In a recent case handled by this office and as reported in the New York Post yesterday, an individual who was ripped off by a car dealership and whose signature was forged on loan documents for a car was repeatedly denied the right to make a police report by the New York City Police Department. With no police report, no investigation and no arrest its as if the crime did not occur and the victim must deal with the consequences, in this case a monthly car loan bill that he didn't bargain for, by himself.

By getting an experience criminal defense lawyer involved we were able to file complaints, with the Bank that issued the loan, the New York State Attorney General's Office, credit reporting agencies such as TRW, Experian and Equifax and the United States Federal Trade Commission. In addition, we are working on getting the loan rescinded. As a result of our work the Bank has already terminated its relationship with the car dealership which has more than 40 complaints against it to the New York Department of Consumer Affairs.

The practice of not taking police reports is unfortunate but also wide spread as has been reported on several occasions by the New York Post and other Newspapers. It appears to be a result of a combination of laziness, sometimes ignorance and is also a symptom of how the Police Department tracks crime statistics. Simply put, if there is no police report the crime didn't happen so crime must be going down. But the practice endangers the public and causes inconvenience and expense for the victims.

Here is a dealership that has over 40 complaints against it and rather than investigating what is happening, the police allow this dealership to continue to rip people off. Sometimes, the consequences of not taking a report or investigating a crime can be even more severe. Its at those times that an experienced New York Criminal defense lawyer can help.

Continue reading " NEW YORK POST ARTICLE - SOMETIMES VICTIMS NEED LAWYERS ALSO " »

An article in today's Wall Street Journal entitled "As Federal Crime List Grows, Threshold of Guilt Declines" focuses public attention on two trends that has long been followed by Federal Criminal Defense lawyers and has raised concerns among civil rights advocates and attorneys. The first trend, involving the rapid and uncontrolled growth of federal crimes (as distinguished from state crimes like murder, rape, assault, etc) has seen the number of federal crimes rise from just 20 to about 4500. The other trend is the erosion of the proof necessary to prove many federal crimes and send someone to prison.

The uncontrolled growth of federal criminal statutes has resulted in many individuals who are clearly not criminals getting caught up in the criminal justice systems for acts that they were clearly not aware constituted crimes. In legal thought there are generally considered two types of crimes. Crimes that are called in Latin malum in se, meaning wrong in itself are crimes that are generally obvious or inherently wrong or evil such as murder, stealing, assault or rape. The other type of crimes are called malum prohibitum in Latin, meaning wrong as prohibited are those crimes which are wrong only because they are prohibited by a statute such as gun possession, drug possession, copy write infringement, tax evasion or illegal immigration.

Since most crimes that are malum in se crimes, the obvious ones, have already been illegal, the new crimes are the malum prohibitum crimes, the crimes that are not so obvious. To make matters worse, according to the Wall Street Journal article, federal criminal offenses are not limited to one section of federal law but are scattered among 42 of the 51 titles of the United States Code. That means there is no one place where you can look to see if your acts are illegal. So the combination of having non obvious criminal offenses scattered all around the law results in frequent accidental transgressions of sometimes serious laws.

The laws can be quite surprising and most people would not be on notice that they were violating a criminal law. The Wall Street Journal article sites several examples such as a native Alaskan selling an Otter for $50 to a non-native Alaskan without first turning the Otter into some type of handicraft. This violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act and landed the offender on Probation for two years and gave him a permanent criminal record. As everyone knows ignorance of the law is no excuse and ignorance of the law did not help this poor individual from serving probation.

In another outrageous example a fisherman who freed a humpback whale that had been caught in his net was convicted of harassing an endangered species because the law requires him to allow the whale to remain tangled while he notifies authorities and they decide to send the government "expert" to free the whale. The fisherman now goes through life with a misdemeanor criminal record.

The examples of law abiding citizens being convicted of obscure federal statutes goes on and on and has been widely publicized among criminal defense lawyers. In our next blog we will talk about how important and ancient legal protections are being eroded in new federal crimes and how law abiding citizens are being caught up by theses laws.