WTF, conspiracy theorists about Ahmed Mohamed on Hacker News
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So if a cop issues a lawful order which in some way involves your physical movement, you've been arrested because your freedom of movement has been denied?
That sounds like one of the crazy nutjobs you'd see on YouTube screaming because she's just trying to film the police doing their jobs and she's been ordered to keep a safe distance...
YOU CAN'T DO THIS! YOU'RE DEPRIVING ME OF MY FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT!! I HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE IN PUBLIC, ANYWHERE I WANT, INCLUDING DIRECTLY UNDERFOOT OF ALL THESE ARMED MEN! AM I FREE TO GO? I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG!!! WHAT ARE YOU ARRESTING ME FOR???!!!?!11!
An "arrest" is when they formally deprive a person of freedom of movement; their job still allows minor, temporary questions or commands which may require a person to stick around and/or not go wherever they wanted to go. A person is obligated by law to comply with such instructions from a police officer if they are lawful and reasonable. It does not mean you're being "arrested".
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An "arrest" is when they formally deprive a person of freedom of movement; their job still allows minor, temporary questions or commands which may require a person to stick around and/or not go wherever they wanted to go. A person is obligated by law to comply with such instructions from a police officer if they are lawful and reasonable. It does not mean you're being "arrested".
(IANAL)
...and the formality is when you physically prevent a person from leaving.
You can ask temporary questions, you can talk them into staying, but physically restrain them and that's an arrest; even if you do nothing but grab onto their arm. The reason it's so important is because that is the point at which a person has a right to demand legal representation and has to be given the Miranda warning. (You always have a right to refuse to answer questions, beyond giving your ID, which is required in some places)
It's not "detained" that is arrest, it is the restriction of physical freedom by authority. But the police like to confuse the issue by putting handcuffs on someone, putting them in the back of a cop car, and then telling them, "Arrest? What arrest? We're just detaining you for a little talk. Lawyer? You don't need a lawyer at this point, we haven't arrested you." (The last phrase of which is a lie; often compounded by overlooking Miranda, or if they give it, saying it's just a "formality" that, "Doesn't mean you're arrested, oh no.")
There's some shades of gray about where arrest starts, but generally it boils down to can leave/can't leave. Hence the dictionary definition.
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...and the formality is when you physically prevent a person from leaving.
You can ask temporary questions, you can talk them into staying, but physically restrain them and that's an arrest
A person who, at the point at which a police officer detains them and starts asking questions, decides that they feel like they can leave instead of answering the questions is probably going to be arrested. You are correct about that much. But if a cop had reasonable suspicion to detain someone, and and they're not being cooperative, then if the cop threatens to arrest the suspect and the suspect suddenly decides to cooperate, they both save the hassle of an arrest.
Anyway, even if they did arrest him (they didn't; he decided to cooperate before that happened), it would've been for obstruction, not for his hoax bomb. That puts him on the same playing field as the screaming idiots I paraphrased above. Congratulations, you were an asshole to a cop who was trying to do his job, and you got arrested for obstruction. What do you want, an award?
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A person who, at the point at which a police officer detains them and starts asking questions, decides that they feel like they can leave instead of answering the questions is probably going to be arrested. You are correct about that much. But if a cop had reasonable suspicion to detain someone, and and they're not being cooperative, then if the cop threatens to arrest the suspect and the suspect suddenly decides to cooperate,
they both save the hassle of an arrestthat saves all the hassle of a trial.FTFY
The basis of a charge of obstruction can't be refusal to answer questions by itself (even though police are prone to charge obstruction) because it's your right under the Fifth Amendment to not incriminate yourself. You always have the right; it doesn't turn on and off with arrest.
When you're a suspect, cooperating by answering questions is likely to put you in prison; the officer is not your "friend". Answering questions is dangerous because you not only have to consider the face value, but also how your answers can be construed.
Worse, cooperating, then stopping cooperation can itself be evidence against you. If you read the Slate article, ask yourself, "When should he have stopped talking?" It was too late to stop when they got to the question about the shells. In that case, cooperation on earlier "innocent" questions put him in prison.
I'm dubious that Ahmed Mohamed's cooperation changed anything meaningful in his case.
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The basis of a charge of obstruction can't be refusal to answer questions ... because it's your right under the Fifth Amendment to not incriminate yourself
If he had committed no crime, then he could not incriminate himself and his 5th Amendment right has no relevance whatsoever. Refusal to answer questions is prima facie evidence that you at least think you've committed a crime. If the cops had a reasonable suspicion to detain you as a suspect, now they have a probable cause to arrest you.
Your right under the 5th Amendment is to not incriminate yourself. It does not give you a free pass to simply refuse to talk to cops; if you have information pertaining to a possible crime that someone else might have committed, you are legally obligated to reveal it. Unless, of course, doing so would reveal you as an accomplice.
Whether you committed a crime or not will be for the court to decide. If you did commit a crime and refused to answer the questions in order to avoid incriminating yourself, then an obstruction charge cannot prevail, so it'll probably be dropped if the cops have enough evidence to accuse you of something else.
I'm dubious that Ahmed Mohamed's cooperation changed anything meaningful in his case.
Other than being arrested and taken to jail? Well, all charges would probably have been dropped, because he's brown and Muslim, and we don't want to appear to be harassing him because of that, so let's drop him like a hot potato and make it look like we really were harassing him for being brown and Muslim.
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If he had committed no crime, then he could not incriminate himself and his 5th Amendment right has no relevance whatsoever. Refusal to answer questions is prima facie evidence that you at least think you've committed a crime. If the cops had a reasonable suspicion to detain you as a suspect, now they have a probable cause to arrest you.
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Nobody said the system worked perfectly. 0.5% is really a pretty small number. And most of those were cases of witness misidentification, which definitely wouldn't have been a factor here.
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10,000 INNOCENT PEOPLE CONVICTED EACH YEAR, STUDY ESTIMATES
The survey asked respondents to estimate the prevalence of wrongful conviction in the United States. About 72 percent estimated that less than 1 percent -- but more than zero -- of convictions were of innocent people.
Based on these results, Huff estimated conservatively that 0.5 percent of the 1,993,880 convictions for index
People are really shitty with their understanding of small numbers. And given that it's pretty much a WAG answer to begin with...I'm not going to put a huge amount of trust in there.
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SOME PEOPLE THINK THAT 10,000 INNOCENT PEOPLE CONVICTED EACH YEAR, STUDY ESTIMATES
FTFReality. Seriously, what kind of "study" is this? Can other fields of science use this method too?
"Hey, dude, you think P = NP?"
"Eeeh... probably not. I guess. What are you asking me for, again?"
"P IS NOT EQUAL TO NP, STUDY ESTIMATES"
