grixit wrote:Monetary Artichoke wrote:First a short course in criminal law 101: Every criminal offense is constructed of elements. Every element must apply for a defendant to be convicted. For example, if "burglary" is "breaking" and "entering" a "house" at "night" and taking "property" that he/she "does not own" then there are six elements. ALL SIX ELEMENTS must apply for the defendant to be found guilty in court. That is the law. If the defendant broke into a "warehouse" or broke into a "house" during the "day", he would not be guilty. Criminal law is very exact as it must be because the defendant's life, or years of it, is at issue and equally to protect the innocent.
Ok, that doesn't jive with what i've observed.
I never took criminal law 101 (or some reason, it wasn't required at my law school when I attended), but what NutHouse is saying is very close to what I was taught during my bar review course. The common law felony of burglary was the (1) entry of a (2) dwelling (3) at night (4) by force (5) for the purpose of committing a felony (such as larceny). And if any one of those elements is missing, then it's not "burglary." It might be another crime, but it's not burglary.
grixit wrote:If they broke lock it's definitely breaking and entering, but even if they walked thorugh an open door they're not excused.
As I said, that's not what I was taught. Walking in through an open door does not involve the use of "force" so it's not burglary. It might be criminal trespass, and it might be larceny if you steal something after you've entered, but it's not burglary as I've defined it above.
Now let's look at what NutHouse has been charged with:
18 U.S.C. § 486. Uttering coins of gold, silver or other metal.
Whoever, except as authorized by law, makes or utters or passes, or attempts to utter or pass, any coins of gold or silver or other metal, or alloys of metals, intended for use as current money, whether in the resemblance of coins of the United States or of foreign countries, or of original design, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years or both.
NutHouse has claimed that the original indictment was defective because it didn't charge him with "original design." But "original design" begins with "or," so it's an alternative. NutHouse can be convicted if the government can prove *either* that the coins were "in the resemblance of coins of the United States" *or* were "of original design." (I'm ignoring foreign coins.)
And those alternatives seem to be pretty all-encompassing because, as a logical matter, a coin is going to be either a copy of an American or foreign coin, or its going to be an original design. What else could it be? The phrase "original design" doesn't strike me as a requirement that the defendant have designed the coin. Copying someone else's design for a commemorative coin, and passing it off as "current money," would seem to be as illegal as copying an American coin. In other words, the phrase "original design" was probably intended to include within the crime coins that don't look like American (or foreign) coins as well as coins that do, and not limit the crime to designers of coins while excluding mere copy-cats.
So I'm not sure that the government even needed to include an allegation of "resemblance" or "original design" in the indictment, but the prosecutor might have decided to put it in out of an abundance of caution. For example, my recollection is that there is a difference between evasion of assessment and evasion of payment, even though there is only one statute, and there has been litigation over whether the government needs to allege one or the other, or whether they can allege both and then prove only one. There might be a similar issue here, and the prosecution might have decided to avoid the issue by alleging "original design."
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