PREPARING FOR JURY DUTY – PART 1

Just in case I do get a jury summons and I have to go to court to possibly serve jury duty, I was thinking of doing a checklist of my own just in case I do end up as an active juror (which I hope I do not get).

Right now I am writing down what cases I could possibly have to serve in in court. Here I lay out what I know about the civil and criminal offenses where the defendant may be charged with and the possible defenses to them.

CIVIL TRESPASS

--the act of entering a property when you are unauthorized to do so

--the person trespassed usually will warn the trespasser of being sued, and then the trespassed sues the offender if that offender does not heed the warning

--Often happens in rural and country areas, such as farms

Defenses to a Civil Trespass Charge

--the person has an authorization to be there

--the person has a permit or license that allows that person in that area

--the person is a family member or friend

--the person who already had warned the person that one is trespassing fires a warning shot using a

  firearm, or, in worst cases, fires a shot directly at the trespasser, whether or not the shots hit the

  person or miss that person

CRIMINAL TRESPASS

--usually happens only in city or urban areas, and less often, college towns

--the modus operandi is the person enters the building or place of business when he is not authorized to do so

--often trespassers are wanderers, lollygaggers, or homeless people who sleep in such establishments without consent, necessity, or a reason to be in there.

--also usually happens when an unauthorized person remains in the business location after closing hours, where the person refuses to leave the place after being warned during closing hours

--usually such trespassers will be given warnings to leave the area, and refusal to leave will mean either an escort by police off the premises in the area one had trespassed, or, in most cases, lead to an arrest for criminal trespass

Defenses to a Criminal Trespass Charge

--the person has identification or authorization to remain on the property

--the person is an employee, faculty member, or staff member of the building involved (especially colleges and universities)

--the trespasser had an official copy of the lease if one was in the apartment and one trespassed

--never had any intent to commit burglary or other crimes when that person is caught trespassing

--has no criminal record or arrest record for criminal trespass

--mental unstableness or mental incompetence

SHOPLIFTING (aka RETAIL THEFT)

--Usually falls into two major categories under the states’ penal codes

   Misdemeanor retail theft (usually carrying penalties of up to 1 year in jail)

   Felony retail theft (usually carrying penalties of up to 2-5 years in jail)

--shoplifting is the intention to steal merchandise from stores or other businesses without paying for the merchandise.

--a person caught usually will not be arrested if he gets caught stealing items before one gets past

   the cashiers’ area (in this case, the person caught will be a trespasser and will be asked to leave the premises upon threat of arrest for trespass)

--the shoplifter who runs out of the store or business with stolen merchandise to avoid being captured by police can face more charges, such as resisting arrest and/or eluding police

Defenses to a Retail Theft/Shoplifting Charge

--the person arrested has no criminal record

--the person who shoplifted did not intend to do any other crimes

--the person showed remorse or apologized to the business where one had shoplifted

--the person had a valid receipt of proof of purchase with the merchandise

--a person sets off an anti-shoplifting device at the store’s entrance even though the person paid for the items before leaving the store

EXTORTION

--often used in mob talk—the act of using force by way of threats to obtain money from somebody else, with or without a dangerous weapon

--often used also by street gangs when drug deals go bad

--a dangerous weapon used on the person committing the extortion increases the severity of the charges of extortion against that person.

Defenses to Extortion

--the extortion involved low or no sums of money

--the defendant was willing to be arrested for this act without incident

--the defendant showed remorse or took responsibility for the extortion action one has done

--the defendant was unwilling to carry the threat or harm and/or death, and tried to recover

     damages to the person or person(s) being extorted 

TAX EVASION

--basically this means willfully refusing to report taxable income when required to do so under the

tax laws, with the intent to defraud the IRS or state tax agency (that is, you do not reveal how much taxable income you have under false pretenses)

--using what happened to Leona Helmsley, found out that generally when you are sentenced after

a conviction of tax evasion, generally there is a fine of up to $25,000 and/or a jail term of 5 years

--using tax shelters that are forbidden by law in your country or another foreign country might be

   tax evasion

--failing to report taxable income that you have in a foreign bank, foreign trust, or foreign securities or stocks can also be evasion

Defenses to Tax Evasion

---every receipt by the defendant was documented—any receipt, bill, or invoice that was saved

---the defendant’s tax preparer made mistakes in making deductions or finding deductions which were not allowed in the current tax year

---an honest attempt was made by the defendant to pay back taxes, liens, and other penalties for

failure to report taxable income or underreporting of taxable income

--identity was compromised trying to report income or taxable income

PLAGIARISM

--derived from the Latin word, plagiarus, which means “kidnapper”

--a civil offense where the writer, artist, or musician takes someone else’s words, art, graphics, and/or music and passes it off as one’s own creative work

--Intentional plagiarism can lead to possible punitive damages as well as compensatory damages to the

defendant who loses a plagiarism case

--Unintentional plagiarism is the lesser of these civil offenses

Some common types of plagiarism include

A.      Self-plagiarism – the writer, for instance, composes an essay with the same content that one used to send to the professor for a past assignment towards one’s new assignment.

B.      Copying-and-pasting – this is the worst form of intentional plagiarism, where you copy and

paste large amounts of text from the Internet or blogs of other people and pass these off as

one’s own work. (Also, such an act gives grounds to the defendant for additional liability for

copyright infringement.)

C.      Close paraphrasing – mainly this means doing a lot of patchwork phrasing and sentence

arranging (also patchwork style) and other swindling techniques to make the paraphrased

passage so close to the original, without using quotation marks on the gray areas of the

passage.

D.      Unintentional plagiarism – this usually happens when you cite in the wrong format as required

by your professor, or publisher, or editor (for example, using APA instead of required MLA citation format), citing articles that you have never read, or forgetting to put quotation marks on

borrowed passeges even though you may have attributed or indebted the borrowed quotes properly.

Defenses to a plagiarism charge:

----The defendant did not show any intentional “substantial similarity” to the borrowed passages of the work he used

----There was no attribution to any borrowed passage that was common knowledge

----There was an effort by the writer to organize a footnote or endnote page where a list of works cited

     was already done