Are you an Accomplice if you Don't Stop or Report a Crime?

As any parent and former teenager knows, there's lots of peer pressure to participate in behavior that pushes them to the edge of legality. And kids see plenty of misconduct. But when someone does not actually commit the crime, can he or she still be criminally responsible?
It depends.

In Florida the old accomplice "aiding and abetting" concept is called "principal in the first degree". To aid and abet as a "principal" means to help the perpetrator, or person who actually committed the crime, by doing or saying something that caused it or encouraged, incited or assisted the perpetrator. Before a defendant may be convicted as an aider and abettor, the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt not only that the defendant assisted the perpetrator but that the defendant had the specific intent to participate in that crime. A principal is subject to the same punishment as the perpetrator. Pretty harsh.

As an experienced criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor, I was asked my opinion by Bay News 9 today about a recent high profile case where several teens observed but did not report locker room assaults by some other teammates. While their inaction is reprehensible, there is no duty to report or stop a crime. If they did not join in or facilitate the crime, they merely are witnesses. What if they cheered the perpetrators on? Does that suffice as encouragement under this law? Not likely. How about if they "put them up to it"? That's closer to the technical definition. What if they were look outs or helped plan the attack? Most definitely.

The moral? Kids should always choose their friends carefully. When you hang with those who test the limits, when things go south they go south in a hurry and it may not take much to become a principal.

See the video at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1XpFRpuq3o

Read the story at:

http://www.baynews9.com/content/36/2009/8/12/507720.html?title=New+investigation+sought+in+school+rape+case

High Court Limits Police Vehicle Searches

For almost 30 years, as an exception to the 4th Amendment's warrant requirement to permit a search and seizure, courts allowed police routinely to search the inside of a vehicle, including trunks, glove boxes, consoles and containers, upon the arrest of someone who just had been inside it ("incident to the lawful arrest of a recent occupant"). The mobility of the vehicle and presumed ability of a driver or passenger to hide or destroy evidence of a crime served as the justification to empower law enforcement with such broad intrusion into a citizen's constitutional protection of privacy and against unreasonable searches. That never made sense to me in the usual case where the vehicle's occupant is removed and unable to access it. Well, no more!

The United States Supreme Court ruled this week in Arizona v. Gant, that once someone is arrested and secured out of the vehicle, there is no logic to justify a full vehicle search in the name of preventing the loss or destruction of evidence. The Court allowed an exception where the police reasonably believe evidence related to the crime for which the person was arrested is in the vehicle. So in Gant's case, after an arrest for a traffic offense, police wrongly searched his jacket on the back seat of his vehicle where they found illegal drugs.

Watch to see whether police modify their procedures to allow someone to remain in a vehicle to create the "need" to conduct a sweeping search of its interior....

Of course, other exceptions to the "warrant requirement" still apply: police may search 1) with consent of the person who controls the vehicle, 2) if they see contraband in "plain view", 3) to inventory the vehicle's contents prior to impounding it and 4) in emergencies called "exigent circumstances" typically involving weapons or seeing "furtive", i.e. unusual, movements within the vehicle that signal possible danger or destruction or hiding of evidence. These exceptions have their own bodies of case law and are subject to much interpretation.