Legal advice?

[SpartacusII]

The facts, as recited by mr. jtur, don't make any sense in light of the charges, the bail and the advice he's getting from attorneys.

This is not an isolated instance of "misremembered" factual situations surrounding a legal issue when it comes to mr. jtur, lending even more credence to my assertion. Always in an attempt to make the perpetrator into a supposed victim.

[LongtimeBravesFan]

If the car is in her name, how could she be charged with theft?

[Snowman]

Yeah, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. No way those charges get brought if it was as she has said.

[jtur88]

Originally Posted by LongtimeBravesFan

If the car is in her name, how could she be charged with theft?

I phoned and talked to a detective with the relevant county's sheriffs department, to give him the details as I understood them, and he asked me exactly the same question. However, the matter is being investigated by the town police out in the county.

I suppose there are ways to get stolen cars registered in your own name, and what remains to be determined (in their eyes) is whether this happened. It's also possible that when she was stopped, she was unable to produce any registration or insurance documents.

[Zen653]

From your initial account of the story, it sounded like the woman should not only be able to successfully defend the criminal charges against her (once she submits the corroborating documentation), but could also possibly compel her husband to continue making car payments (as a matter of contract law.)

The subsequent charges just don't seem to match the story. I suspect that your female friend hasn't told you everything.

[jtur88]

I phoned her husband at work, and told him she had asked me to help her sort out the car payments. He obviously did not know she had been arrested, and I did not tell him that. He confirmed to me that she is the registered owner of the car, and that he had cosigned the loan. So either that much is verified, or the two of them are running a stolen car ring.

A lawyer said since she is charged with a class-2 felony, he wouldn't even sign on for less than $1,500 up front, and it would probably run abour $5,000 to defend. Not counting another $3,000 to make bail.

[baidaho]

"........or the two of them are running a stolen car ring."

Put me down for this scenario.

[LongtimeBravesFan]

Jtur, maybe you should get Zen to do the case pro bono. He could stay with you while working on your friend's case.

[jtur88]

Originally Posted by LongtimeBravesFan

Jtur, maybe you should get Zen to do the case pro bono. He could stay with you while working on your friend's case.

He's not licensed to practice in the applicable state.

[jtur88]

I now have some more information , after speaking with the arresting officer, who was limited in what he could tell me at this time, but I told him what I knew (or understood) and he shared some facts with me. He confirmed that she was indeed the registered owner of the car, according to the registration certificate.

It seems that she and hubby went to the dealer, and the dealer was convinced that she herself would come in the next day and make a substantial down payment. So convinced, that he let her drive the car away, with plates and a registration in her name. In spite of the fact that her own credit is so bad, she can't even open a bank account, and she has had no income for at least two years, and has paid none of her own personal living expenses for the past year. In other words, has absolutely no income, assets, resources or prospects. What remains to be determined is: did she willfully and fraudulently make this unsupportable commitment to paying herself (easily disprovable by a most perfunctory credit check), or was the understanding based on the co-signer husband's assumption of marital and signatory liability, or was the dealer terribly irresponsible in not checking her credit, driven by a zeal for a commission? If the dealer had asked her "Can you come in tomorrow and make the down payment" and she said Yes, it would obviously have been on the basis of a promse from her husband that he would give her the money. (She had been begging him for $2-3,000 to buy an old car that would serve her needs for errands, and was angry that he had forced her to buy a $17,000 car, with no spending money on the side for all of that.)

I described this to my cop-bro, he still says, based on above, the worst case scanario is fraud. the line between fraud and larceny is elastic, varying from state to state, but it seems to be well on the side of fraud, if that. Actually, even as described above still a civil contract dispute, unless there was a blatant attempt on the part of they buyers, collectively, to attempt to obtain the vehicle without payment, since both were present at the point of sale. Buyer and seller entered into the contract voluntarily, with knowledge available, and with civil remedy for non-compliance with the contract.

[jtur88]

By the way, just to give you an idea of whose interests the judicial process is designed to serve. Her lawyer drove 60 miles Friday morning to ask for a bond reduction. He was told that his client had been transferred to a jail in another county the night before, and therefore, as of last night, you are now required to give advance notice of intent to request bond reduction.. Which effectively added five needless days of jail time until the next bond hearing on Wednesday. Because of a move that was intended to alleviate having too many people in jail.

Nothing brings our justice system into clearer focus than being there. It's easy to laugh at our flow-chart bureaucracy, when you're not wearing an orange jump suit.

[SpartacusII]

Originally Posted by jtur88

I described this to my cop-bro, he still says, based on above, the worst case scanario is fraud. the line between fraud and larceny is elastic, varying from state to state, but it seems to be well on the side of fraud, if that. Actually, even as described above still a civil contract dispute, unless there was a blatant attempt on the part of they buyers, collectively, to attempt to obtain the vehicle without payment, since both were present at the point of sale. Buyer and seller entered into the contract voluntarily, with knowledge available, and with civil remedy for non-compliance with the contract.

Honestly, every recitation by jtur of his understanding of the law should not be read, but should be printed out and used to wipe your bum. There isn't a "fraud" v. "larceny" distinction in the law. In fact, fraud is a way to commit larceny.

And if your cop-bro actually gave you that information, you should tell him to shut up and stop putting misinformation in your noggin.

[jtur88]

I mis-spoke. I meant to refer to the distinction between fraud and theft. They are quite different, and both generally fall under the class of larceny. The difference between theft and fraud is clear enough to remove this case from the definition of theft.

The code in the state in question defines theft as knowingly act with the intent to deprive an owner of property permanantly. The state has to prove all three. Ssince she is charged only with possession of stolen property, the knowingly and intent still have to be there, but also the onus to prove that somebody committed theft, whether the defendant or somebody else.

Your astute and mature observation about wiping etc. will no doubt be very helpful to the attorney, who will I'm sure wish to use your choice of words to discuss this case with the court. Thank you for that. I will now return you to my ignore list, where you had been until a few minutes ago.

[SpartacusII]

Again, jtur's distinction between "theft" and "fraud" has as little basis under the law as his earlier attempted distinction between "larceny" and "fraud" - actually less, as "theft" is typically a more all-encompassing term than larceny (though sometimes it is relatively synonymous with the other term).

You put me on ignore because I live in reality, and correct your flights of hallucinatory fancy. In virtually every instance your recitations of the law are incorrect. There are really only two possible reasons this occurs on a regular basis - 1. that you are attempting, in good faith, to correctly recite the law and apply it to the facts for everyone's betterment or 2. that you are intentionally trying to mislead others to believe an incorrect status of the current law, for whatever purpose. Given that you present these things not in an inquisitive "I think I'm right but double check me" manner but instead with a "here's how it is and you all should learn from my superior knowledge" attitude ... and given that you have established an extreme bias against both authority, generally, and the United States, in particular, and your "mistaken" interpretations always paint the authorities or the U.S. (or both) in a negative light ... it's quite apparent that your constant b@stardizations of the law are the result of choice #2.

Stop.

[jtur88]

After 7 days in jail, her bond was reduced from $30,000 to $500, and she has been rleased. She is now in the shower scrubbing off the physical residue of the state's effort to break her spirit to the point where she will sign anything and say anything the inquisitors want. Since gaining her release was the priority, there is still nothing concrete available as to why the state is determined to treat her like a common criminal. Howveer, the bail reduction seems to suggest that the court is not all that determined to throws her under the bus of justice. (IOW, that they don't care that much if she ever shows up to face the music. They got their kicks from their seven days of brain-rape.) The state department of child welfare has been held at bay, so at least, she doesn't have to spend the next two years and thousands of dollars trying to get her 6-year old daughter back out of a foster factory.