What I'm trying to understand is if it matters that the police catch suspect A and B doing the exact same thing, but then for whatever reason take pity on suspect B and decide not to charge him, but they still charge suspect A. Would that be something suspect A could bring up in his defense? All I can see is suspect A saying "hey that's not fair! you let the other guy off with nothing!" but I don't see how that applies to the law or goes against suspect A's guilt.

Does it help suspect A at all?

It's not the police who will make that decision. Whoever is prosecuting handles who gets charged, and that would be a public entity such as a district attorney. My understanding is that what they charge the other guy with will have no bearing on what you're charged with.

It's not the police who will make that decision. Whoever is prosecuting handles who gets charged, and that would be a public entity such as a district attorney. My understanding is that what they charge the other guy with will have no bearing on what you're charged with.

I know it's not the police that make that decision....or at least it's not SUPPOSED to be the police making the decision. That's not what I'm asking about.

I'm saying, A and B do the same crime. The police write them a citation for this as it is a misdemeanor. But one of the cops tells B "stay out of trouble and I'm just going to rip this citation up so it'll be like it never happened." But A doesn't get any such offer and is still charged even though he did the exact same thing as B.

What then? Understand?

I understood it the first time. I also provided you my answer, and I maintain that it really won't make a lick of difference whether they were charged or not. You're on trial at your trial, not them. It's not going to help you to say "Well, he did it too!" since all they want to know is whether you did it. Cry miscarriage of justice and all (because it is, certainly), but I can't imagine it influencing a judge.

Insofar as a citation goes, at that point, it'd be your word against the cop's, and I maintain it wouldn't help. Again, they're not interested at your court appearance in what the officer or another party did or did not do, but what you did.

That's my understanding of it anyway, from the little bit of background I have in it. I'll check with my girlfriend when she gets in (she's studying a legal assistant program right now, in her second semester) to see what she thinks, but the purpose of a trial is to establish whether you did or did not commit an illegal act, regardless of any other party. You're the sole focus.

But it is outside the officer's scope of authority to decide whether or not who to charge, as he is not a prosecutor, to then "sentence" that person to a few weeks "probation" as he is not a judge, and then once that probation period is up, to consider the matter closed, as he is not a probation officer.

I mean, two people commit the same crime with the same amount of evidence present...is it not the officer's duty to treat both parties equally? Isn't that part of equal protection under the law? Imagine if B was a friend of the officers. Imagine if B was rich and well liked in the community. Imagine if A and B were members of a different race. Now does it seem like an abuse of police discretion? But even without any of those circumstances...I think it could be.

And you didn't understand me the first time because the prosecutor will never even know of B's crime because the officer will have never turned in the citation. He, B, and A are the only ones who know B did the crime.

I still don't understand how you're making the connection between another party's actions and the charges brought against you. They're not being charged with you. Only you are facing the charges brought against you. They're two completely separate cases. Pending cases (or lack thereof) don't influence each other. That's one reason you'll often see on the news two people who committed crimes together get different sentences.

And you're right...if the prosecutor didn't know about the other's crime...well, then how will it influence your situation? Unless you can provide evidence that the officer acted unjustly, it won't help your situation. Assuming you have evidence, it's probably going to incriminate you just as much, and we're back at the start again.

This argument is going in circles. I don't think you're terribly clear on how courts and prosecution work. If a cop doesn't make an arrest/issue a citation, then the other person won't get prosecuted for it. Telling them that someone else did the same thing isn't going to influence their decision one bit.


EDIT: So now after re-reading our banter, here's the short answer.

No, it will not help subject A. While it may have been wrong for the officer to not cite/arrest subject B, the courtroom situation of subject A is about A's actions, and only A's actions. The rest of the situation won't be taken into account, only whether there is evidence to purport that subject A did indeed commit a criminal act.

Next time figure out what your actual question is. A situation like the ones you've described is indeed wrong, if we assume equal protection. However, in your original post, you asked if it helped the other party, which it doesn't.

Here ends our object lesson on confusing the issue. ;)

I still don't think we're on the same page.

Let's just say an attorney I know is dealing with a case like this, representing suspect A, and the attorney feels it does indeed matter. But I don't personally get it completely. The only thing I can see is "the cop thought the crime wasn't serious enough to bother with writing a citation for B...so why did he write one for A?" And furthermore, the officer made the appearance of writing the citation to other officers there, suspect A, and anyone else who happened to be around, but only made the deal with B in secret. The officer then threatened B with "making sure B would go to jail if anyone found out about this deal." There is got to be some wrongdoing here on the officer's part, even if righting things results in A and B being charged and possibly both found guilty. But given the officer's behavior in playing favorites, maybe neither A or B should be charged because A could've gotten off and B been charged, and such arbitrariness isn't reliable.

I understand prosecutors drop charges against defendants all of the time, usually for lack of evidence. I understand this can occur when there are two similar defendants in the same incident, and one is charged and one isn't. But that is up to the prosecutor, not the arresting officer! He sees a crime, he's obligated to report it. Hell even if he were to just issue a warning (which he couldn't have done in this instance as it was beyond that level of a crime) there is still paperwork to fill out.

If you and your friend were caught by the police doing the same crime at the SAME TIME and same PLACE, would you not be pissed if your friend got to run home while you were cited? Do you not deserve justice for that unfair treatment?

If the suspect in question committed the crime, and there's sufficient evidence provided to erase reasonable doubt, then no, it won't change things. The officer MIGHT be investigated and dealt with, but the long and short is that if the evidence says suspect A committed a crime, then he's gonna do the time. At least that's as much as I understand it, and my girlfriend agreed.

Besides, at this point, you're offering up more and more hypotheticals to try and get me to change my stance. You're changing your question with each subsequent reply.

Q#1: Does it help suspect A, or does it play against suspect A's guilt?

Q#2: Is it out of the scope of the officer's authority, and/or is it abuse of police discretion? Also, only A, B, and the officer know of the situation.

Q#3: The deal was in secret, should A be charged? (The answer is yes, if he did indeed commit the crime, because, as I've repeated to you numerous times, HIS FUCKING TRIAL HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ACTIONS OF SUSPECT B!

Q#3 Part 2: Would the cops actions exhonerate suspect A (they wouldn't, because it doesn't show that he did NOT, in fact, commit a crime, but rather that the officer potentially committed a crime as well)?

At any rate, you can offer up complex, winding hypotheticals to find an exception to the rule until we're both blue in the face. However, the legal system doesn't deal with hypotheticals, it deals with evidence. The long and short of it, to answer your first question YET AGAIN(!!!!) is that no, an officer's indiscretion in who to cite/arrest will not help another suspect who was cited and arrested and whose citation/arrest is being upheld by evidence. Does it make the officer's actions right? Absolutely not! However, it does not change the fact that the first suspect committed a crime.

I'm done playing this game. Go pester someone else.

I'm not offering up new hypothetical situations. It's the same situation, I was just trying to clarify because I felt like you misunderstood my original concise post. Nobody is obligating you specifically to answer me, as this is a thread, open to whoever has not only an opinion but some kind of precedent or law to back it up with. So don't get shitty with me. Leave then. I for one agree with your assertion that the officer's actions are wrong, he should be disciplined by the department, but that has no bearing on suspect A's guilt or innocence. Perhaps a judge would show mercy given the circumstances and offer up a light sentence or even a suspended one, but they certainly wouldn't have to do that. So I was trying to give you more details about the situation to see if some exception would come up, where you'd be like "oh yeah, since the officer did THAT, then it does matter for A!" The only reason I kept going with you is because of a certain attorney who believes it matters in A's case and was willing to go to trial.

You're right, I was being a prick. I was in a lousy mood and Totse caught me at the wrong moment there. That's not your fault, and you certainly didn't deserve that obnoxiousness on my part. Hope you'll accept my apologies. Wasn't anything personal, just me on a round of being pissed at the world. Doesn't make it right, but hey, it's Totse.

If the attorney is willing to press the issue, what they'll likely do is call the officer's credibility into question. That might work; however, I maintain that if there is sufficient evidence against suspect A that is backed up by other officers on scene, suspect A is still in bad shape.

HOWEVER...

If there were no other officers on scene, and suspect A can provide evidence of officer indiscretion, he MIGHT have a case. Purely speculation on my part, and I guarantee it's a long shot, not only because of my bias TOWARD law enforcement in the United State and the amount of training that officers receive, but also because the OTHER side of bias tends to side with the law. So hope the attorney has a good case against the officer, backed up by evidence that is pretty damned rock solid.

To put it bluntly, that's a lot of "if" qualifiers. My feeling is that it's highly unlikely that it will influence your friend's case, but I'm no attorney.