Comments on: Breaking Stupid Criminal News

By: Clif Burns

Clif Burns — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:04:00 +0000

Mike, I admit that the story does also have the whiff of it’s too good to be true. So either the defendant is really stupid (a possibility) or he’s been badly framed.

By: Mike Deal

Mike Deal — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:45:16 +0000

Clif: OK, I admit that I didn’t go beyond your report when I posted previously. After your response, I did, and it seems the Chief of Police who made the report to the FBI is on suspension for various and desultry violations. And some of his officers don’t seem to think he is particularly trustworthy, and that the the Chief might possibly be inventing all this to rehabilitate himself. Of course, we should all ignore all this because we all know that no “sworn officer” would ever, well not hardly ever (apologies to G&S lovers), violate his sworn duty and fudge the truth.

By: Clif Burns

Clif Burns — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:47:20 +0000

Mike, if you look at the stories, he also said to the police chief that he was shipping them to Saudi Arabia first and then to Indonesia because of the arms embargo on Indonesia. That looks like specific intent to me, if it is in fact true that he sad that.

By: Mike Deal

Mike Deal — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:06:40 +0000

But Clif, the defendant’s request begs the question of whether he was attempting to evade ITAR, or whether he just didn’t want the company to circumvent him and go directly to the end customer. As someone who has drafted more than my fair share of ordinary distributor and broker, I can fairly say that most middlemen live in constant fear of being by-passed by the US vendor or manufacturer. This guy could have just been doing business as usual: Stupid, maybe; but, required degree of specific intent? Not clear on these facts.

By: Shawn Wheatfill

Shawn Wheatfill — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 16:09:06 +0000

I think the saying goes, “stupid is as stupid does”.