Law

Let’s Say Goodbye To Vanity Laws

Once upon a time, in international locations, some distance and extensive, rulers inclusive of kings and emperors created laws that all topics living inside their nation-states had been forced to obey. If the king or emperor became a fair and just character, the legal guidelines they made served the human beings they ruled, and every person was happy for the most component. But unavoidably, there came to the thrones within these lands kings and emperors who have been now not fair and now not simply. And the laws that those monarchs made induced suffering to their human beings.

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And so it came to pass that human beings arose in defiance of those monarchs and demanded alternate. Chief among the people’s demands became that the regulation is positioned mainly men – inclusive of kings and emperors. They also demanded that legal guidelines would not arbitrarily trade and that new laws would now not be enacted without humans’ consent. In other words, in preference to the King being the law, the regulation could be King. And the ones ruled by way of the “Rule of Law” might have an equal voice in creating and administering such legal guidelines.

Revolutions had been added and lots of humans gave their lives to result in such trade.

This is why we inside the United States don’t have such things as “King James Law” or “Queen Anne’s Law.” We have public legal guidelines enacted by using our elected officers through the consent of human beings. We live underneath the Rule of Law and now not underneath the rule of someone making up legal guidelines through which we have to live. At least, it really is the manner it’s supposed to work. Lately, however, we appear to have embraced a few sorts of a macabre fad that ushers in new legal guidelines named after individuals who have been sufferers of one calamity or every other. This new regulation fad has been occurring so fast and so frequently that a few human beings have come to call those new laws “arrogance laws.”

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You know what I am speaking me approximately. I’m speaking approximately Adam’s Law and Mary’s Law and Scott’s Law and God-Only-Knows Law. They are popping up anywhere, in each nation, and even at the federal level. Unfortunately, no person is given a pass in existence. Bad matters can and do occur to proper people. And it’s miles comprehensible that friends and relatives of people who suffered calamity could want to honor them. When John Lennon changed into shot out Dakota’s front in New York, people showed up and placed plants on the ground where he became slain.

Since then, plant life and crosses and snapshots and signs and all types of memorabilia have proven up on shrink sides, and fences and everywhere a person perished in a vehicle accident or some different tragic occasion. It has grown to be so prolific that ordinances have been exceeded to remove these makeshift memorials from the pedestrian manner in lots of towns. While the general public appears to have stated sufficient is sufficient to those roadside shrines, unluckily, the general public hasn’t achieved sufficient to mention enough is enough with conceitedness laws.

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So, I actually have decided to start. ENOUGH ALREADY WITH VANITY LAWS!

In a democracy, no law needs to undergo the call of absolutely everyone. Remember, we’re presupposed to live below the guideline of law through the consent of the people. We are not speculated to live underneath Joe’s regulation on the whim of Joe’s weeping household. I recognize that sounds harsh. But undergo with me for a moment longer, and I will explain why I am severe.

Let’s begin with “Katie’s Law”. If you enter the search time period, “Katie’s Law” in Google or some other search engine, you’re going to discover several unique Katie’s Laws. That’s because this craze has gotten so massive we’re starting to run out of names. But in this example, I am regarding Katie’s Law that originated in New Mexico. In 2003, a younger lady via the name of Katie Sepich become brutally attacked and murdered in New Mexico. Although police had little clues to head-on, they found DNA evidence below the sufferer’s fingernails. The police entered the DNA into the countrywide DNA database and waited to see a suit.

Katie’s mother and father determined out that someone is most effectively required to check in their DNA within the countrywide database if they’re convicted of a felony during maximum states. They reasoned that if the law changed into modified to require each person arrested on a criminal price to provide their DNA to authorities, then the crime’s culprit in opposition to their daughter might be more significant fast found. They commenced the effort to create “Katie’s Law,” which calls for simply that. In January 2007, Katie’s Law was enacted in New Mexico. Since then, everybody arrested on a prison charge in that country must sign up their DNA within the national DNA database.

At gift, 11 states have legal guidelines similar to Katie’s Law and 26 states are considering enacting the law. Katie’s dad and mom are accurate. If human beings arrested on felony costs are compelled to post to DNA trying out, then some cases will be solved that otherwise might not. The actions on the part of Katie’s mother and father are also understandable. What befell their daughter becomes beyond evil, and their determination to locate the person responsible became and is admirable.

However, what isn’t always understandable nor admirable is the movements of elected officers who positioned commonplace feel apart and, for political advantage, seize upon these passionate troubles and usher them into regulation. When they try this, they do no longer serve the people. They also do no longer serve the sufferer in whose name the regulation will be enacted.

Katie’s Law is a terrible regulation. And I say that for four reasons. First, there’s the presumption of innocence that we join underneath the legal guidelines of this land. You and anybody else in this u. S . Is presumed innocent till confirmed responsible. This being proper, how can we force human beings who have now not been convicted of against the law to surrender their DNA? I can see no difference in demanding that an accused check-in their DNA and traumatic that everyone in the U.S. Register their DNA.

Now thoughts you, I am not talking about requiring someone arrested for a particular crime to be required to offer DNA to examine other DNA observed at that specific crime scene. What Katie’s Law requires is that anyone – for any reason – who is arrested on a felony rate have to submit his or her DNA to the countrywide DNA registry – in which it’ll all the time be stored on a report.

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Secondly, our legal guidelines are imagined to forestall authorities from forcing an individual to incriminate himself or herself. Every time someone is arrested, police are required to read them their rights. They are advised that they have a right to hold silent. They have a right not to incriminate themselves. But how can we inform a person he has a right to keep his mouth shut but no right to defend himself from genetic checking out? What Katie’s Law method is that for any reason what-so-ever, police can publish an arrestee’s DNA into the countrywide database to see if they find a fit someplace for a few purposes. It’s like trolling for a crook fee.

Once your DNA is registered in the national database, it’s going to stay there for the rest of your existence – regardless if you are harmless. Regardless if the prices are dropped. However, of the case, you had been falsely accused or falsely arrested. You are inside the database – for all time. Thirdly, DNA is shared. Two or more humans could have the exact identical DNA. Identical twins, as an example, will not have the same fingerprints. However, they do have equal DNA. So, as DNA proof is beneficial for apart from a person having perpetrated a specific crime, it is not conclusive proof that someone sincerely dedicated a criminal offense.

And eventually, there is the simple reality that in a democracy, we need to respect regulation enforcement. However, we must never unconditionally accept as accurate with regulation enforcement. Contrary to what most people suppose, while the police arrive at a criminal offense scene, they do not begin searching for clues that lead them to a suspect. What police normally do is decide on a suspect and then build a case against him or her. If, at some stage in the case building section of the research, the police find they can’t reap enough proof for an arrest, preferably they’ll search for some other suspect and begin the whole case constructing section again. But in a few cases, too regularly, in reality, some police do not stop once they hit a wall.

Instead, they coerce confessions and that they lodge to torture. That is how harmless humans go to jail. With Katie’s Law, we’ve given these police officials every other avenue to construct instances. And due to this, one day, a police officer will determine that someone might be responsible for a criminal offense. And the police officer will reason that if he can simply get a sample of that person’s DNA, he can tie them to the crime he is investigating. And so that hapless individual may find himself stopped via some cop for a simple traffic violation. In the course of that site visitors forestall, the officer will just show up to discover a bag of suspicious white powder in that character’s automobile. Enough white powder to warrant a legal arrest and the man or woman’s requirement post to DNA sampling.

It is unfortunate, but this could happen. Katie’s Law might be abused by law enforcement to gain DNA consequences. It will make the mission of regulation enforcement less complicated and faster. And if some terrible schmuck has to warfare a phony prison rate due to a cop’s shortcut, correctly, to some cops’ thinking, that is simply collateral harm. Take an examination of all the human beings who can be currently being freed because DNA proof has exonerated them. Then ask yourself the significant question that nobody appears inclined to ask. Ask yourself how most of these guys wound up in jail in the first location? The unhappy, unhappy, truth is that there are horrific police officers available. And Katie’s Law palms those awful cops a new device in which to do bad things.

Katie’s Law isn’t the only horrific regulation happening the books nowadays. Vanity legal guidelines are being enacted nearly every day in numerous states. At a minimal, vanity laws are puzzling to the general public. In their intense vanity, legal guidelines fly in the face of a democratic republic built upon the rule of thumb of law. In our society, legal guidelines need to by no means be personal. All legal guidelines must be impersonal. They need to no longer be created out of emotion – they ought to simplest be enacted out of purpose. Katie’s Law is a bad law and arrogance legal guidelines are a bad idea. We ought to position a forestall to this nonsense earlier than human beings get harm and our republic falters.

Leah Leonard

Coffee expert. Troublemaker. Typical music guru. Friendly beer fanatic. Introvert. Web specialist. Uniquely-equipped for implementing bullwhips in Ocean City, NJ. Spent a year importing licorice in Hanford, CA. Have some experience licensing cigarettes for the government. Once had a dream of selling toy monkeys in Las Vegas, NV. Spent the 80's working on hula hoops in Minneapolis, MN. What gets me going now is working with action figures in the government sector.

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