Christie clarifies: 'Illegal' immigrants are in civil violation [US Atty in NJ]

Star-Ledger ^ | 4/29/2008 | Brian Donohue

[bill1952]

If being IN the country was a criminal act, then each minute, the illegal would be committing another crime. Or substitute each hour, or each day — things that are illegal WHILE being done subject one to continual and possibly repeated arrests for multiple violations.

Law is not your area of expertise.

Substitute being in possession of a stolen vehicle with being in the country and you should see how absurd that argument is.

Being in possession of a stolen item, or even “conspiring to commit a criminal act” does not need to attach continuous liability for every denomination of time.

The initial instance of said act is both encompassing in the Law, and compelling as to prima facia evidence.

[bill1952]

I didn’t mean that to sound insulting.
Sorry if it did.

[gubamyster]

ping

[CharlesWayneCT]

I actually find the concept of a continual violation of law fascinating.

Suppose you are speeding. If the police pull behind you, and follow you for 5 minutes, they will probably give you a ticket. If you leave, and start speeding, they can give you another ticket 5 minutes later. But if they had followed you for that 10 minutes, they would probably not give you two tickets.

If there were speed trap CAMERAS set up every mile, you could theoretically get 100 speeding tickets for speeding through a 100-mile section. Each one would be it’s own violation. In fact, you are speeding each second.

Your example seems to suggest that my feeling about the illegal question was correct, not incorrect as you seem to imply.

If someone steals a car, and it takes the police a month to catch them, they won’t charge the person with 30 counts of possessing stolen property, even if they could prove that each day you drove the car. You’d get a single charge of stealing the car.

If you gave the car to another person, they could also be charged with receiving stolen property — so it’s possible to have multiple charges for the “same theft”, but it would be two people getting charged.

If being in the country as an illegal was itself a crime, you could be arrested for being here illegally, and released pending trial, and then the next day be arrested again for being illegal — you could get arrested each time you were let out of the jail, since your presense would be illegal.

I know if sounds weird, but if you were driving the wrong way on a street, and were pulled over and given a ticket, and when done you kept going the wrong way, you’d get pulled over again.

And no, I didn’t see anything wrong with the manner you responded. Law is NOT my area of expertise.