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Reality Check: Sometimes There Are No Do-Overs
Today’s Decisions Can Have Legal and Long-Term Consequences
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Because I’m 18, any federal crime I’m convicted of won’t have an impact on the rest of my life.
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My parents know that my friends and I are going to drink and they want to keep us off the road, so they buy the beer and take us to a federal park near the beach where we party. Law enforcement won’t get involved if we have parental supervision.
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Probation in the federal system is just a matter of meeting with my probation officer and, maybe, doing drug testing for a few weeks.
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Assume that there is a federal law that makes cell phone use while driving illegal: I use my cell phone almost every time I get in the car. It’s the only place that I have any privacy. Everyone does it. If I get stopped, I’d get off because I’d just say that I didn’t know about the law.
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I’ve been driving for two years — since I was 16. I’ve never been caught speeding and I’ve never had an accident. But I do have a stack of parking tickets in my glove compartment that I’ve never paid. If I ever got stopped, say, on a federal parkway, the worst that could happen is that my insurance rates would go up. No big legal deal.
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Sure, when I go to a bar, I use the fake I.D. I bought on the Internet. I’ve heard that the site could be part of a national ring, but I’m not going to get caught. Besides, if I do, I’ll just get kicked out of the bar.
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I don’t drink or do drugs, but I go to parties where other guys do. Last Saturday, my best friend’s uncle bought us a keg from across state lines for our party. If I’m not actually doing the distributing or using, law enforcement can’t touch me.
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Let’s say I’m hanging out on the National Mall, which is the federal park where most of the monuments are in Washington, D.C. My friends are passing a joint and we get stopped. The best thing to do is for no one to claim ownership, then the feds can’t get us.
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Putting graffiti on the courthouse is my First Amendment right. If I ever did get caught, I would just have to clean it off.
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Everybody downloads music and movies from the Internet. There’s no way it can be illegal. It’s all in the public domain.
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I order steroids off the Internet that come to me in the mail. I use them to improve my athletic performance. I need every edge I can get to win a college scholarship. These are pharmaceuticals. They’re not illegal drugs that I’m getting from some street dealer, so the feds can’t touch me.
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FaceBook and MySpace are harmless ways to stay in touch with my friends. I like to take pictures at parties. One time we staged a World Wrestling Smack Down among the guys. The parents overreacted and took it wrong. They thought we were really fighting because we named the video “Fight Club.” No harm can come from that.
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