Badly Written Laws Badly Applied

I sometimes watch Law and Order on TV (not faithfully), and I’ve often thought “how creative!” as one prosecutor or another invents a way to apply the law to something they’d like to “get” someone for. (Quite a sentence, but I’m going to leave it.) At the same time I’ve hoped real prosecutors in the real world don’t behave in that fashion, even though I know they do.

Here’s an example. According to The Economist, a marine biologist took advantage of the fact that some killer whales killed a gray whale calf. She moved quickly to photograph the feeding, including putting a rope through some of the blubber. She’s now charged with a federal felony for feeding the whales, as well as for lying to the police. Why lying? She provided them with her edited video when they asked for her video of the event.

We need better laws, better written, and we need better accountability for some of these prosecutors.

(HT: The Agitator)