{"id":2189,"date":"2009-12-18T13:06:51","date_gmt":"2009-12-18T17:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=2189"},"modified":"2009-12-18T13:08:58","modified_gmt":"2009-12-18T17:08:58","slug":"the-lesson-is-next-time-dont-turn-it-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2009\/12\/18\/the-lesson-is-next-time-dont-turn-it-in\/","title":{"rendered":"The lesson is . . . next time, don’t turn it in"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remember the report of a man who’d found a shotgun on his lawn, turned it in to the police, and was promptly charged with posession of an illegal weapon? Well, he’s been convicted<\/a> and will face up to<\/strike><\/font>a minimum of<\/ins><\/font> five years in prison for his “crime”:<\/p>\n

\n

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”.<\/p>\n

Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday — after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.<\/p>\n

The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon.<\/p>\n

In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: “I didn’t think for one moment I would be arrested.<\/p>\n

“I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The way the law is written, the jury would have had no choice but to find him guilty. If only there were some way for a jury to find that the law<\/em> was at fault. (Or, among their other limits to civil liberties, has the British government made jury nullification illegal?)<\/p>\n

Update<\/b>: Fixed the mis-statement about the length of sentence Mr. Clarke may face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember the report of a man who’d found a shotgun on his lawn, turned it in to the police, and was promptly charged with posession of an illegal weapon? Well, he’s been convicted and will face up toa minimum of five years in prison for his “crime”: A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,9],"tags":[52,343,49,322],"class_list":["post-2189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-bureaucracy","category-law","tag-absurd","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-guns","tag-nannystate"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-zj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2189"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2193,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189\/revisions\/2193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}