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| Authored by: Tolerance on Tuesday, April 02 2013 @ 05:09 PM EDT |
"[T]he degree of knowledge and intent" which "distinguishes [conversion] from
theft", was my original point. You can't prosecute someone for theft who didn't
intend to deprive the owner of a chattel. That is, at most,
conversion.
You're right that I didn't say "Conversion and criminal
conversion are two different things". It's far from clear. Mr Goldman didn't
either:
He wasn't talking about something purely civil like the tort of
conversion, because he said that conversion, like theft, is punished "both
civilly and criminally".
Yet he didn't mean "criminal conversion"
either. Wikipedia used the joyride example I quoted for that. Goldman used the
same joyride example as a “trespass to chattel.”
That's three
uses of the same joyride example, by the way! Where did that come from? It's in
my notes from 2005, so it's old; it's in Wikipedia, for criminal conversion; and
it's given by Goldman as trespass to chattels.
So what are we left
with? Conversion being what's left of theft after you take out intent or
permanent deprivation? That's still the core of the matter, but looking at
commentary our Crimes Act and other jurisdictions it's becoming very clear that
legislators, the lawyers including Mr Goldman, and even the judges, are
thoroughly confused.
Which actually is his point; on-line "Trespass to
Chattels" has become punishable as a Federal or State crime although deprivation
or damage isn't present, and needs to be rethought. He could have used better
terms or examples though. From his actual words, he is still confusing
'conversion' and 'criminal conversion'. Is he saying the difference is only one
of degree?
---
Grumpy old man [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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