Hacker News Reader

Comment by pc86 | Hacker News Reader

> The notice came from District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office. His prosecutors are using these fake subpoenas to pressure witnesses to talk to them — a tactic that defense lawyers and legal experts said is unethical, if not illegal.

The fact that the DA's office, which does not issue subpoenas, can mail to witnesses a document which says "SUBPOENA" is bold lettering and threatens arrest, is not on its face obviously and flagrantly illegal, is shocking to me.

In a just world everyone in the DA's office who had a hand in this and had the authority to stop it would be charged with falsifying court documents, witness tampering, or whatever other crime(s) were committed in doing this.

View on HN

Beyond the fact that it should be illegal, it's stupid.

It's going to teach people that they might not have to comply with subpoenas because of all the fake ones. At the very least, people will be more inclined to wait until they have a lawyer before speaking with the police, which is the opposite of what they want.

But it's also likely to cause people to ignore real subpoenas, which will not only hurt them but also the court cases that they were supposed to testify at.

It's incredibly stupid.

I disagree.

It won't really harm the prosecutors and police. They'll still be able to bring the full force of the law against anyone who violates an actual subpoena. In fact, it allows them to successfully prosecute a few more people (those who didn't respond to a subpoena). And stories about THAT will just terrify people and make them more likely to comply with requests from police and prosecutors (because they don't know whether such requests have the force of law).

So the impact on society may be quite harmful, but the impact on PROSECUTORS is completely positive.

There are negatives in creating a situation where people that normally would talk to you without you jumping through hoops stop talking to you willingly and require you to jump through hoops.

Especially when the eventual new prosecutor wonders why they have to arrest everyone that is under subpoena to get them to respond.

I'm inclined to side with you on this one. I took a linguistics class called Language and the Law. The takeaway was that the legal system is quite generous when interpreting language from the side of The Law, and very strict when interpreting the language of those on the other side.

I imagine you might be able to avoid the consequences of ignoring a subpoena if your lawyer was very good, and hired the right experts to testify on your behalf, but I wouldn't bet my house on it. And legal fees can easily be as much or more than a mortgage. (IANAL)

A substantial portion of the reading for the class was from Language in the Legal Process[1]. I'd highly recommend the book if you are at all interested in legal language from a linguistics standpoint.

[1] https://smile.amazon.com/Language-Legal-Process-J-Cotterill/...

If I couldn't be sure if the document was authentic, you can be sure I'd want proof of authenticity from the court before I complied. Throw the book at me if you like, I will present my case to the court. If it was proven that the department were issuing fraudulent subpoenas, shouldn't we treat all their subpoenas as questionable until proven otherwise? It seems like a perfectly reasonable response. Of course, IANAL and TINLA applies.

Did you know I'm really the IRS/ Consider yourself served with a bill, totalling $5800 or we will arrest you at your workplace.

You can pay us via Bitcoin address 1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYK

(See? That's really scammy and evil. And its illegal for us to do that. But you know, government isnt subject to the laws for the rest of us. Oh, and that's the EFF BTC address.)

I disagree that it won't harm the prosecutors and police.

The rest of what you said is exactly my point. Those people will get hurt because they now question some basic parts of our legal system. They might violate a subpoena that they mistakenly think is fake and end up on the wrong side of the law.

At the same time, those people are also hurting the court cases that they were supposed to attend.

Prosecutors who can't get their witnesses to come in to trial are going to have a bad time, even if they can later convict those people for violating a subpoena.

The only time it helps them is when people comply with the fake subpoena and talk when they didn't have to... And there's some serious question about the evidence that produces. It wouldn't be the first evidence thrown out because it didn't follow the correct protocols and/or violated civil rights.

And what happens when this all comes to light? Do they throw out every case where this appears to have happened, if it's found to be illegal?

To me, this is a complete negative for prosecutors in the long run.

You're arguing short-term consequences whereas the parent comment is arguing long-term consequences.

I agree. I had a civil lawsuit where the opposing attorney gave a fake subpoena to one of my former employees to get him to testify. Nothing could be done about it.

IANAL, but this likely meets the standards for FRAUD: "A false representation of a matter of fact—whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading allegations, or by concealment of what should have been disclosed—that deceives and is intended to deceive another so that the individual will act upon it to her or his legal injury."

Misrepresenting a court or court officer may have criminal penalties as well.

I hope the LA state bar is reviewing (or will review) the attorneys that have done this.

> If a defense attorney did something similar, Williams said, “I guarantee you this DA would try to prosecute that defense attorney.”

Who watches the watchers?

We know now that we need to look for something like a notary stamp and judge signature on a subpeona, but we will never be as sophisticated in this domain as the DA's office, so they can probably easily trick us in other ways. The lesson I am inclined to take from this is to avoid interacting with a DA without a lawyer, similar to an investigator or a "curious" or "friendly" police officer.

The DA office can always just lie in person, mislead people (who cares if there's an official stamp; how many regular people know literally anything about the law?). At the end of the day if a prosecutor says "obey or you will be jailed" people will obey. If they did it to me and I couldn't afford a lawyer you bet I'd obey too. The only remedy is to seriously punish prosecutors who commit fraud like these ones are. Prosecutorial misconduct needs to be taken much more seriously and be much easier to convict on, since it's a national epidemic. Either that or the bar association needs to start taking their responsibilities seriously and ban people who do this from ever practicing law again.

IANAL, but this really sounds like document fraud and possibly mail fraud. If it is, then this DA could get up to 20 years per document.

You do have a point there. Mail fraud has been a federal offence since 1872.

However document fraud appears to be a little less black and white. Obviously I have no legal training and my interpretation is probably way off, but reading U.S. Code statute 1324c regarding document fraud, it appears to insinuate in subsection b that somehow law enforcement agencies are exempt.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1324c

Perhaps you can interpret this more effectively than I can.

I didn't even think of witness tampering. Good one. I don't know enough about that law to know if it applies, but it definitely might. Add that to the list of violations for these dirtbags.

It may not be illegal because no-one thought anyone in a position of responsibility would consider doing anything like it, when the rules covering subpoenas were set up.

Sounds like time to lodge a complaint with the bar.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com