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Comment by jdoliner | Hacker News Reader

> He went through a traumatic experience with aggressive, armed officers not knowing why.

Talking to police officers for 5 minutes after you commit a crime is the cost of being part of society. It seems very reasonable to me and I wouldn't call it traumatic.

> maybe we should all be severely punished for our mistakes

This qualifies as severely punished?

> The world is a much better place if we can work together and be understanding of mistakes

Completely agree, that's why Aaronson complete inability to understand his mistake is so gross. Even after it's explained to him and he's back home writing a blog post about it, he still doesn't understand his mistake.

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Being told to confess (confess! confess!) sounds downright medieval. [Redacted some stuff comparing American police to police in some other countries, accusing them of being especially aggressive.] I don't know why anybody would accept being treated like that, without being told what they're being accused of. I would complain in his shoes.

Keep in mind that, in the U.S., the benchmark for bad treatment by police is being shot while complying as fully as possible with their instructions (for which the involved officers are virtually never punished).

> Talking to police officers for 5 minutes after you commit a crime is the cost of being part of society. It seems very reasonable to me and I wouldn't call it traumatic.

Did he commit a crime? What he did isn't a crime in England.

Yes... stealing money is a crime in the US. You're allowed to take from tip jars in England? That doesn't sound right to me. But I don't know much about English law.

> Yes... stealing money is a crime in the US.

Theft in the US generally involves intent, not merely taking. There was certainly probable cause to arrest for petty theft, but a taking under an honest mistake of ownership is not theft, so, if one accepts Aaronson’s account, he did not, in fact, commit theft.

OTOH, whether a jury would believe it plausible that not only did he initially forget that he had paid by card and mistake the tip jar for change but, when told that the container from which he had just taken money was for tips, still did not realize that the money he had taken was tips and not his change is another question, so I wouldn't have been surprised if, if this had gone further, he had been convicted of theft even if his narrative of th facts external to his mental state were accepted as true.

In England theft requires dishonest appropriation with the intent to permanently deprive the owner.

I'm not sure what he did meets all of those tests. I'm not sure it meets "dishonest" - it sounds like it was a simple mistake.

I think the amount stolen here probably precludes prosecution in most jurisdictions. But I have trouble believing that if it was a larger amount he'd be able to just say: "I was mistaken, I thought their money was my money." I'm not a lawyer but that seems like far too abusable of a defense.

According to what he says happened, this couldn't have happened with a larger amount without him realizing it.

Theft in the US afaik is also defined as "intent to deprive". That's why e.g. joyriding is different than grand theft auto.

Theft or larceny requires specific intent to permanently deprive another individual of his or her property.

There exists also strict liability crimes where intent is not considered but theft is not one of them.

> It seems very reasonable to me and I wouldn't call it traumatic.

Well, I'm glad we've got you here to tell us all that he didn't feel how he felt.

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