Edit: I looked into it, nope, Florida is utterly insane - a child didn't get consent to record their rapist soliciting/threatening them, so the evidence was denied;
On December 11, 2014, the Florida Supreme Court held in McDade v. State, 154 So. 3d 292 (Fla. 2014), that a defendant accused of child molestation has an expectation of privacy in conversations between him and his victim taking place in their shared residence where he asked her to have sex with him and also alluded to his prior acts of sexual abuse.
...
the court concluded that the Secrecy of Communications Act’s (SCA), F.S. Ch. 934, et seq. (2014), plain language barred the trial court’s admission of a recorded conversation between McDade and his victim into evidence. The decision may surprise some, especially when one considers that the victim’s actions in McDade also constituted a crime under the SCA and authorized the criminal defendant in that case to sue the victim under the statute’s civil cause of action
https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/mcdade-v-...
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-district-court-of-appeal/1633...
https://law.justia.com/cases/florida/supreme-court/2014/sc13...
They have since made a exclusion for this scenario, allowing children to record talking to their abusers.
I was just having this conversation. You can be sued and/or jailed if you record someone without their consent in a two party consent state.
Not saying it's right or wrong, but it exists and is something to think about.
Personally I'd absolutely do it and take the gamble. But I'm risk-thriving (hence started several companies, enjoy international travel, etc.)
At some point you need to worry about deep fakes, etc, but there's still cases where the accused more or less says they are guilty and flips the court off and everybody acts like nothing can be done about it.
I did not think I would ever see someone comparing starting businesses and international travel with committing clear misdemeanors and possible felonies and opening oneself up to civil suits.
If the recording is not tampered with it's unlikely a civil case will get anywhere.
If someone is actually a rapist and got off on a technicality it's your moral imperative to do something, no? Stand up to unjust laws. Evil prospers because idiots like you do nothing.
That seems unnecessary ad hominem. Just completely uncalled for.
Also, you're assigning a values judgment to my statements that I genuinely thought I was clear about when I said "Not saying it's right or wrong, but it exists and is something to think about."
You have no idea what my stance is on literally anything. Trying to be superior to someone who has given you nothing to feel superior about seems sort of hateful?
Facts are facts, and consequences are consequences, regardless of right or wrong. That was my meaning. Agree with the outcomes or not, believe me or don't. That doesn't matter.
>If the recording is not tampered with it's unlikely a civil case will get anywhere.
How do you figure? If it is a surreptitious recording without consent, the person who was recorded has a pretty clear line to a civil case.
also wait, were criminal charges brought against the rape victim for recording? did some prosecutor decide to actively assist further ruining the victim's life? civil I can understand, but what a scumbag for not exercising prosecutorial discretion if so.
Or just make a deepfake of anyone you want saying anything you want and try them in the court of public opinion. Mob justice is a poor form of investigation.
This is a separate issue that will need to be addressed. It will soon be possible to claim any video or audio evidence is faked. I don't know what happens then, but building off of what happens now, each piece of evidence is just weighting the scales one direction.
I'm definitely aware of what can happen. I don't know how often it does. But if you restrict yourself to forcing justice only when you aren't acting on a hunch you're probably doing the best for yourself you can, because the alternative is usually nothing.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/29/521919322...
Or they could've attempted to intimidate you while you were in a crowd.
Otherwise it would be on reputation alone, just like now.
Your best bet if you care about delivering the evidence is probably to leverage the power of the judge, ventilate it and get the people threatening you to retreat. If you do that, you transform a threat behind closed doors (not to do something) into a retaliation for something real that you did (telling the court about tampering) that you can tell your tenure committee about later. In sum, open justice is designed to expose these things, it is far and away the best forum for it, so better to use it while you can.
Is this true even when gathering evidence of a crime?
Edit: the laws are the same, and you can't use an illegal recording in a court -- expressly. If you try to give an illegal recording to the news you'll likely get taken in civil court.
> If you wanted to play it on the news, however, you're still free to do that as far as I know.
Sure, if you want to advertise the crime you committed on the news you are permitted to do that.
There is no express prohibition on this in the California law, sure, but it probably is a good way to rack up civil liability as well as advertising your existing exposure to criminal liability. If Florida really has identical law in this area, I’d expect the same thing.
> Posted: Dec 5, 2019 / 05:44 PM PST / Updated: Dec 5, 2019 / 05:44 PM PST Secretly recording someone else’s conversation is illegal in California, but prosecutors can use the illicit recording as evidence in a criminal case, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
> In their unanimous ruling, the justices cited a 1982 ballot measure passed by voters that allows all “relevant evidence” to be introduced in any criminal trial or pretrial hearing, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
> The case at hand concerned a private phone call about the actions of an alleged child molester. While the conversation was confidential under state law, its contents were clearly relevant and were properly disclosed to the jury in the molesting case, the court said.
> The ruling follows a line of cases that narrowed criminal defendants’ rights after the 1982 ballot measure, which sponsors dubbed the Victims’ Bill of Rights, the Chronicle said. The measure included provisions that increased sentences, narrowed the insanity defense, allowed victims to testify at parole and sentencing hearings and let prosecutors introduce evidence that had been obtained in violation of state law.
> The court also rejected defense arguments that admission of secretly recorded evidence would violate the right to privacy in the California Constitution. Those who are harmed by the recordings can still sue for damages, the eavesdroppers can be prosecuted, and the evidence remains inadmissible in non-criminal cases, Cantil-Sakauye said.
[0]: https://ktla.com/news/local-news/its-illegal-to-secretly-rec...
Tampering with a witness is a crime, and attempting to document evidence of a crime will outweigh the civil tort.