Mexican WINS ID theft case in supreme court!!!
http://www.ohio.com/news/nation/44341012.html
Associated Press WASHINGTON: A unanimous Supreme Court said Monday
that undocumented workers who use phony IDs can't be considered
identity thieves without proof they knew they were stealing real
people's Social Security and other numbers.
The court's decision limits federal authorities' use of a 2004 law,
intended to get tough on identity thieves, against immigrants who are
picked up in workplace raids and found to be using false Social
Security and alien registration numbers.
Advocates for immigrants had complained that federal authorities used
the threat of prosecution on the identity theft charge, which carries
a two-year mandatory prison term, to win guilty pleas on lesser
charges and acceptance of prompt deportation.
''These prosecutions have been taken off the table,'' said Nina
Perales, southwest regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal
Defense and Education Fund.
The court, in an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, rejected the
government's argument that prosecutors need only show that the
identification numbers belong to someone else, regardless of whether
the defendant knew it.
Breyer said intent is often easy to prove in what he called classic
identity theft. ''Where a defendant has used another person's
information to get access to that person's bank account, the
government can prove knowledge with little difficulty,'' Breyer said.
But immigrants without proper documentation need identity documents
and often buy them from forgers, never knowing if they belong to
anyone.
Such was the case with the undocumented worker on the winning side
Monday. Ignacio Carlos Flores-Figueroa, a Mexican immigrant employed
at a steel plant in East Moline, Ill., traveled to Chicago and bought
numbers from someone who trades in counterfeit IDs.
Unlike earlier fictitious numbers Flores-Figueroa used, these numbers
belonged to actual people.
Flores-Figueroa had worked at the plant under a false name for six
years. His decision to use his real name and exchange one set of phony
numbers for another aroused his employer's suspicions.
He was arrested in 2006 and convicted on false document and identity
theft charges.
He appealed his conviction as an identity thief, but the 8th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis upheld the conviction. With
appeals courts divided on the issue, the Supreme Court stepped into
the case.
The Bush administration used the identity theft law hundreds of times
last year. Workers accused of immigration violations found themselves
facing the more serious identity theft charge as well, without any
indication they knew Social Security and other identification numbers
belonged to real people.
Juvenile sentences
Also Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it will decide whether
sentencing juveniles to spend the rest of their lives in prison
without hope of ever being released can be considered a cruel and
unusual punishment.
The justices are taking up two cases from Florida challenging life
sentences for teenagers. In the first case, a judge determined that
17- year-old Terrance Graham took part in an armed home-invasion
robbery while he was on probation for a violent crime.
Joe Harris Sullivan, 33 and in prison at the Santa Rosa Correctional
Institution in Milton, Fla., was sentenced to life in prison without
possibility of parole for the rape of Lena Bruner in 1989.
Bryan A. Stevenson, Sullivan's lawyer, said Sullivan was one of only
two 13-year-old children sentenced to life without parole for a non-
homicide crime in the United States and only one of eight with that
sentence for any crime in prison.
The cases will not be heard until the fall term. The Supreme Court is
expected to have a new justice by October following the retirement of
David Souter.
In other actions, the court ordered the federal appeals court in
Philadelphia to consider reinstating a $550,000 indecency fine against
CBS Corp. over Janet Jackson's breast-baring performance at the 2004
Super Bowl.
Associated Press WASHINGTON: A unanimous Supreme Court said Monday
that undocumented workers who use phony IDs can't be considered
identity thieves without proof they knew they were stealing real
people's Social Security and other numbers.
The court's decision limits federal authorities' use of a 2004 law,
intended to get tough on identity thieves, against immigrants who are
picked up in workplace raids and found to be using false Social
Security and alien registration numbers.
Advocates for immigrants had complained that federal authorities used
the threat of prosecution on the identity theft charge, which carries
a two-year mandatory prison term, to win guilty pleas on lesser
charges and acceptance of prompt deportation.
''These prosecutions have been taken off the table,'' said Nina
Perales, southwest regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal
Defense and Education Fund.
The court, in an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, rejected the
government's argument that prosecutors need only show that the
identification numbers belong to someone else, regardless of whether
the defendant knew it.
Breyer said intent is often easy to prove in what he called classic
identity theft. ''Where a defendant has used another person's
information to get access to that person's bank account, the
government can prove knowledge with little difficulty,'' Breyer said.
But immigrants without proper documentation need identity documents
and often buy them from forgers, never knowing if they belong to
anyone.
Such was the case with the undocumented worker on the winning side
Monday. Ignacio Carlos Flores-Figueroa, a Mexican immigrant employed
at a steel plant in East Moline, Ill., traveled to Chicago and bought
numbers from someone who trades in counterfeit IDs.
Unlike earlier fictitious numbers Flores-Figueroa used, these numbers
belonged to actual people.
Flores-Figueroa had worked at the plant under a false name for six
years. His decision to use his real name and exchange one set of phony
numbers for another aroused his employer's suspicions.
He was arrested in 2006 and convicted on false document and identity
theft charges.
He appealed his conviction as an identity thief, but the 8th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis upheld the conviction. With
appeals courts divided on the issue, the Supreme Court stepped into
the case.
The Bush administration used the identity theft law hundreds of times
last year. Workers accused of immigration violations found themselves
facing the more serious identity theft charge as well, without any
indication they knew Social Security and other identification numbers
belonged to real people.
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