Laws have been passed that require strict interpretation, which means that simple errors -- clerical and otherwise -- unintentional violations and ignorance of the law are prosecuted without respect to
mens rea. No harm has been done, there is no victim (aside from the prosecuted) but the law has been broken.
George Norris, buyer/seller/cultivator of orchids, home-based business, SWAT-raided by US Fish & Wildlife ...Mr. Norris ended up spending almost two years in prison because he didn't have the proper paperwork for some of the many orchids he imported. The orchids were all legal - but Mr. Norris and the overseas shippers who had packaged the flowers had failed to properly navigate the many, often irrational, paperwork requirements the U.S. imposed when it implemented an arcane international treaty's new restrictions on trade in flowers and other flora.
Then there's
Abner Schoenwetter:Lacey Act violations is what was used against Gibson Guitar as well.
Schoenwetter was charged with violating the Lacey Act, which basically says that if you violate the wildlife laws in another country, then the U.S. can charge you in this country. The law in question was that the lobster was not packaged correctly; the exporter had them packaged in plastic bags, but Honduran law says they must be packaged in cardboard boxes.
So, Schoenwetter fought the case in court. Even the Honduran Attorney General came forward with a written statement defending Schoenwetter. The statement said that the laws of Honduras were not applicable to Schoenwetter’s case, and that they were invalid laws.
By my reading (if I'm correct), "exporter" means whoever shipped the lobsters
from Honduras packaged them incorrectly, but Schoenwetter was tried, convicted, and spent six and a half years of an eight year sentence in prison.
More recently, there's this:
Wyoming welder faces $75,000 a day in EPA fines for building pond on his property.Lives in Wyoming on eight acres, got a permit from the state, followed the rules, now the EPA is on his ass -- assuming facts not in evidence -- for building a pond on his own property, requiring he prove his "innocence". He'll go to prison unless this is settled because he avows to fight.
How many others are in prison as a result of this kind of bullsht?