Declan McCullagh[SMTP:declan@well.com] wrote:
This is from a bill that both the House and Senate passed (yesterday):
Whoever knowingly provides or obtains the labor or services of a person...by means of the abuse or threatened abuse of law or the legal process, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
URL: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d106:h.r.03244:
I can imagine some abuses of this, in workplace situations or divorce cases...
-Declan
While almost any law can be abused, I think you'd need a really odd situation for normal people to be able to use this one abusively. For civilians, as far as I can see, it means that filing a totally bogus SLAPP suit, or (for example) threatening to make false reports of child abuse to get leverage in a divorce are now punishable beyond what they already are. Let us remember who the greatest abusers of law and the legal process are: LEAs and prosecutors. It appears to me that this law is far more a curb on the behaviour of bad cops and over-zealous DAs than anyone else. DAs too often obtain false testimony against third parties or plea bargains by threatening trumped-up charges. Corrupt cops can similarly threaten false or totally overblown charges to obtain services from the weak and defenseless. I suspect that in so far as far as any law can be considered 'good' this is one of the less bad ones. Of course, I rejoice that IANAL. Peter Trei