Accessory After the Fact
Contact a military lawyer if you are accused or suspected of a military offense.
Many times people get themselves into trouble with the law simply because they don’t understand it. However, this in itself provides no basis for a defense. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
There are instances where people commit an offence—such as accessory after the fact—without even realizing they are subject to the law. Some good examples of this:
• Your brother offers you a good deal on some car parts. You know they have been stolen because he told you he was going to break into a warehouse a month ago to commit the theft of the parts. In this case you are benefiting from the proceeds of the crime, so you could now be charged as an accessory.
• Your boyfriend shows up at the door in a panic. He just got into a bar fight and gravely injured someone. Now the police are looking for him and he has nowhere to go. You allow him to hide out at your place. You are harboring a criminal and can be charged with accessory to the crime.
• You happen to see a friend fleeing from a store that he has just robbed. He is running down the street. You pull over in your vehicle and give him a ride so he can escape. You could be found guilty of assisting in the crime.
Although many of these examples are pretty basic, there are many grey areas to the law. Even if you think you have done nothing wrong, you might find out that the law thinks otherwise.
One of the somewhat greyer areas of the law is reporting a crime that you know happened. In many cases, reporting the crime doesn’t mean you will be found guilty as an accessory, but there are some special circumstances where this could be the case.
Although there are occurrences for which you cannot be held responsible for not disclosing a crime, this does not include the circumstance where you were paid by the accused not to disclose the crime – in other words, if you were paid for your silence. Even if you later come forward with the information, you might still be charged.
One thing is very important: if you are ever charged as an accessory, don’t just automatically assume that once you have explained the situation, the charges will merely be dropped. What you should assume is that you could be in serious trouble and that you are in need of the help of a lawyer. You must invoke your rights to counsel as soon as you have been charged with an accessory offence. If you fail to do this, you could make the circumstances much worse than they are, and whatever statements you make could be misunderstood or misconstrued and used against you at trial.
